There was nothing in the way of ear protection, at least manufactured as such, back in the steam days. Possible deafness was a real occupational hazard back then.
In fact, I remember reading a "Reader's Digest" article some forty years ago where veteran sportscaster "Red" Barber mentioned his father, a veteran steam engineer, had lost most of his hearing. "Red" also mentioned his father advised him NOT to go into railroading, "It's a dying business son!" his father told him, "Find something else you'd like to do!"
Thankfully Pop Barber was wrong on that one.
A personal note: When I was a Marine lieutenant my guys and myself were being flown from Point A to Point B on a CH-53 helicopter. There wasn't enough ear protection to go around, so I gave my headset to one of the troops and went without for the one-hour flight, and if you think one of those "Hogs" is loud from ground level you should hear it from the inside! My God, my ears didn't stop ringing for hours afterward! No permanent damage by the way, my hearing's just fine, although there's times Lady Firestorm would argue that point!
RME- Thank you for your reply. Yes I would imagine the sound fatigue would be quite rattling after a while. Compressed air driven jackleg and stoper drills, and diesel equipment underground require ear protection, plugs and fixed earmuffs but I doubt they had much available in a locomotive cab back then. I wonder if they had those little wax type "roll 'em" or foam plugs that expand in your ears back then. Perhaps that inhibited communication too much.
MiningmanPerhaps RME could explain how a whistle can get stuck in such a way that it requires servicing to stop it. I would think if it was on for some time it would seriously drop the steam pressure, no?
There are a number of different ways -- I don't know the specific design of the whistle on the Hudsons but will look it up -- that a steam whistle can 'fail' sounding. Some of these involve cracking or pin failure of the arm that the whistle cord 'pulls', with parts physically dropping off. Some involve sticking or jamming of the actuator in the 'open' position, either thermally or involving corrosion or 'foreign intrusion', and I suspect cases where an air-operated (e.g. Viloco) whistle actuator sticks would be in the latter category.
There is a reasonable steam flow through the whistle, but it is not of the magnitude of some of the other 'usual' auxiliaries on the locomotive. Remember that most of the 'sound' isn't produced by steam but by entrained air (which is a reason that whistles blown on compressed air don't sound too different from whistles on boiler steam) and there were good reasons to reduce the actual steam consumption of whistles to a minimum. There are discussions of this for the whistle on the T1 in testing, which if I remember correctly involve something like 3-point-something lb per minute; I think there is also some discussion of this in the NYC documents on fitting horns to some of the large steam power in 1947.
There would be an associated -- and 'calculable' -- cost in both fuel and water for the whistle to stay on. But it is very far from something that would 'necessarily' drop steam pressure with the fireman doing any reasonable job of responding to gauges with injector and stoker valves... he would automatically compensate, without too much conscious effort or work, and things would be fine aside from things like induced aural fatigue and widespread vicinal tinnitus.
Inevitably with two large parallel railroads, one is going to need to temporarily use the other's line because of an accident, washout, etc. It would be foolhardy for one railroad to try to overcharge the other in that situation, as they would probably need to ask for the same favor in the future. I'm sure they had agreed a long time ago on how it would work, and what charges might be assessed.
Penny- The images are there if you click on the little empty boxes, but now you have given us the link so "ok" then! Just not the same as an instant visual.
Staying on topic with the PRR in Canada I found this ..on March 20, 1936 the PRR's Red Arrow ran through on the NYC's CASO division because of flooding in the Pittsburgh, Johnstown and other Pennsylvania State points.
Nice to see the NYC lending a helping hand to their nemisis. Bet the Central charged 'em plenty. ...or maybe they owned them one.
Also found that 1) in 1939, upon Canada entering the war, every single bridge on the CASO had military guards 24/7 and 2) after Dec 7th, 1941 no Japanese "persons" could purchase a ticket on the CASO (ouch) and 3) found 4 instances on the NYC CASO of the whistle being stuck "on" for quite some time, every instance involving a Hudson. That must have been fun. One mention is that it was on a moving train. The others just say it was stuck, and required service.
Perhaps RME could explain how a whistle can get stuck in such a way that it requires servicing to stop it. I would think if it was on for some time it would seriously drop the steam pressure, no?
What a pain in the hind quarters.
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/156208155@N04/35508770631/in/dateposted-public/
Terrible loss for us. We are all at the whim of a button on a keyboard.
Poof gone. Thankfully there are alternatives, at least for now.
Quite a minefield if you sit back and think about the big picture.
I'm in the middle of transferring all of them from Photobucket to Flikr right now. Hard to believe I had 794 photos on there! It won't help me for past postings, but going forward is another story.
That's capitalism baby! As the late, great James J. Kilpatrick once said...
"I'm a conservative, and a capitalist, and business has no bigger friend than me, but they make it awful hard sometimes."
I feel the same way Mr. Kilpatrick did.
MiningmanOh no...Penny just got hit with the same thing that got K.P.
From the Photobucket self-serving response page:
"Photobucket defines 3rd party hosting as the action of embedding an image or photo onto another website. For example, using the <img> tag to embed or display a JPEG image from your Photobucket account on another website such as a forum, Etsy, eBay auction listings, a blog, etc. is definitively 3rd party hosting."
And of course their response is to try to make this into a profit opportunity by making you 'upgrade' your account to a pay tier ... regardless of the volume, or lack of same, involved with the number of actual view requests served. I also detect an attempt to demonize hot-linking, similar to what some companies tried with the term "power user" a couple of decades ago now.
Apparently doesn't matter if it's just a few images on a free forum like Kalmbach or a heavy lister on eBay: you'll be paying at least $9.99 per month* to keep those hotlinked images live. But think of all the useful "Photobucket promotional opportunities" and such you'd get with a paid account ... ad-free, too. (Whether that means tracker-free or cookie-free appears to be carefully nondisclosed until you sign up...)
In case you are wondering, yes, that's dripping with sarcasm. "Definitively." Indeed.
*I have heard the lowest tier that supports 'our' kind of hotlinking is presently $39.99 per month. I do not expect that to persist very long...
Oh no...Penny just got hit with the same thing that got K.P.
Well Becky, your Thai layout may be loosely based on the D-63 but it makes that old Lionel display layout look positively anemic.
If you were around in the 50's I think ol' Joshua Cowan would have put you on the payroll without a second thought!
Thanks! It's based loosely on the design of the Lionel D-63:
By separating the City from the mountains, it makes the 5 foot by 9 foot layout look much larger. Mine is even smaller at 4 by 6.
Hey Miningman, you may not know this but everything on "Penny Trains" Chonburi Thailand layout she built herself. Just amazing work.
Indeed, the Pennsylvania Railroad was in fact known as "The Standard Railroad of the World" and with good reason!
Which brings up another point to ponder: After the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro had set up his Communist ruled regime in Cuba there remained scores of freight cars that belonged to North American railroads standed on the island as a result of the U.S. decision to terminate diplomatic relations with Castro.
The West India Fruit & Steamship Company* operated railcar ferry service between the Port of Palm Beach and Havanna until the U.S. embargo against Cuba terminated this operation. In addition to railcars belonging to North Amrican carriers, WIF&SCo. operated their own fleet of boxcars and reefers, which carried WIF reporting marks.
It would be interesting to know how many freight cars belonging to North American railroads at the time remained on the island and who their owners were. It is highly probable that at least one Pennsy boxcar remained in Cuba, possibly a X-29**. Afterall, this class of boxcar can be observed in countless period photos taken of trains or rail yards on viturally every Class One railroad, shortline, or terminal company, that operated in the U.S., Canada, as well as Mexico!
* WIF&SCo. artical on Wikipedia.
** www.steamerafreightcars.com
I threw in my two cents worth because an angry army of termites turned my wooden nickel into a pile of sawdust! :(
BaltACD- Well yes you are right...but...if you think about it this is the only possible location in all of North America where the Pennsy could even cross the border. They kind of poked a finger in the eye of NYC CASO line with their ferry boat "Ashtabula" crossing Lake Erie, lots of carloads but never any locomotives..same in Detroit.
Just many have stated Pennsy never actually came near Canada physically whereas NYC had a huge presence. I was never sure they actually sent locos across the border. Common thinking is they never did.
Penny- Love that. Chonburi, Thailand. Good Good!
Canada? Thailand? Why not? The Pennsy would do anything to upstage the New York Central!
Dang, that is one gorgeous layout!
I've seen Pennsy trains running as far away as Chonburi Thailand...
Okay, maybe not.
Miningman PRR 8108 8105 Baldwin RS12's with a transfer from Buffalo to CNR. Fort Erie September 1963 Bill Thomson Common belief is Pennsy did not run trains into Canada...well here is proof and in a big Pennsy way to boot ....with Baldwins no less.
While a inter-yard transfer job is in fact a train - Moving interchange between carrier terminals doesn't have the 'cashe' of actually operating a train point to point in Canada.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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