Never too old to have a happy childhood!
What a lovely thing that is!
Yes, there are some suspicious re-enginings of diesel power, and I did not know Guido Sarducci worked for a Canadian railroad before he entered the priesthood, and what is a CP man doing on a Portland engine... but those just add charm to the thing. Almost hard to believe that the introductory series titles, and the music, were once up-to-the-minute modern television production ... now they are more quaint and dated than the modern steam power that was shown!
Thanks for posting that, I haven't seen it in awhile.
A couple of those fellows reminded me of the line; there are two kinds of railroaders, the kind that quit after six months, and the the kind that retire after forty years.
That sequence where they are getting the steam up sure gets you to thinking. It is had to believe that anything so complicated lasted for over a century, yet it did because there was no other way to do what it did.
The 2816 they are pacing at the end of the film is of course now sitting down at the Ogden Shops, awaiting a day when it can get back out on the line.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
"Bringing together earth, fire, air and water wrapped in a mystery that changed the course of history"....Great line!
Hard to believe Omar Lavalee has been gone 23 years now.
Yes that is a fine pacing sequence at the very end. I know we still have 2816 and a string of CPR maroon cars, however I really miss those frequent everyday scenes that came through my hometown dozens of times a day.
The CBC was not the mouthpiece for a current government back then nor did it have a particular strong ideological bent.
Their big money maker was Hockey Night in Canada. The National Film Board /CBC did several railroad themed films during this time period.
OvermodI did not know Guido Sarducci worked for a Canadian railroad
I can't tell you the number of people I heard talking like that when I was growing up. Western Canada was a land of new imigrants back then and many got jobs on the railways.
Many of those fellows hired out as Section Men. In recent times I would be reading my Mom's CPR staff magazine and see the listing of employees who had passed away. Men in their nineties, who had worked as Section Men in small villages across the prairies, who had done their jobs their entire career without benefit of power tools. When they retired at 65 they could still out work any gym rat in their 30's. Dad used to joke about CNR men, who he called sissy government workers because they wanted roofs and sides on their Speeders. And it wouldn't even be 20 below.
Since we started off this post with a TV character, I will mention another actor, David Boreanaz from "Bones". Ever since I first saw that guy on "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer", imagining him without perfect hair and teeth and a Hollywood smile, you take one look at that man and you know he should be a Section Man. I just looked at IMDB and it says he has Italian and Slovak ancestory. If he had come to Canada in the first half of the 20th Century, that is the kind of job he would have gotten. It was a hard way to make a living.
Oops, got the quote wrong... "earth, fire, air and water, but these were wrapped in some sort of alchemy that changed the course of history".
Yes those FA's sure sounded like growling EMD's ...err, London Division, I mean. What do media folks know? "We need a Diesel sound in here, get me a Diesel sound!"
Personally witnessed those graveyards and they were traumatic to say the least, so sad, such a waste, so ungrateful. No sooner than that and the rest of it went to pieces too.
I can only imagine the lines of Mohawks, Hudsons and Pacifics stateside. I did however see them all vanish overnight on the CASO except for those two teapots on the Courtland branch.
Sigh... well we can at least enjoy what we have saved and things are picking up!
While not railroad related, pre se, railroads had a hand in pulling off the magic that made the USA the supplier to the World for the fight for liberty for all.
Master Craftsmen of Yesterday
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY4RZ-FEi6M
Great film Balt. Man are we soft or what? Not an overweight person to be found. Same thing goes for railroading, lumbering, mining. Those guys were tough. Not many overweight guys underground even today on a jackleg, manual drilling, loading and blasting. It is amazing what we are capable of designing, creating and just doing.
I just saw a report that researchers have a put forth a theory that, we as humans, have reached our limits for height, weight, physical ability, longevity and so on. That few records will be broken in the future.
Apparently this is as good as it gets.
I think they are off just a wee bit. The best was when Kiefer designed and "we" rolled out the Niagara.
Landing on the moon using basically only slide-rulers wasn't too bad. Just a late burp.
Man, that's industry! No plastics or synthetics, just honest-to-God iron, steel, and sweat!
I wouldn't mind having one of those cars myself!
That picture of the bank vault door reminds me of a sectioned Le Rhone rotary aircraft engine they had on display at the now-defunct Virginia Aviation Museum here in Richmond. What an example of the machinist's art that thing was.
MiningmanI think they are off just a wee bit. The best was when Kiefer designed and "we" rolled out the Niagara.
Still off just a wee, wee bit. The best was when Kiefer designed the C1a. The Niagara is a step back, in a direction that bends rods and pins excessively. And it won't make Harmon-Chicago in one pull with a 64T tender...
Good good...yes!
[quote user="Overmod" above]
I thoght in the days that I was riding, that the Century's Niagra did run Croton-HArmon - Chicago without change.
Miningman I think they are off just a wee bit. The best was when Kiefer designed and "we" rolled out the Niagara.
[/quote]
Have I not read numerous times that a Niagara with its specialized tender could do the distance?
Dave was there....geez, what a lucky guy. T1's too!
Now the only flaw with the C1a logic is that it was never built.
Perhaps Overmod could give a brief explanation why it would have been more successful than a T1. ( which of course was successful after they got all the fixes in but corporate sabotage and EMD hypnosis ended their careers very quickly)
Would the C1a not have used the same boiler as the Niagara? Would they have averted the metallurgical problems with the firebox? What was specified for valve timing? (I think I know that one but just making sure.)
The issue is not that the Niagara ran through without engine change, it is that it needed a fuel stop enroute. As I recall this was a purpose-built facility built over the main to speed the job... but still involving time to stop, coal, and accelerate that added up.
