Rather remarkable how things have NOT changed that much, at least visibly.
Carlton car shown on old hand-coloured post card with "Greatings from Toronto" message. Toronto Public Library Riverdale Branch 360 Broadview Ave. built 1910.
TTC 4124 in a recent scene. Note the two small "one person" structures! Februariy 2018.
Note the two small "one person" structures on the street corner. These are where you can go inside, close the door, put a coin in the slot to have a telephone conversation and only TWO people in the whole world knew what you are talking about!
Imagine that!!!
I note that the receent-picture streetcar is a CLRV, to be phased out with replacement by Bombardier Fleixidy low-floor articulated and air-conditioned cars, some now in service but behind in deliveries.
So this with be an historic photo soon!
Miningman Note the two small "one person" structures! Februariy 2018. Note the two small "one person" structures on the street corner. These are where you can go inside, close the door, put a coin in the slot to have a telephone conversation and only TWO people in the whole world knew what you are talking about! Imagine that!!!
Note the two small "one person" structures! Februariy 2018.
Don't forget CSIS and the CIA listening in... ...phone tapping's been around since long before cellphones.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Espionage is something different... and you need a court order and equipment. I'm referring more to people in bank lines, walking down the street, grocery shopping versus a private booth.
I used to be able to pick up cell calls quite but accident, they would just pop up all by themselves on the scanner. Don't know if this still happens, don't have the scanner anymore.
It never fails to amaze me, some places hardly change at all, others change too damn much and too damn fast!
Just for example, every time Lady F and myself go back to our hometown in New Jersey the car is usually full of a chorus of...
"When did they put THAT up?"
"What happened too..."
"Where did (fill in the blank) go?"
And then there's my father's home town of Tenafly NJ, less than ten miles to the east, which hardly changes at all. Oh, the names on the building fronts in the downtown area change, some of the exteriors change a little, but otherwise someone from the 40's wouldn't be lost there.
Go figure.
1957 vs 1960 Lambton Yard Toronto. 1957 was a great time to be a kid Anywhere in Southern Ontario. Beware though, 1959 is only 2 years away. It all changed on a wholesale basis and ' just like that'!
Not a Diesel in sight, a great variety of steam with various duties from freight to passenger.
P2 5394 next to Stores Dept. building. G1 2235 on next track. Looking north. August 17, 1957Toronto Public Library/Salmon Collection
3 Quick years later and steam is all gone. In a few weeks from this picture the roundhouse was torn down. Many passenger trains had disappeared from the timetables virtually overnight. Everything changed.
Summer of 1960. R.L.Kennedy Larger Image
I always wondered what a smoke chart looked like.
I believe the New York Central issued smoke charts to locomotive crews at some point as well, and for the same reason, i.e. to head off municipal smoke ordinance violations.
Yes seems a bit subjective. Also I do not 'see' a time component .. if you had a 5 second burst, but otherwise quite clear, is that a violation? Looks like maybe it is.
Certainly sure some disagreements and heated arguments ensued from time to time.
Ariel view 1957
Bit fuzzy but lots of steam and no Diesel. You see, that's how you run a railroad.
Carrollton, Texas, north of Big D, once hosted three railroads: Katy, Frisco, Cotton Belt. In the 1920s, Texas Interurban Ry. ran on Katy's Denton Branch under wire no less (!) until it quit operations.
The depot was owned and operated by SSW. At one time Tower 77 to the NE of the tracks proteced the three way crossing there. Until relocated a few feet to the west in the 70s, the SSW-Frisco Xing was located right smack dab in the middle of Denton Road!
Today. the track remains of all three one time Class One railroads. Pretty amazing itself when one considers how many communities have lost their railroads altogether. Of course, there are new carriers in town who own and operate the tracks in Carrollton. The wooden depot remains, relocated a short distance to the east. Tower 77 is long gone of course. I doubt if you can see the concrete foundation today but it could be observed well into the early 60s. perhaps later.
But wait, now in Century 21, wire is once again strung tight over the onetime Katy branch and DART now runs where 100 years ago the Texas Interurban ran their electric trains!
Progress? I'll let you be the judge.
That's "Ringelmann" (after Max Ringelmann, who developed this codified approach of gauging smoke opacity in the late 19th Century). Some of these charts were made with 'grids' or viewing windows that were supposed to provide more direct and immediate comparison against the smoke. Even today there are EPA training courses that cover how to read opacity correctly.
Of course there are better measurement methodologies, including for steam locomotives. Some of you might enjoy this blog entry that covers a different aspect of combustion but is, in my opinion, fully applicable to locomotive practice.
Nice. Thanks
Makes me wonder why smokestacks don't have some kind of afterburner. Is that possible in a steam locomotive? A very hot grid pattern 'filter', perhaps an electrical element to vaporize a lot of the smoke. Or am I wishful thinking here?
We use something very similiar to the Ringelmann chart in minerarlogy and field applications called a pyrite chart. I'm sure there are many other similiar types of charts like this for various other applications.
MiningmanMakes me wonder why smokestacks don't have some kind of afterburner. Is that possible in a steam locomotive? A very hot grid pattern 'filter', perhaps an electrical element to vaporize a lot of the smoke. Or am I wishful thinking here?
Problem is that there isn't enough oxygen in the combustion plume at that point, even if you could get enough heat into the PM during the very short dwell time in the front end. Remember that the combustion is almost entirely below atmospheric pressure in a locomotive with induced draft, and the object is to get effective oxidation to at least CO by the time the gas plume hits the rear tubeplate area. Introducing oxygen (as air, of course) after that point reduces the effective draft on the combustion gas; to the extent there is afterheating, this increases gas volume and would further reduce effective draft right up to the region of turbulent mixing in the exhaust jet.
However, the exhaust gas in a typical locomotive is still quite hot, and it is likely that adding additional oxygen 'after the tube passage' will in fact reduce carbon PM if there is adequate TOF at elevated temperature afterward -- as for example might be observed in a Franco-Crosti economizer setup. Another possible alternative might be to provide better centrifugal separation in the front end (there were several devices that claimed to accomplish this in the last days of big steam) -- I suspect that while some kind of DPF as on diesel trucks might be possible, it would have to be so big if operated in a drafted system as to be impossible to package effectively on a locomotive.
I don't think it likely that any kind of 'afterburning' system using an appropriate fuel would make much economic sense, as you'd need a careful range of temperature to get all the PM and hydrocarbons effectively 'lit off' or flared without bringing any part of the exhaust up to the range where thermal generation of NOx increases.
Another before and after... note the wire is now gone. That's a backward step!
Article about first Hydro Radial January 15, 1916
L&PS 14 southbound at Union and PSTR northbound at Union Station. Two scenes about 60 years apart!
At least it's still there, and the station too. That's something.
Oh yeah! Built in 1856, first steam hauled passenger train that same year and it's still going. Now operated by Port Stanley Terminal Rail from St. Thomas to Port Stanley. The London to St. Thomas portion is the CN Talbot subdivision.
Port Stanley has humoungus beach on Lake Erie, million dollar 'cottages', great burgers on the beach, fish and chips, campy pubs with lots of patios. Luv it all.
If anyone goes to Port Stanley, St. Thomas, London or southern Ontario in general, be sure to pay a visit to the Elgin County Railway Museum, located in the former CASO/MC/NYC shop in St. Thomas. It is a great place, and their CN Hudson is kept indoors in immaculate condition.
http://ecrm5700.org/
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