How's About Some Rompin' Stompin' New York Central Steam Action?

[Flintlock76]

OK, there's a few diseasels thrown in, but it won't kill 'ya!

Twenty-five minutes of some good running, so get yourselves some snacks and a drink, settle in, and "remember when."  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntzO4HAxwgg  

[daveklepper]

Thanks!   Grest!

[Juniatha]

Hello Fire-uhm-flint (ooops - sorry)

"but it won't kill 'ya!" you said so - well I hope not! Or else nothing will happen to you anyhow.

No, I reckognized it from 00:01 - I have that one on my computer !

D-e-i-s-e-l-l-s .. but nearly killing me - if you look at them the way I did: each one of them a steam locomotive less!

The passing of the Pacemaker from 00:10 always takes me in. That whistle! Oh-my!

Heart-rending, unkempt wildness and powerful fury! On the other hand : that track condition at the switches - very much the way we saw it on the Reichsbahn tracks in East-Berlin. But they never ran over it at 80 - 85 mph but no faster than at 60 - 65 mph (100 km/h) .

Once we stood at the eastern end of the train hall at Eastern station (Ostbahnhof, East-Berlin, formerly the Silesian train station) and saw a Berlin - Hamburg train being pushed in by some smaller shunting diesel, consist composed of DR and DB coaches. In front of us was a rupture in the rail at one end of the switch, causing one then the other rail end to bent down under the wheels passing, making a classic, yet slightly loud "bang-dang" in case of the Reichsbahn coaches which had their bogies balance the vertical hit pretty elegantly with the body hardly moving - came a DB coach, optimized to run straight at speed on perfect track and it made an alarming "karr-parr!" with the body vibrating. Upon that a friend of mine cooly remarked "There you see why DB coaches are being sent to the Reichsbahn in turns - to practice their suspension again, which they badly need."

I bent laughing and one Reichbahn employee looked at me in bewilderment.

The other way around it was when we were at Warsaw bridge, a wide street passing the vast railway network of lines shortly outside the station. We were actually expecting a Pacific 01-5 class to pass there on her way to the station and were insecure if she hadn't passed already. I stepped right onto the very periphery of the platform to take a look down the station round the bridge pillar and checked - no smoke , no steam there - when suddenly I was being shaded by a black wall moving right besides me - I flinched and noticed: it was the tender of the 01-5 backing up to her train on that very track next to me, long main rod silently moving, cylinders slightly hushing as the engine coasted beneath the Warsaw bridge. Myyyy- goodnesss! No sound at all! It was uncanny!

Juniatha

[Flintlock76]

So glad you're back!  Her majesty Juniatha, the "Steam Queen," a title well deserved!

You know, I'm not surprised that 01-5 sneaked up on you like that.  I was in Roanoke VA for a 611 excursion back in the 90's and when 611 rolled past in the yard I was surprised how quiet it was, just a quiet "woosh-woosh" from the stack. Mind you, it was rolling toward the head-end to couple to the train so it didn't have a load on it, but still it was quite surprising.

I'm also a bit surprised the East German railways were still called the "Reichsbahn," I would have though the negative connotations of the word "reich" would have kept it from being used, but obviously the Communists didn't care.

(I know the word "reich" means "empire," but you know what I mean.)

I'm also surprised you could get that close to DDR rail operations without getting in trouble, but it looks like they didn't care about that either.  Those steam operations must have been quite a show!

And how about the all-too-brief shots of the cool old cars?  Just as interesting as the locomotives!