Have these odds and ends Pics that perhaps you may enjoy or are worthy of discussion.
1) Big big power on the Reading
2) Beefy Power on Jersèy Central
3) New Haven Alco DL109's in glorious colour
4) A nice break from look alike F's... a full set of Baldwin Sharks in A-B-B-A formation. Wouldn't it be great to hear these burble by with a mixed manifest instead of a string of coal hoppers.
Ahhhh, Shot Two! One of the Jersey Central's big beefy Mikados!
They didn't save none of them neither! Dammit.
Still, a nice shot of the Communipaw Engine Terminal, with New York City in the background. Now Communipaw's gone like it was never there.
Communipaw is gone? See I didn't know that. Thought it was one of those important strategic locations that would live forever. Nice notice on the City Skyline in the background. Heck of a big engine. Huge tender! With all Diesel assassins lurking about its days are numbered for sure.
Sorry to hear the Terminal is gone and wouldn't it be nice if they kept that Mikado.
Nothing looks tougher than an anthracite road Consol or Mikado with a Wootten firebox.
Yeah Vince, to make a long story short when Conrail came about and the Jersey Central was folded into same the Jersey City terminal, freight yards, and Communipaw engine terminal and shops weren't needed anymore, and were demolished in the 1980's.
The old CNJ passenger terminal survives as Liberty State Park, but everything else is, to use a Lucius Beebe phrase, "Gone with the snows of yesteryear..."
Like it was never there.
i'm sure I lined this video clip before, but for those who haven't seen it, here's an excerpt from the Jersey Central promotional film of 1949 " The Big Little Railroad."
And again, everything you see in the Jersey City terminal area is gone. Staggering really.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kYeg5A6jBE
PS: I couldn't help but notice that YouTube says "Comments are disabled for this video." No surprise, considering there's a lot of railfans in New Jersey and some of them are pretty intense there was probably a lot of profanity involved! The old CNJ had a lot of fans!
Jersey Central
http://www.trainweb.org/rahwayvalley/route_rosellepark_aldene_CNJ.htm
Check out that before and after picture 2nd and 3rd down!
Oh yeah, those "before and after" shots!
It's stunning how something like the Jersey Central terminal area can disappear so completely, isn't it?
All that hard work that went into building it. Lost. What a shame.
That double Roundhouse in the background ...just gone and all that yard trackage. What a whammy.
So all those railcars have been replaced by trucking?
Thanks for building New York and surrounding areas, winning the war for us and building our economy, now GET LOST!
The eradication of the CNJ's landmarks gets even worse.
Here's the story of the CNJ's Newark Bay Drawbrige, an engineering marvel. When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey wanted it gone it was doomed. Not a trace remains.
Here's the story, and the photo really doesn't do it justice, it was a colossus!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRRNJ_Newark_Bay_Bridge
It's funny how small the Elizabethport Shops actually were. It's interesting how some larger railroads had relatively small shops while smaller ones had huge (for their size) ones. US Steel roads had large backshops, along with the anthracite roads while NKP Conneaut didn't seem to be large at all.
It can be worse. At least C'paw was obsolescent by the '70s. You couldn't really say that about Orangeville, which in my memory was alive with locomotives. And now...
https://www.navpooh.com/orangevillemap.html
Flintlock/Wayne -- Are you sure we won the war?
Jersey City
Mind boggling ... that's a long way from originally trading with the Native folks
Miningman Flintlock/Wayne -- Are you sure we won the war?
Oh, we won the war all right, but it's amazing how fast the tools that made victory possible disappeared when they weren't needed anymore. Ships, tanks, planes, steam locomotives, and eventually a lot of railroads themselves that dieselizing couldn't save.
Check this depressing stuff out...
https://www.airplaneboneyards.com/post-wwii-long-term-aircraft-storage-sites.htm
Now I'm not saying all of those warplanes should have been saved, that would have been totally impractical, but the preservation of a goodly number of them should have been attempted instead of wholesale junking.
I don't know, I wasn't there, what do I know? Maybe all everyone wanted to do was get the war behind them as soon as possible and get on with their lives. Can't blame them for that.
By the way, several years ago I read an article in "Air Classics" magazine written by a former USAAF pilot who ferried fighter planes to the boneyard. P-39's, P-40's, P-47's, you name it, and when he got to the boneyard it was always "Park it over there," or "Park it over here," no-one asked him to sign a delivery voucher, or sign any paperwork whatsoever. It was always "Park it..."
