Activity around No. 16 engine 6032 stopped at Island Pond, Vermont. September 6/1954No. 16 from Montreal to Portland, ME was due to meet No. 17 here at 1.05 p.m. daily except Sunday.Anthony H. Perles
Kinda wonder whats going on here...8 or 9 men, maybe 10 all sort of looking like they are lost !
"Waddaya mean I have the keys to the men's room? I thought you had the keys to the men's room!"
Yeah, something like that!
Even the guy in the baggage car is curious. One fellow running down the left side toward a conductor standing at attention, another peering around the right side. Maybe a supervisor type with hands on hips supervisoring away. Something's up!
Two famous State of Maine potato cars in the freight 3rd track over and an Atlantic Coast Line big circle style boxcar closer to the engine.
Maybe they are all wondering what happened to the connecting train, or maybe realizing they made the wrong turn in Schenectady!, cause this ain't Miami Beach!
Regardless, it's a nice GTR scene with steam and passenger cars and I put it up to cheer up our buddy Wanswheel/Mike.
Wasn't this a crew change point? Could there have been some irregular transition problems?
A crew change point, at least for the engine crew, and perhaps a couple of folks from the roundhouse to do some routine servicing. Possibly one of the men on the platform is the local trainmaster checking that everything is running as expected. The other might be a passenger stretching his legs or a local railfan.
In other words, a number of people, but nothing out of the ordinary for the era.
Unlike the engine crew, typically a train crew would cover two engine districts, and there are two between Montreal and Portland. The international boundary is not far north of Island Pond which may have complicated the manning.
John
cx500 Unlike the engine crew, typically a train crew would cover two engine districts
Unlike the engine crew, typically a train crew would cover two engine districts
Sometimes more, for example on CN's Western Canada mainline passenger train crews worked three engine districts, Vancouver crews worked east to Blue River, BC, where a Edmonton crew would take over. On that leg the engine crew would change at Boston Bar and Kamloops.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
#6032 is a CNR engine, a mountain type 4-8-2. Sure is a big boilered beast In the photo. Lot of tracks and I'm sure a busy place back in the day.
It is hard to believe that in such a short period of time from this picture everything about it all will vanish. I remember it all well and even though there were flaws in society we sure had our act together.
Ike was President and good ol' "uncle" Louis St. Laurent was our Prime Mininster. Times were good, prosperity ensued, the future was bright and exciting and the railroads were solid as Mt. Everest.
Glad I rode the line. A few months after the two-Budd car (CP and B&M) Allouetts was taken off, the last through passenger train between Bpston and Montreal, I received a call to check out the sound system I had designed at the Basilique at Cap Du Madeleine (Sp) near Three Rivers, and looked for a way to get there by rail. B&M had not yet removed the afternoon Budd train to Portland, and I could then board the Grand Trunk late-afternoon-and-evening train to Montreal. And the Parlor at the rear, modernized heavywieght, was named Allouette! Sandwich and hot tea dinner, served only to parlor-car passengers. Rear platfom riding allowed! At least for me at the time. Night at the Q. E. in Montreal and the CP Budds from Windsor the next morning. Met by Larry Phelps at Three Rivers Station. This was a significant check-out visit. I and others at Bolt Beranek and Newman had been desiging soud systems with pew-back loudspeakers in choir stalls to avoid covering these stalls with primary sound systems because of the close proximity to live microphones. But the check-out indicated quality and intelligiblity in the choir stalls was as good as in the main nave and balcony seating covered by the main system. So that gave me the courage to design all pew-back systems to solve demanding architectural and acoustical problems, the first at the U of Oklahoma Chapel and first with progressive delay (using acoustical tube) matching live sound from the front at National Prebyterian, Washington DC, and then with the very first digital delay at St. Thomas 5th Ave., NYC. Now this is all common practice but expensive. But I did learn later that the main Kremlin Auditorium in Moscow had what they thought was the first seat-back system around the same time as the UofOK system installation. Jacek Figwer, a Polish engineer, was involved someway with that system, later migrated to the USA, and worked with me at BBN, including his designing the Duke U. Chapel system, not a pew-back system, uses delayed line-source column loudspeakers. Anyway, Larry Phelps drove me to St. Hycinth for a tour of the Casavant Freres factory, then to Montreal where I boarded the Washingtonian to NewYork, and behold organist and composer John Weaver had the roomette next to mine. Also a fan and model railroader, at one award ceremony the American Guild of Organists presented John with an AGO O-gauge boxcar!
Corrected my error of calling it CV when it is Grand Trunk Railway of course. It's sort of all in the family though, but still!
Great story David...your memory is sharp as a tack!
Thank You.
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