A astonishing railroad related discovery occured a few years ago in the village of Mattawan in Dutchess County , approx. 45 miles north of New York City. A very old building was being renovated and when the workers entered the attic, they found all the books , records, ledgers etc. of a long forgotten railroad, the Dutchess County & Columbia RR; the building being renovated was this railroads office.What if YOU had made such a discovery!. This treasure-trove of historical material was placed in the custody of the Beacon Historical Society and a railroad historian, Bernard Rudberg , perused the material and published a book , "100 years on the ND& Connecticut RR". I had the "thrill of discovery" searching for the remnants of a never-completed railroad , the New York , Housatonic, & Northern circa 1867, and what I found was the only artifact left behind after construction ended, a century old horse drawn dump wagon.It was a vivid image of the pick and spade era of railroad construction.My next discovery was a "accident"; while assisting the Town of Greenwich in the "documentation" of the Cos Cob Power Plant erected to electrify the NHRR. All the CCPP and NHRR electrification blueprints had been removed by Metro-North, but I "stumbled across" a large cache of vintage blueprints in a dark room that resembled a coal-bin; blueprints left there and forgotten about.Another "thrill" was finding the ROW of the very ill-fated New York , Westchester , & Boston RR after I had learned of it's existence. But this was hardly an obscure railroad ; it was well known by many others. The "W&B" remains a subject of interest to many people.
A thrill of discovery all right! You lucky guy you! Isn't it something when the past reaches right out and grabs you? Well done!
And finding those blueprints! "Someone" somewhere must have decided you were the "chosen one!"
For a railfan, such a discovery must be similar in feeling to that of the lads in Israel who this week found that hoard of 1,000 year-old coins.
Bravo! Good on you!
When I hired out, the old CNW heads told me about when the CNW took over the old RI in Des Moines in 1980. There was a building, called the Rollerdome, that was part of the old freight house/RIMT (their trucking subsidiary) that was a large warehouse. The upstairs contained old RI records back to the 1960s.
Dispatcher's train sheets, train order books, train register books, station office copies of train orders, and other records sent in for retention. Some was saved by those who were interested. Most was trashed.
It still makes me sad to think of the loss.
Jeff
mudchickenThe folks that don't want to pay to store paper records or preserve them by getting them ought to be the things thrown in the trash.
Sometimes it's other things. I remember reading somewhere that when the Southern Railway got out of the passenger business, finally passing it off to Amtrak, several boxcars loads of SR diner china were sent to the Spencer NC shop area, pulled onto a sidetrack, and all the china was dumped into a ditch that was later filled in. Those dumping the china could keep some if they wanted to but the rest was trashed, for lack of a better term.
There are moments. Realizing you have enough drawings to build a T1. Or finding the design for the Ingalls Shipbuilding 2000hp passenger locomotive... and learning what made it special was the same thing that revived the PRR mechanical steam turbine now almost unremembered.
When I first drove down to the old CNJ terminal, in the early '70s, it was easy to get inside, in fact to climb the stairs all the way into the tower for the best view of Lower Manhattan there used to be. It was like one of those sets for a disaster mystery: every desk was just as it was set the day of abandonment, some with coffee cups and personal items left on top or in the drawers, but some overturned and a tremendous snowdrift of precious original drawings and blueprints thrown across the floor. Signal diagrams, track charts, speed-control adjustments... too much to go through. I hunted a bit for locomotive drawings, my chief interest historically at the time, but found none. I have no idea how much of this was saved subsequently in the Liberty Park rebuilding but it is amazing how much history counted for so little.
Still sorry I did not cough up the $3000 for the Alco-rebuilt Shark B-unit, or the probable price to have the two last E40s moved up to the siding from Princeton Junction when there was still abandoned yard trackage to keep them...
Having been attracted to this forum by the key word "Pilbara" in an adjacent thread, I found this thread. I have to take everyone back 47 years to when I was invited to collect material from an Australian car and locomotive builder, Tulloch Limited for the Australian Railway Historical Society. I rolled up in my Austin 1800, a sort of enlarged Mini Minor with the engine from the MGB.
Tulloch had failed following the entry of Commonwealth Engineering into the Sydney electric commuter car field, partly because Com Eng had the Budd licence which allowed lighter cars requiring less maintenance.
One of the Tulloch brothers took me into their offices and I was able to collect an anazing collection of technical information, including numerous unsuccessful tenders for diesel locomotives for various Australian state railways and the tender for the New South Wales intercity electric cars. I passed all the tenders on to the Australian Railway Historical Society but kept some technical material not directly connected to the official teders. Australian Railways, being Government owned, had to call competitive tenders for all rolling stock purchases.
Some of the most interesting tenders were for versions of the Britsh Rail Class 48, (a Class 47 with the twin bank Sulzer 12LDA28B replaced by the 12 LVA24 vee-type engine. A few of these were built by Clayton in England for Cuba, so at least we know what they looked like.
The Commonwealth Railways were offered a version of the Kestrel prototype fitted with the 16 LVA24, good for about 3600 HP into the alternator. This was single ended and like the Cuban units had a "hump" over the larger radiators.
The item I was most impressed with was the Tulloch tender for the NSW intercity electric cars. These can be most easily compared to the Bombardier Canadian bi-level commuter cars. Virtually every detail of the earlier version of these cars (with an aluminium skin riveted to a steel frame) and the styling appeared on this design, well before the first Canadian car appeared. Even the seating looked like the Canadian cars later built by (initially) Hawker Siddeley Canada. One big difference was that the Australian cars had flat roofs rather than the tapered ends on the Canadian cars. This flat roof was required since the Australian cars were electric multiple units with powe equipment mounted over the trucks.
I also found but was not allowed to take away a series of detail photographs of the Hawker Siddeley single deck cars built for GO Transit.
It appears that Tulloch and Hawker Siddely exchanged details of their current commuter cars.
Hawker Siddely gained valuable data which assisted them in building what is undoubtedly the most successful single commuter car design in Noth American history. Tulloch were able to buid a few underfloor engined railcars based on the GO Transit and CN Tempo cars.
I know who did better out of that deal and it wasn't the Australians. But at least a really good design wasn't lost.
What still upsets me 47 years later is that the Australian Railway Historical Society appears to have lost the whole car load of documentation I gave them. The boot and the qite roomy back seats of the Austin 1800 were filled right up with paper files. All gone!
I kept, as I said, some data not directly connected to the official tenders. This included a diagram (only) of the Class 48 offer to Western Australia and some internal correspondence on the offer of the Kestrel derivative to the Commonwealth Railways.
My intention is to recreate the drawings to the best of my ability of the CR unit from the drawings of the Kestrel and the Tulloch intercity multiple units from the NSW Railways drawings provided to the tenderers. But it shouldn't be neccessary since I thought I had saved the originals.
I'm still upset nearly 50 years later.
Peter
Peter: Great story!!
My biggest thrill was no biggie, seeing a DB class 5x steamer (2-10-0) still in operation in 1968 in Konstanz, Germany by the shore of Bodensee.
charlie hebdoMy biggest thrill was no biggie, seeing a DB class 5x steamer (2-10-0) still in operation in 1968 in Konstanz, Germany by the shore of Bodensee.
1973 in Essen. Not exactly a picturesque location back then. Even in 1970 (still pretty your myself) there were many 50 and 52 class running, even in passenger service. Saw several in Kaiserslautern that March.
Which type of steam locomotive did I see in 1973 running along side the highway in Franconia in and around Bayreuth? I guessed at the time it was a 2-8-0.
It sure beat my rented VW beetle.
Probably not any 2-8-0, mostly/all retired by 1973. More likely a 2-10-0. BR 50 (top speed 50 mph) or a 2-6-2 BR 23. Your Beetle must have been slower than any I drove there or here back then, as the latter locomotive could not exceed 68 mph.
I donated to the Archives at Storrs Ct. the blueprints relevant to the NHRR electrification; the blueprints and documents relevant to the Cos Cos Power Plant are in the Archives of the Greenwich Historical Society. One interesting item was a "Conduit table." All of the wiring of the CCPP was in ridgid steel conduit and each one was number-identified, and for a particular number, the table indicated the conduit size , the number of conductors and the conductor size , and the connection-points at each end. Not a "discovery" , but I met a local builder who informed me his grandfather had worked on the 1906 constuction of the CCPP and the builder had the original "on the job" blueprints that his granfather had preserved. I suggested that he place them in the custodt Greenwich Historical Society, and he did.
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