Afterwards he'd hop a ferry flight back to where the planes were being returned from overseas and pick up another one, then start the wole process over.
"Geez!" he said in the article, "I could have flown one or more of those planes to my parents farm, stuck 'em in one of the barns, and no-one would have been the wiser!"
Flintlock76Now I'm not saying all of those warplanes should have been saved, that would have been totally impractical, but the preservation of a goodly number of them should have been attempted instead of wholesale junking.
But they were ridiculously obsolete for most military purposes, expensive to maintain and run, and not the kind of thing a person would want in his yard as a memorial. The thing's been said far more powerfully than anything I could possibly indicate here ... the personal side, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpGNKO6wz10
Prefabricated houses, bigger jets, the TurboTrain ... those were the way of the future. And that was only 1946, when steam still had a bright future on American railroads...
I do know of at least one company that tried to make 'civilian' use of these aircraft: the On Mark company with A-26s. Some of the engineering changes used to accomplish the conversion were ingenious. Didn't appear to help. But the results were spectacular...
FYI.
The CHAIN DRIVE Mack Truck w the crane would be a Classic these days.
Thank You.
NDG FYI. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpGNKO6wz10 The CHAIN DRIVE Mack Truck w the crane would be a Classic these days. Thank You.
No doubt!
Mod-man, I know just what you're saying. All true. Still, it's a shame nonetheless.
Have you ever heard of the original ending to that sequence in "The Best Years Of Our Lives"? I forget where I read or heard this, maybe in a "Great Movies" type magazine, maybe on Turner Classic Movies, but purportedly the sequence originally ended with Dana Andrews committing suicide in the the nose of the B-17. If you've seen the movie you know his whole life's come totally apart by that point.
Anyway, in several "sneak previews" the audience had such a bad reaction to it, it "Stopped the picture COLD!" to use a Hollywood phrase, the sequence was re-shot and the ending we see in the clip was substituted.
Is is true? Maybe.
More pics for possible discussion
1) A very very early picture, among the first, of a through train on Horseshoe Curve.
2) Still on Horseshoe but years and years later.. A Pennsy funeral train of dead steam, featuring a former hard working Decapod, being taken on its last journey.
3) Its days are over... a NYO&W wooden milk car, forlorn and abandoned.
4) A remarkable survivor into 1960! AT&SF antique wooden box in very good shape.
5) Big Power featured in post war ads from steam locomotive suppliers.
6) C&NW in Rochelle. Wouldn't it be a shocker to see this whole train cross the diamonds at the park.
7) Saskatoon! A one horse town! Very old days. I can personally attest that it does not look like this any longer. Still flat though!
8) The elusive 2-2-0 single driving axle. Big crew. That's a long reach on the main rod.
Miningman 8) The elusive 2-2-0 single driving axle. Big crew. That's a long reach on the main rod.
If you google 2-2-0, you will find a lot of interesting early steam engines from different countries, and strange photos like this:
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Miningman8) The elusive 2-2-0 single driving axle. Big crew. That's a long reach on the main rod.
That's almost certainly a converted 4-4-0, probably one of the pre-1850 or so engines with the four-wheel lead truck awkwardly under the cylinders instead of the Mason design with the wheels before and behind. That's a perfectly normal main rod; what's unusual is the longer piston rod and crosshead guide that allow drive on what was previously the 'rear' of the two axles; see the comparable arrangement on the forward engine of a PRR T1 that allows all four main rods to be common.
Interesting that with the wheels at the 'corners' the thing would ride as well as a Pullman car, and there's plenty of deep firebox and boiler capacity for that pair of little long-stroke cylinders... balance those drivers well (and compensate somehow for the effect of surge) and it should show a surprising turn of speed.
Might need a better crosshead and crosshead-lubrication design, though!
Interesting Overmod, something I did not know. Converted from a 4-4-0 of very early design.
Some more food for thought just to remind us how far things railroading have been destroyed and removed from everyday life.
1) Perhaps if you strolled deep into the woods of the Granite State you could find an old timer in a checkered shirt who can relate.
2) A Lackawanna advert without Phoebe, extolling the virtues of their bread and butter ... Freight! Yet another road needlessly wiped out of existence. Long Live the Lackawanna!
