Miningman
Jones-- There is a lot of stuff in older threads. Compiling all that together would be quite a challenge.
Posted by Miningman on Saturday, May 20, 2017 7:40 PM
I use this picture as part of a slide show that acts as a screen saver at work ( not all of it is trains, lots of Field School stuff and students, that sort of thing)
What is striking is that absolutely everything in this picture is gone. The T1, the K4, the heralded Trail Blazer tail car. The tracks are gone, the platform is gone, the passenger trains are gone. Not only that but the PRR is gone.
Been trying to reconcile that for a long time but the math does not come out right...ever. I know what I'm told as to why, and it's not as if I'm not trying my darnest to understand and keep an open mind.
There is more to it than what we think or know.
Darth Vader stuff I tell 'ya.
You are right, Vince. I think the Google search engine is good enough to play the role. But I will pick some interesting threads and simply put the link of them in the index for reader's convenience. Thank you for your contribution.
I believe as time goes on, the number of people who want to search for things about Pennsy will keep slowly decreasing. Not sure if 5550 will change the trend or not, but the basic general premise is 5550 successfully get built. However, we will never know what will happen next hour. From today to the year 2030, a lot of things could happen, "A castle can only have one king". If the castle is the earth, who is the king right now?
I found the original links of this post "Darth Vader stuff" on google - http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/t/263084.aspx - and I read all replies in the thread, I found some very profound or meaningful discussions. I do believe the demise of passenger train service of America was not a 100% natural cause; It was probably an organized and premeditated Homicide. Yes, there was no doubt the conventional steam engine was not as economical as other motive power thus it was only about time for them to disappear in the railway system. but the post-war US government never distributed enough money and resources to develop new motive power for the American's passenger train.
It was very obvious that The post-war US government chose to concentrate the nation's resources for aviation and automobile development, including construction of matching facilities like Airports and Highway. But for passenger trains, they looked on with folded arms, waited for it to die. There was a project like UAC-TurboTrain but it was negligible and lack of matching facilities, compared to the SST projects. After the failure of SST projects in the late-1960s, the US government still had no plan to develop High-speed rail system like TGV or Shinkansen. US citizens didn't have many choices except buying and driving a car or taking the plane for long distance travel, unlike people living in Europe and Japan, or even developing countries like China in nowadays, travel on high-speed trains is a common thing for them or you can say, part of their daily life.
Lack of modern trains development was supposed to boost the sales of America brands automobiles and related products after WWII when the States was still leading the automobile industry. But after cheaper car and products from Japan and China became mainstream stuffs in the market, it hurts the national interest of America. What the Darth Vader will do to his rival will inevitably change the fate of humanity.
If the photo Miningman posted was taken in 1947, the Trail Blazer in the pic was probably hauled by the PRR S2 #6200 or another T1. Imo, better than anything you can ride in America nowadays.