More Devolution
Pennsylvania Reading SeaShore Lines
Only a railfan would find this exciting. The public sure would not.
Miningman Only a railfan would find this exciting. The public sure would not.
It's not the Atlantic City Railroad of the great days when the fastest and most glamorous of the world's locomotives handled that route; it's not a Nellie Bly and surely not a Blue Comet. But it gets the right job done for its present clientele... and would as long as Ecolaire had the parts and the equipment trust kept running.
If I remember correctly, what replaced it was RDCs, likely a step down for the pax in most respects. Might have been interesting had PRR/PC kept going just a couple of years, into the casino era...
6013 is a 1600 HP AS-16 (geared for 80 MPH!) Dual control with the "good" 608A engine. PRR class BS-16ms ("m" = MU, "s"=steam boiler)
Yes, I believe replaced by this:
The public of course would not know a P70 coach from a hole in the ground.
Far cry from the Blue Comet days for sure. A grimy dirty burbling Baldwin pulls up with a single coach and you're standing there with Mom and the kids looking forward to a day of fun and excitement .. not a good start.
looking at the above pic it appears the more curious got a good view of what's ahead although one or two must be engineer and crew.
The striping looks like a hurried afterthought.
They would not care about the P-70 but it would be comfortable sitting and a comfortable ride. In the early '70s these could still be found on the Philadelphia clockers, and their ride quality and comfort were astounding compared to the other equipment. Of course you had to be prepared for the sort of half-light illumination and bronze seat frames and purplish plush, a bit funereal... but if you needed a nap at 80mph or better, you could get one. My guess is that the public wasn't expecting either an AOE or a Metroliner... and would like that coach once they were sitting in it.
Now if you want something to deplore, look at some of the North Jersey options in that general era... I love the principles of rattan seats but not once they get rott-an.
Lots of railcars and doodlebugs had some version of tiger stripes -- considering the Boston-rocker exposure of the engineer or whatever you call the driver of one of those things, that was a reasonable sort of precaution, although adding a tasty touch of ghastliness to many a gas-electric already looking like it was contrived by a grave-robbing relative of good Dr. Viktor.
For some reason, unaccountable to me now, I never actually rode one of the things east of Lindenwold. Folks I trusted claimed the trains got over 90mph at times, and even if that were based only on the notoriously-Italian-style-optimistic RDC speedometers it would have likely seemed pretty quick.
rcdrye6013 is a 1600 HP AS-16 (geared for 80 MPH!)
Don't ask me where that AS-12 typo came from: PRSL never had those.
Pity this wasn't a few short years earlier: this is one of the justly-famed Green Hornets, I believe. Plenty fast, and plenty hot. Here she is then:
http://www.godfatherrails.com/images/slides/1954_07/30-PRSL6033HammontonNJ072454gf.jpg
6013 was delivered in green. BTW the PRSL didn't own the P70s, they still belonged to PRR's West Jersey & Shore (PRSL leased them).
Well then...Just as stated, only appeals to railfans. All the Madison Ave. marketing in the world would not convince folks that the unkempt Baldwin and a single old coach was a great travel adventure or an advanced way to get to Atlantic City.
Wish I had taken it though!
End of the Line
Old Train Masters never die, they just fade away?
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Actually Becky, that's not a Train Master, it's a Baldwin, but I can understand the mistake. Most roadswitchers look alike anyway. It took me years to spot the differences and even now I'm not sure on some!
My spotting feature for the Trainmaster is the high end platforms at the same hight as the cab floor. Also 6 axles.
My favorite spotting feature for the Train Master is the arched roof line, the Baldwins have a flat roof.
Miningman End of the Line
To be fair, 6024 doesn't really look anything like 6013 because the very last Baldwin roadswitchers had taller hoods than the great majority built earlier. This made them look very much more like the intermediate FM units (after most of the Loewy windows and fillets had gone) than the Baldwins that preceded them. Had Baldwin kept building for another ten years, these would have been more familiar.
Peter
PRSL's last four AS16s were built for Reading with electric MU and dynamic brakes, but not accepted for delivery. The PRSL removed the DBs from the short hood, put in a boiler, changed the MU to Baldwin pneumatic and regeared them for 80 MPH.
The PRSL's 1970s problems with Baldwins stemmed more from the Westinghouse electricals than from the 608A engines. Westinghouse stopped supplying electrical parts to B-L-H and F-M sometime in 1955. Spare parts were still available by the 1970s but had become expensive.
I suspect the problems with the remaining PRSL Baldwins were related to Ecolaire and Harry Rentschler stopping key parts availability after 1970. There were engines with Westinghouse 'legacy' motors that soldiered on later than the mid-Seventies, weren't there?
Trona ran them into the 2000s. SP had long since pulled its AS616s from line haul service to hump service. The lack of Baldwin parts and the availability of C628s and C630s to replace them in hump service shortened their service lives. Some of them were rebuilt in the late 1960s.
Is that building 'one with the Traymore' now?
Was hoping ' yoo's guys ' knew of its fate. Looks classy, expensive but functional.
Demolished '97 Of course!
A decade later, this:
https://njcrda.com/wp-content/uploads/Downtown-Plan-Sept2007.pdf
Isn't it interesting that even today no one really wants to talk about why this, of all buildings, was pulled down for 'something else' ... that probably isn't economically thriving.
Note the overhead lights so very reminiscent of 30th St. Station. Wonder where they are now.
Jersey City Station
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/0gcAAOxyTjNSoqOA/s-l1600.jpg
http://dcmny.org/adore-djatoka/resolver?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&svc_id=info%3Alanl-repo/svc/getRegion&svc_val_fmt=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajpeg2000&svc.format=image/jpeg&rft_id=http%3A//dcmny.org/islandora/object/photosnycbeyond%253A25147/datastream/JP2/view%3Ftoken%3D58029aba8937eda2db7efb64f94168c683a0de5158da22c2751553bdcd16bb77&svc.region=0%2C0%2C2114%2C3560
Some actually justify this.
Garrick Theatre Chicago
Boston Post Office
More Devolution, what the heck happened?
The Scene---Waverly, Iowa 1987, a CNW siding.
Pennsy's Keystone Tubular Train
( purchase and restoration for a never happened dinner train)
Brief history on Page 20, Aug. 2011 Trains Magazine
New addition to the threads title .. I'm adding the words 'Thread Noir'. This in keeping with its sinister nature, where dreams and good intentions don't always work out. Dreams and good intentions aren't for everyone.
How you qualify for a Thread Noir:
Start with something strong, ( a T1 will do, or anything with a turbine) add a little sweet, then comes the bitters. Diesel makes good bitters.
Now you shake it all up well and then dump it all on the rocks. Done.
1) The last Frangeco RTG cab in existence.
2) A Classic and one of my favs ... Pennsylvania Station. In terms of the way it was built it was a three year old. EeeeDeeeeeOttttts.
3) At one time there was a red carpet and the Century.
8th Ave. looking south, Penn Station on the left, Post Office on the right, and
The Turboliner saga would indeed qualify well for noir... were any part of it to fit on this forum yet!
1 of course was not a Rohr Turboliner, as originally posted -- it is the last cab in existence, spared kinda like the EBT or the Lost Engines Baldwins by scrapper sentimentality. It's ironic that this remains (and, I think, could be restored using foreign parts in a similar way to the Krauss-Maffei in California) when all the domestic trains are gone...
The Rohrs were much more like a streamlined train, but for some reason I always associated them with being more like a big interurban or pretentious regional commuter train than a true Amtrak train pulled by locomotives or running under catenary. That changed when I was living in Garrison and went over to Cold Spring Harbor to have lunch at an 'outdoor cafe'. This was on a curve of the Hudson Line, tracks no more than about 10' from the tables, and there were these little signs about 'watch out for 100mph trains'. The first one I saw was every bit of that... I didn't have dessert waiting for the next one.
The great apotheosis came with the Super Steel rebuilding. Now THOSE were high-speed trains. And as far as I know they never turned a wheel for Amtrak, the very sophisticated turbine and gearbox spare parts were literally sold for six orders of magnitude or so less than their cost... and the surviving trains have been given to FIREFIGHTERS TO PRACTICE TERRORIST RESPONSE. (After which they will not be offered to museums, but scrapped.)
The whole idea deserved better. By the time it becomes a fair subject for Classic Trains, no one will remember enough to care.
Now, there is a noir-in-the-Detective-Cinderdick style starting only a decade later -- that being the technically-fascinating but otherwise-who-cares saga of the 100mph Northeast Corridor... railbus. (One actually survives in a trolley museum and English groups are agitating to have it repatriated to Blighty, a bit like that jewel in Steamtown's crown Repton... I personally think it should be rebuilt for high speed yet again whether or not anyone sane would bother to ride it, even for free museum rides.)
Not being anywhere near an expert on British steam I went looking for Repton. Found it, too! Interesting story. Found a video as well, here it is:
(That's one gorgeous piece of machinery, let me tell you!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRNa21Hpk60
Ok thanks Overmod. Corrected the original posting with the proper identification.
Nice video work on the Repton. Fine looking loco.
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