3) "Keeping passengers in good humour and enhancing prestige"
Obviously boosters were very good!
4) Alco and the mighty 3 cylinder steam locomotive! Just another fading memory of a great technology.
3) Lima! Never gave up... always believed in steam.. where are you Lima, where are you?
Where most useful things go...
http://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/2016/04/lima-oh-locomotive-works.html
...to oblivion in the name of progress.
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
So to our friends at Alco:
Alco_remains by Edmund, on Flickr
The building I circled in blue is, as far as I can tell, the only remaining structure.
Alco_site5 by Edmund, on Flickr
Presently occupied by a steel sales service. The remaining property is now a casino .
At least the distinctive "Cross" of the Baldwin Office Building, eddystone, Pennsylvania, still exists.
http://wikimapia.org/21018966/Baldwin-Tower-Office-Building
Anyone know the status of the EMD property at La Grange?
Regards, Ed
GMD London Ontario ...shown is the listing for the property.
Typical GMD builders plate (mounted on wall panel). Collection of Al Howlett
Apparently it is currently a greeting card and party balloons business.
Aerial photo showing property for sale. General Dynamics property to left. CPR Galt Sub. main line at bottom including GMD test track former passing track.Note: Most in-plant trackage dismantled by OSR.
More Classic Days photos maybe worth talking about.
1) The Baltimore and Ohio before the Capitol Limited, famous salads and an equally famous Monopoly square.
2) Now this is how you do street running.. big wide right of way and seperate lanes for street traffic ... Irontown, Ohio
3) Lot of talk on this Forum about Sunnyside Yard lately... so here's a great aerial view.
4) Conrail in its baby years, wearing baby blue and as the saying goes "using it up". Pretty darn skimpy on the graphics ... a simple small CR, common in its early days.
5) UP Turbine... as stunning as the S1..
Look at all those axles and the length!
6) Norfolk and Western and REA in an iconic scene that us Classics dudes sadly
miss... " don't know what you got 'till it's gone"
Miningman The Baltimore and Ohio before the Capitaol Limited ...
Thanks for fixing the spelling.
Ask BaltACD about salads, and ever so much more. His father oversaw the service for many years, and if you like Southern-type home cooking there was said to be no railroad that did better.
You do realize that in your picture of the UP turbine, you have less than half the locomotive visible? Each half was only 2500 nominal horsepower (I think this was at least in part condenser-limited) and while they could be operated separately you'd normally find them together doing the work of a good large 4-8-4.
There really aren't "that" many axles under there; the wheel arrangement is not far different from that of, say, a GG1 if you put tankage between the underframes. (Note that later developments went to span-bolstered trucks, both for steam and gas turbines, which could lower the overall length... the N&W TE-1 was monstrously long for 4500hp but nowhere near what turbines 1 and 2 showed when coupled)
Much of the length involves those condensers -- and they were probably too small for many requirements on the UP system. For something more amusing, see if you can find a picture of the actual steam turbine used in one ... and compare its size to the exhaust plenum provided for it!
I continue hoping, more and more dimly, that someone took notes on how the bugs in these locomotives were worked out during their WWII service on GN, and that the notes will come to light. These were interesting and seemingly well-designed locomotives, and when built were sensible alternatives to early diesels.
There are books that could be written about the inability of REA to 'switch paradigms' and survive against UPS in the post-passenger-train world... in fact, I think there have been. In an era of effectively-free M&E service to a wide range of 'destination pairs', maintaining relatively small trucks at nearly every station that were driven by people with local knowledge was a cost-effective strategy. Once that died back, and I get the impression that the change was very rapid in the postwar years, trying to duplicate the backbone with anything else, specifically including any of the versions of intermodal service that otherwise were flourishing from the early '50s on, was relatively hopeless.
It was my impression, when I looked at this in the '70s, right about the time they finally gave up the ghost, that they had the basic idea both that they were 'too big to fail' and that they couldn't make the huge changes in both operations and capital to transition what they had... until they had no effective future.
That was a shame because they were a known symbol for 'express package service' to most everyone in America, and their livery remains distinctive to this day. Throwing that away -- and by now it is nearly completely thrown away, as the last people who remember it pass 'the edge of history' -- was nearly incomprehensible ... but then again, so were other contemporary business changes, including so many of the railroads in the Northeast that were 'fixtures' right up to the '70s.
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter