Based on a couple of photos, built with no MU and a tiny fuel tank. Obviously as N&W 3453 it has both MU and a large (by GP7 standards) fuel tank. Delivered with a batch of GMD SW8s.
Rob and All:
This secondary question is regarding US railroads that operated in Canada. Did the Wabash and NYC purchase switchers and Geep's for service in Canada? I have an old GN Distribution of Power and that has about 4 SW's in Vancouver that were built in Canada. The road power was sent from Seattle into Canada and had an "*" indicating duty paid on about 12 diesels and 3 or 4 cabooses. Which US roads operate in Canada from, say, Detroit to Toronto? CSX (NYC) and NS (Wabash)?
Ed Burns
It's something specific to that ex Wabash GP7. Not about fuel tanks or anything like that. It made it unique in it's very nature.
rcdrye- You were very close when you stated it was Wabash's only GP7 built in Canada...just take that one step further.
NP Eddie- Wabash has GMD London build 22F7's and one only lonely GP7 for Canadian service Detroit-Black Rock (Buffalo/Fort Erie). Now NS.
Pere Marquette also ran Detroit-Fort Erie/Buffalo and that became Chesapeake and Ohio and then CSX.
New York Central had their magnificiently engineered Canada Southern line.
All 3 had roundhouses and backshops in St Thomas, Ontario. St. Thomas shops even had the capacity to build steam locomotives for the 3 of them in their day. It was one happening place.
The joint Canadian National/Pere Marquette/Wabash line is gone, tore up and rails lifted. NS and CSX use a different CN line for running rights, further to the North.
The Canada Southern is also gone in what RME describes as "ritual murder" to prevent anyone else from getting it. It was in decline but still very much in use by NYC, then Penn Central, which saw further deferred maintenance, then Conrail for a short while, then sold to a joint CN-CP unholy cabal that quickly tore it up. This ensured that no 3rd party could purchase the line. There were several good suitors and some great ideas. The St. Clair tunnel was the big prize.
453 was also Wabash's only road-switcher built in Canada. The others were all switchers or F-units.
Thats close enough.
NW 3453 ex Wabash 453 GMD A148 1/1951 Only road switcher built for Canadian service.
Miningman The Canada Southern is also gone in what RME describes as "ritual murder" to prevent anyone else from getting it. It was in decline but still very much in use by NYC, then Penn Central, which saw further deferred maintenance, then Conrail for a short while, then sold to a joint CN-CP unholy cabal that quickly tore it up. This ensured that no 3rd party could purchase the line. There were several good suitors and some great ideas. The St. Clair tunnel was the big prize.
Was anybody besides Manny Moroun seriously interested in the line?
CSSHEGEWISCH- My last day at work today, off for the summer break, and things were beyond belief...could not respond sooner. I recall meetings in '99 where fisticuffs broke out over the fate of the CASO. Investors were not able to speak, presentations could not be made and so on. The main gist of it all was the fix was in. There was way more than Manny Moroun, who came later anyway.
At the end of the war the CASO was handling 2,500 cars a day and 81.5 Million passengers a year.
Its been a draining day and I need a few days to just veg for a bit then i will see if I can find specifics and names.
rcdrye- the question goes to you.
August 17, 1943 - CASO busy with 4500 to 8000 cars a day going through St Thomas on the Canada Division.
Updated from an earlier response...I stated 2,500 cars a day...seems they were very very busy during the war.
This railroad company began operations in the middle of winter a little more than 50 years ago, on track it didn't own. The track had been purchased after the abandonment of a railroad that had at one time been controlled by two of the most powerful railroads in the east, and earlier by another railroad with strong ties to its home state's governor.
Is it still around? What freight was its main income?
The Vermont Railraod? Rutland track owned by the State of Vermont? Rutland was once controlled by the NYCentral. Or perhaps I am thinking of the Vermont's immediate predicessor, the Green Mountain Ry.
