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Other views of NY City

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Sunday, May 24, 2020 4:53 PM

Much better photo, he looks like a fine, proper gentleman in that one!  

He does  look a bit PO'd in the first one.

Then again, there are some people who the camera just doesn't like, for whatever reason.  Richard Nixon had that problem.  

And no doubt Mr. Smith was a great railroader, that's a given.  

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Posted by Miningman on Sunday, May 24, 2020 10:27 PM
Brooklyn 1922 - last soldier returned from France
 
 
 
 
Turner Classic has been featuring 'soldier stories' all day. More human interest than a War Movie. Of course the setting is the war years or shortly after.  Almost every one of them has clips of trains and stations. At the moment the movie playing is Pride of the Marines. Philadelphia Station, Pennsy passenger, GG1's.  
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Posted by MidlandMike on Sunday, May 24, 2020 11:06 PM

The map of the Kingsbridge area shows how the earlier Hudson Division looped around the meander of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and then the new cutoff (penciled in) that follows the new ship canal.  An X marks the spot of the old Kingsbridge station near the spot where the old line and the Putnam Division part ways.  I would assume that that remained the location of the Putnam Division's Kingsbridge Station.  In the first posts with the photos of the Marble Hill/new Kingsbridge Station, looking in the background above the station you see boxcars on the grade where the old line and the Putnam Division ran side by side.  The old line, or parts of it, remained in frieght service for at least a half century.

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Posted by Miningman on Monday, May 25, 2020 9:47 AM
 
 
More of the same tracks and the 59th Street Bridge
Hell Gate Bridge on the right. 
Wet kids waiting for an internet to be grumpy on
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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, May 25, 2020 10:40 AM

Miningman
Brooklyn 1922 - last soldier returned from France

Very somber photographs of that fallen Doughboy's return home.

Any idea who he was?  I wish we had a name.

Lest we forget...  

Somewhat sad as well, but there's no one left alive who was in those photos.  Time marches on, what can you do.

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Posted by timz on Monday, May 25, 2020 12:01 PM

Miningman's four 1929 pics were apparently taken from the NW corner of the Paragon bldg 40.7424N 73.94915W . Goes to show you don't need a skyscraper to get a terrific panorama -- 100 feet of elevation can be enough.

Surprised to see LIRR Hunterspoint Ave station -- almost no trains stopped there in 1929. Or did DD1s not pull LIRR trains out of NY Penn that early?

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Posted by Miningman on Monday, May 25, 2020 2:23 PM

Question for timz... what is the double tracked elevated line shown on the right?

 See post 2 back for super clear image with the link.

 

Miningman's three 1929 pics were apparently taken from the NW corner of the Paragon bldg...

 
 
 
 
Lots of stuff below
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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, May 25, 2020 2:49 PM

Miningman
Wet kids waiting for an internet to be grumpy on

Man, did I just learn a good lesson about looking at a photograph too quickly!

I saw the Hell Gate Bridge, I saw people in swimsuits, and the first thing that popped into my mind was  "Are those people swimming in the East River?   What, are they nuts?  That river was so polluted you could walk across it before you could swim in it!"

Then I looked again.  "Oh, swimming pools!  Never mind!"

My "Emily Litella Moment."  For those who don't know her, let me introduce you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZLeaSWY37I  

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Posted by timz on Monday, May 25, 2020 2:58 PM

Miningman
what is the double tracked elevated line shown on the right?

The one just right of the steam plume, that disappears underground at the bottom edge of the pic? That's the IRT subway, now the 7 line. Still looks about like that now -- a westward train enters the tunnel, makes one stop in Queens, then under the river to run along 42nd St in Manhattan.

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Posted by Miningman on Monday, May 25, 2020 4:01 PM
Not that it possibly matters, but the Paragon Building was originally Borough Hall, and is related to the Vessel stairways to nowhere. Click on bottom link.
 
Thanks to timz.  Thanks to Magic Mike.
 

 
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Posted by MidlandMike on Monday, May 25, 2020 10:12 PM
Miningman wrote the following post 11 days ago:


Social Nondistancing 

 
 
The lonely Ardsley station with the Saw Mill River Parkway on the left, and the New York State Thruway on the right, gives some indication for the demise of the Putnam Division.  The Thruway displaced some of the village near the station when it was built.
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Posted by Miningman on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 12:57 AM

 
 
 
I really don't have the right words.
The Putnam Division.
 
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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 1:28 AM

Answering a question, I believe then PRR-owned, LIRR leased, DD-1s began hauling Montauk Point LIRR trains from Pennsylvania Station to Jamaica even before they began hauling PRR trains to Manhattan Transfer.  With the New Brunzwick - Sunnyside, Queens AC electrication, ownership of most DD-1s was transfered to the LIRR and Greenpoint and Port Jefferson trains were also handled.  DD-1s were also used in LIRR freight service.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 9:44 AM

Miningman
I really don't have the right words.

Me neither, except "Sic transit gloria mundi,"  or "So passes worldly glory."

Photo one looks like something you'd call an "Urban Decay Tour."

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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 10:13 AM

The book cover interests me.  I note the locomotive is correct, a ten wheeler.  The first coach is a problem unless the train is one of those running through to Brewster, which occasionally did use a regular non-air-conditioned long-distance coach. But nearly all Putnam division passenger trains that I experienced in my boyhood, seeing them within Van Courtland Park or from the windows of the Hudson Division MU or layed up at Lake Mahopac and/or Yorktown Heights, used plain-Jane arch-roof commuter coaches identacle to those in the Boston and Albany suburban service, similar to those used by the C&NW in steam days.  Possibly the second coach in the cover picture is of this type.

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Posted by MidlandMike on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 10:20 PM

Miningman

 
 
 
I really don't have the right words.
The Putnam Division.
 
 

I can think of two possible "Marble Hill stubs".  On the west side of Marble Hill thee was a yard on a remanent of the original Hudson line.  On the east of Marble Hill there is some track on the remanent of the Putnam Division.  The west stub was pretty much done in th 60s.  The east (Putnam) stub is still there.

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Posted by MidlandMike on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 10:57 PM

We moved to Westchester in 1960, so I never saw a Putnam Division passenger train.  I did see a number of supposedly classic Putnam  photos with a ten-wheeler and two coaches, one arched roofed, and the other clerestory roofed (similar to the Harlem Division coaches I rode n the 60s).  Maybe the cover art captured one of the "classic photos".

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Posted by Miningman on Tuesday, May 26, 2020 11:14 PM

I'm sure the painting was based on a photo. 

I can't see the author /historian approving something incorrect or out of the ordinary. 

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Posted by Miningman on Wednesday, May 27, 2020 2:20 AM

Click on the 'x' top right to skip 'the rules' and on to the obituary. 

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Posted by MidlandMike on Wednesday, May 27, 2020 8:43 PM

When I started to ride the deiselized part of Harlem Division on the early 1960s, all the coaches were clerestory roofed, although with sealed tinted windows and AC.  by the mid 60s we started to see more stanless steel, probably bumped of the long distance trains.  Maybe in earlier days on the Putnam, those arched roofed coaches started to get supplimented by clerestory roofed coaches coming off main line trains.

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, May 28, 2020 1:33 AM

I suspect the Central may have always had a cleristory-roof coach on the two rouind-trips to and from Brewster, and the trains I saw most often were the :short turns" that ran to and from Lake Mahopan or Yorktown Heights.  My memory says the ten-wheelers handled the freight, as well as the passenger jobs.

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, May 29, 2020 12:18 PM

Putnam Division at Yorktown Heights 

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Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 10:28 AM

My grandfather, who was only in his twenties at the time, was Walter Chrysler's New York lawyer of choice.  His story was that he was delivering some documents about the real estate transactions for the Chrysler building when Chrysler said "I need a good lawyer.  John, are you a good lawyer?"  After a quick gulp my grandfater replied "Well, nobody ever heard me say I'm not the best."  Apparently that was good enough for Chrysler, as he and his firm worked for Chrysler for the rest of his life.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 12:00 PM

As spectacular as the outside of the Chrysler Building is you should see what the lobby looks like!  It's like walking into a Fred Astaire movie set!  Trust me, I've been there!

Have a look:

http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/chrysler-building-lobby.html  

(There's some Grand Central Terminal photos mixed in, but I don't think anyone will mind.)

When we walked into the lobby Lady Firestorm, lover of all things Art Deco, nearly passed out!

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Posted by Miningman on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 1:22 PM

rcdrye-- How about that! Sometimes it's a small world. Terrific story.

Flintlock/Wayne -- kinda looks like my bedroom at the cabin.

Would be worth it to see the real deal just for the marble, but a trip to NYC is not in the cards, besides the border is still closed. 

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Posted by Miningman on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 7:35 PM
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Posted by MidlandMike on Wednesday, June 3, 2020 9:34 PM

Here is a Putnam Division steam line-up at the Yorktown Hights yard:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1376146

 

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Friday, June 5, 2020 9:52 AM

That's a great shot!

But it makes me wonder if someone's standing behind the photographer waiting to drop the green flag?

"Hey boys, wanna drag?"

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