The C1a with its better water rate per hp also had lower required fuel consumption per hp, to the point that a 64t tender ... a humongous thing! made possible unarticulated by NYC's 85mph track-pan infrastructure ... allowed the full trip with no stop and adequate reserve.
Yes, they would have had the need for rebuilt boilers due to the alloy problem, and yes, I'd expect them to get welded boilers
Valve gear would have been Baker, adapted for the 26" stroke; take your pick of lighter construction or common components, either way easily capable of the level of performance of the T1a, which was nobody's slouch as fast as NYC truly ran passenger engines. Little to no high-speed propagation with that gear and likely-sized piston valves and associated passages.
As noted to Tom Gerbracht, Deem conjugation of this engine would've been easy, and magnetorheologics a well-studied field right in the late '40s when the need for a Ferguson-type clutch would be determined.
Snyders:yes. Cunningham circulator: I'd like to think so. Survival in an era of Dieseliners and the implementation of the 1947 train-control order ... play the march from 'Saul' as the dead engines exit the yard.
Well it is not everyday that you can use the word magnetorheologics in a sentence. I'm putting that on my next Geophysics exam.
Very nice analysis with the inevitable depressing conclusion.
How is it that Germanys war locomotive survived to the Millenium in the hundreds, even in some "Western" countries, while state of the art highly evolved and advanced, expensive, brand new, quite and very useful locomotives, representing say around 100 million (between the Central and the Pennsy) in 1940 dollars of investment head into the blast furnace and oblivion. That all yet without one example extant.
I have heard the answers. They stink, like lutefisk in Denmark.
You can't fool an old horsefly! It's a humbug I tell ya, a humbug.
Quoting mining man: "They stink, like lutefisk in Denmark." Thanks, I had long wondered what the something that stinks in Denmark is.
Johnny
An interesting video. I thought back to that era and how unknown the CN and CP were to those of us in the lower heartland of the U S. They were sections of the Official Guide we rapidly thumbed through to get to RR's of greater interest. Now a half century later, CN is the dominant road in these parts.
Firelock76 I wouldn't mind having one of those cars myself!
http://americanclassicscars.com/chevrolet/77471-1936-chevy-slantback-2-door-nice-driver-car-soutern-car-runs-good-35-38-39-34.html
Chevy on track near the end of the era of trains to Key West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnx6yPM-fIg&t=53s
[quote user="Miningman"]You can't fool an old horsefly! It's humbug I tell ya, humbug[/I quote]
See the correspondence preserved at the Hagley about putting the still-beloved Big Engine in the Northumberland collection. That was about the closest we got. The Ts and Qs had a long and expensive paying-for before one could be preserved. I assume you know that Westinghouse took its turbine back and the rest of the S2 at that point was perhaps best forgotten by PRR.
I won't go into Perlman and Young over on NYC except to note that yes, it was a preservation shame. And the list of 'we came so close' including the EM-1, the Reading Pacific, and all those 4-6-4s for the Louisiana and Eastern is so long.
But it's also true that much of the cash-strapped Northeastern railroads with the most interesting power needed or wanted the scrap value more than the goodwill from obsolete history ... we have different priorities now, but it's only fair to consider what railroad eyes saw then.
Have to put on my snarky hat, or conspiracy theory eyewear.
So you say it is only fair to consider what railroad eyes saw then...Ok...how about partnerships between big oil companies, tire manufacturers and automobile manufacturers ....do you not think they had a purposeful agenda not actually based on what was best for society but on destroying a way of life and infrastructure and replacing it with their own product in both a public and private applications.
In North America only...in the USA and Canada, ( because we here are always situated at your side, economically the samller one, tugging on your pant leg ) , this way of life and it's infrastructure had to be made to look obsolete, mercilessly and with 100% destruction. The best of the best was top priority and buried fast. It needed to be forgotten and made abscent. That future glimpse cannot be tolerated or made to continue or allow to exist. The smaller and quaint could then be handled easily with ridicule and forgotten about.
375 Hudsons, 598 Mohawks, all the Niagaras, and thats just the Central...all the T1's and Q's, and what..where is our K4's dotting parks and museums. J's, M's? Even Pennsylvannia Station!
2 Mohawks survive, one by sheer luck and audacity, one out of pleas and sympathy. No way they turn a wheel again though.
Yes things were bad but what happened to all the wartime profits and massive cost saving measures.
Today we have fake news, deep state, collusion, biased reporting, spin coming out the ying yang, the .1% .... I see parallels from back then, just the folk were easier to believe and bait. Perhaps not, but they were willing.
You can't tell me Paul J. Keiffer was a happy fella in 1955...a lifetime of achievemnt without an Oscar. Can you imagine witnessing all your Hudsons cut up, your magnificient Mohawks and Niagara's dismissed and disrespected like old fish heads. Same with those guys in the roundhouse and on the road that did all the extra's throughout the war years and beyond. Here's a gold watch, get lost. Pipefitters coming back from lunch to find they have been laid off. Too bad.
Saw a twenty something Facebook billionaire, that's billions, saying he "will live to 160 with modern science, and wait until you see what the effects of 100 years of compound interest will do" and that he will "lord over us all".
Only the UP survived unscathed and intact.
wanswheel Firelock76 I wouldn't mind having one of those cars myself! http://americanclassicscars.com/chevrolet/77471-1936-chevy-slantback-2-door-nice-driver-car-soutern-car-runs-good-35-38-39-34.html
Oh so cool, but the blurb in the posted link made me nervous when it stated "Ask a price."
You know the old saying, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it!"
Here is another era gone bye bye
Caboose 434711 brings up the rear of 515 leaving Smiths Falls for Toronto, January 13, 1990, the last train with a van. The next day Montreal-Toronto through freight trains ran cabooseless. Bill Sanderson
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