Vermont Railway is the correct answer. Rutland was briefly owned jointly by NYC and NYNH&H, regaining control of itself a little before WW I. Even earlier the railroads that eventually made up the Vermont portions of the Rutland were leased by the Vermont Central, controlled by the Smith family. VC (later CV) contributed at least two governors to the State of Vermont, which is why Dr. William Seward Webb, a Vanderbilt son-in-law wanted the Rutland - he thought it might be a path to becoming governor! The only long-term result of the arrangement was that his daughter-in-law eventually founded the Shelburne Museum.
Vermont bought the Burlington-Rutland, Rutland-Bennington, and Rutland-Bellows Falls lines after the Rutland's abandonment, leasing the Burlington-Rutland and Rutland-Bennington lines to Vermont Railway, which began operations in January 1964. The Rutland-Bellows Falls line was leased to F. Nelson Blount, the founder of Steamtown. The Green Mountain Railroad and Steamtown were hopelessly tangled financially (Steamtown's CPR G5s were painted for Green Mountain, and occasionally operated on freight trains), a situation made worse when Blount was killed in a plane crash in 1967. The two operations were separated as part of his estate settlement, but remained entwined operationally until Steamtown was moved to Scranton PA. Green Mountain is now part of the Vermont Rail System, includint VTR, GMRC, and Washington County (WACR) which operates former CV lines around Montpelier, and the former B&M/CP line to Newport VT.
My questions: Third Avenue Railway Co built 335 lighwieght streetcars in its 65th Street and 3rd Avenue double-deck shop building, the first 100 using extended bodies of single-truck cars, including battery cars. All used recycled parts from old cars, including walk-over rattan seats, trucks fabricated from parts of old maximum-traction 2-motor trucks to make four-motor trucks, etc. One series of cars was special and set apart from the rest in body configuration. How? And the interior had an interior feature, a defnite passenger amenitiy, only used elsewhere on all PCC cars and Brilliners (and possibly the pre-PCCs, the 1500s, in WAshington DC., the San Francisco Magic Carpet cars, and the 1939 Brill and 1947 St. Louis Red Arrow cars that made it into SEPTA operation before retirement.) What was that interior feature?
Even if you don't know the answer to the above, but can tell us how the unique foot brake and door control of all these lightweight cars operated, and which other USA transit property used the same safety control system, you get to answer the next question.
I think the feature you're looking for is the rubber mat flooring found in the 600 series. It has a non-slip surface and is much better than a wooden floor on a rainy day.
All of TARS rebuilds had K-35-G control with an LB-2A line switch ("jiggler") allowing power control in first point without damaging the controller. Brakes are self-lapping foot operated straight air, interlocked with the door controls. In operation the brakes are applied with the pedal in the "up" position, with full release achieved when the pedal is fully depressed. The line switch is opened when the brakes are applied. The arrangement is great for operating in heavy traffic, allowing the operator to control the car with one foot, while making change and issuing transfers with his hands. The black thing in the center of the interior shot is the foot brake. The cars operated off of conduit plows, and only cars used in the Bronx and Westchester had trolley poles.
The only other company using this arrangement was the Omaha and Council Bluffs Railway, on some cars rebuilt around the same time.
Forty two of the 600 series were sent to Vienna in 1948 under the Marshall Plan. Several have been returned to the U.S. for museum display.
Beauatiful description of the control system. Yes, all cars after 551 (551-685, curtailed because of the forced bus conversion agreement) did have the floor covering you described. But 551-600, aluminum, and 601-625, Corten steel with two side corregations, were the only Peter Witt door-arrangment cars for easier exiting, and had PCC=type Pantasote headlining instead of bare wood ceilings, with bulls-eye PCC-car lighting instead of bare bulbs. This was a direct copy of the PCC and the only way any Third Avenue car resembled PCCs. 551 was a sample car, and may have been built by Brill instead of the 65th Street shops. Its exit doors were opposed. 552-625 had staggared doors for greater body streangth. 551-600, aluminium, were scrapped. 601-625 went to Sao Paulo, became single-end cars with three doors on one side, and some have been preserved. One is operating, retrucked to narrow gauge and operating on a Brazilian tourist trolley line. Another is under a plinth in a Sao Paulo park.
Except for 626-645, all TARS-TATS lightweights, except some second-hand cars, had essentially Brill E-177 trucks fabricated from parts of Brill maximum-traction trucks from scrapped cars. 626-645, conduit as built, later converted to poles for operation in the Bronx 1947-1948, had a very modified truck with lots of rubber repacing conventional springs for more noise control. 646-685 were built as pole cars for Treemont Avenue and Southern Boulevard in The Bronx. Only 551-625 had the Peter Witt door layout and PCC lighting.
TARS would have required special PCC bodies in any case, as their cars had to be narrow due to clearance problems, especially under the Third Avenue Elevated.
This early Rapid Transit line was the first to use automatic air brakes with steam locomotives, at a time when contemporary, and even later lines, were using vacuum brakes.
Was it the Metropolitan in Chicago? Congress Park, Douglas, and NW?
Not the Met. The Met started with "locomotive" cars and trailers, and was one of the first (if not the first) to operate on electricity from the beginning. The original trains were straight air, later converted to automatic air.
Staten Island Rapid Transit of the B&O?
daveklepperStaten Island Rapid Transit of the B&O?
When did they have an elevated? Their serious grade separation occurred in electrified days, as late as the '20s, iirc.
SIRT was on the ground. The question did specify "Rapid Transit." I will admit that I am expecting an Elevated, since steam-powered subways were pretty rare in North America...
Lake Street?
Lake Street used vacuum brakes with steam locomotives. Like the Met, the first Lake Street electric trains used "locomotive" cars and trailers, and straight air rather quickly converted to automatic.
Well, since the Southside Elevated pioneered multiple-unit operation, maybe they were the firs with your brakes as well, in thier steam days.
Got it in three! The "South Side Rapid Transit." (the period appeared on the letterboards until 1913!) equipped its steam-powered L trains with Christensen air brakes, the first use of automatic air brakes on elevated railways. Of course the cars retained automatic air when converted to MU cars by Wells & French in 1897. Christensen remains in business producing brake equipment for trucks. With some clever adaptive wiring, the Sprague/Christensen MU cars in the 1-250 series could be MUed to later Westinghouse/WABCO equipped cars, and remained in service until the 1930s.
There was one kind of Pullman sleeping accomodation that, as far as I know, was available only on Pensylvania Railroad trains. What was it, what series of cars were these (common second or first word in the names), to what trains were they assigned.
If you know, were any of these cars saved?
If you are talking about the Creek series 12-5 prewar and 12-4 post war cars Southern Pacific also had a pair of 12-5 cars. They were #9250 and 9251 and were initially assigned to the City of San Francisco and ended up on the Starlight until 1955 when they were retired.
The prewar 12-5 cars were "Brook" series. The other cars that had "Duplex Single Rooms" were the three "Dome" dome-sleepers assigned to the Capitol Ltd and Shenandoah (built for C&O's "Chessie"), and the NP's 4-4-4 dome sleepers, though none of them had the up-down setup characteristic of Duplex Single rooms. There was also a small series of heavyweight "betterment" rebuilds. Many of the lightweight cars were assignd to such overnight services as Boston-Pittsburgh, New York-Pittsburgh and Boston-Washington. By my count 19 "Brook" and 24 "Creek" cars. One of the "Creek" cars ended up in Amtrak ownership in the early 1970s, but was never used as far as I know.
Obviously, I did not know about the SP cars, which I assume had the same up and down arrangement as the PRR's. But if I remember correctly, the others were a more normal configuration without the stairs to the individual rooms. I guess then that none of the Brook or Creek cars were saved. DS was first. Anyway, RC has asked lots of questions. So we will hear from DS.
What US locomotive builder was the first to manufacture a single engined diesel locomotive with 2000 HP? What railroad purchased and used it?
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