Thank you for your understanding Dave.
Alan, Oliver & North Fork Railroad
https://www.buckfast.org.uk/
If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. Lewis Carroll English author & recreational mathematician (1832 - 1898)
daveklepperSo the second part of the question is still up for grabs. Otto Mears never got financial help from an important connection, but lots of cooperation becuase his lines were feeders of traffic. One friend was a retired General. The cooperation of the longest surviving railroad continued this kind of cooperation after Otto passed on. Including leasing locomotives.
Chief Ouray and Otto Mears in Washington in 1868.
Frontier in Transition: A History of Southwestern Colorado
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/10/chap5.htm
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/10/chap6.htm
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/10/chap7.htm
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/10/chap8.htm
I think the retired general was probably Kit Carson.
Mike
The railroads he promoted, which if any are running today, the reason for their existance, and the reason for the existance or abandonment today.
A copy of Beebe's Narrow Gauge thru the Rockies might help.
daveklepperThe railroads he promoted, which if any are running today, the reason for their existance, and the reason for the existance or abandonment today.
Silverton Railroad - built to replace a toll road that Mears had built but the wagons could not handle the loads. Plans to reach Ouray was never realized due to the silver panic of 1893. Right of way was eventually donated to the Colorado Highway Department and became mostly the Million Dollar Highway.
Silverton Northern - branch of the Silverton Railroad with aspirations of a cut off to Lake City and hence to Denver (153 miles and 14 hours shorter). Mines started playing out and during WWII the equipment was requisitioned to use in Alaska on the White Pass. Some of right of way can be driven on today. I personally made it up to the Sunny Side mine upper tramway a few summers ago.
Rio Grande Southern - built to connect Durango to Ouray by going around the mountains to the west and to the DRG to the north at Ridgeway. Was completed only a few years before the silver panic. The road was always broke. Fate was sealed in 1952 when they lost the coal hauling contract to a trucking company (for the city of Rico?). Anyway the next year, after the rail line was abandon, the trucking company quadrupled the rates. If the railroad would have been able to hung on for a few more years it probably would have become a tourist like like the Durango & Silverton. Amazingly enough I have never driven through this part of Colorado. Do not know how much right of way has been reused as highway 145. I know a road already existed before the railroad was abandon, but in many places it is called Railroad Avenue, so ???.
Silverton Gadstone & Northerly - Was built by the Gold King Mine in Gadstone, apparently after Mears could not get financing to build a branch to their mine. It hauled 300 tons of ore a day. Sold to Mears in 1906(?) who operated it as the "Gadstone Branch" until it was obvious the mines were playing out in the 1930s. Right of way is now Colorado 110a basically a glorified jeep & mining truck trail.
OK Tex, next question please!
What major railroad shops were closed down after an unfortunate string of events that started by a hopper car's hand brakes failing? Name the railroad, the shop, and the string of events. The bonus question is what was the last rebuild project done at these shops, the last locomotive to be completed of that project, and date.
Amazingly enough I discovered and visited these shops for the first time the summer right before the hopper car incident. I hope it wasn't my visit that jinxed the place.
A great question! Wish I had the resources to figure out the answer!
The story begins...
The hopper car (two of them actually) being kicked with a brakeman in the car repair yard (can't say the name because it would give it away). As the cars approached the end of the track the brakeman discovered the cars hand brake was inoperable. This was probably why the cars were being sent to the shops.. Anyway what finally stopped the cars was the rear wall of the shop. The 180x340 foot shop built in 1908 had a hipped roof supported by wooden beams resting on 4 brick thick walls. The hoppers made a punch out in the bricks of several inches in it the shape of a hopper car.
Note this was only one of the massive buildings in this major railroad shop.
Did the brakeman live through this experience?
daveklepperDid the brakeman live through this experience?
First one to jump in after I've given enough clues... The story continues...
The cars had ended up in the upholstery section of the coach shop.
The bridge and building crew was called in to repair the hopper car impression. They put steel beams on either side and clamped them together pulling the punched out section back into place. To make certain the patch was secure they welded the repaired piece of wall to the gussets of the roof trusses.
Ok side story. The Railroad used to have their own fire department, but in a cost saving effort they decided to just use city services. There was an elaborate fire plan and they had fire drills occasionally.
So as one might guess apparently white hot bits of metal from the welding process sprinkled down into the upholstery shop and smoldered until that night. A reg glow appeared and the call of fire went out.
One of the steps in the fire plan was to cut power to the impacted building. Unfortunately the power to that building was the same circuit that the water pumps were on. The fire department arrived and hooked up to the local fire plugs to find them with zero pressure. Fire rages on while a line is run to the closest city fire hydrant (thousands of feet away). The heat get sufficient to ignite (explode) the highly flammable paints and solvents in the paint shop. The fire fighters spend all the time keeping other buildings from catching on fire.
Ironically the next morning the only wall of the coach shop was the wall with the hopper car repair.
The remains were cleared away, dumped in the middle of one of the wyes (which later became a superfund cleanup site).
The shop was not rebuild. Work that would have been done here was sent elsewhere.
WAG(sorry bout that) shots in the dark. Not D&H Colonie (was closed when it burned) . I'll throw my hands up and admit I do not know. However saw the thread was empty.
Rgds IGN
The shop was no longer independent, and in fact became dependent on the other two. Heavy metal work was sent to one shop about 473 miles away while electrical work went to another shop about 1155 miles in the opposite direction.
The railroad went though a cost cutting exercise and this non-independent shop was the logical one to close.
The locomotive cranes and cradles from the steam era lasted until the very end.
The shop was large enough that each specific component rebuild got its own area. Trucks were rebuilt in one place, prime movers in another, with a final "assembly" area.
Arguably the shops were the home of one of the most well known, most easily recognized, and definitely the most ambitious rebuild programs in the United States.
PRR-PC Juniata?
Hey, Tex , do I have the answer?
Nah, Juniata, Paducah was self-sufficient.
Deleted Rgds IGN
IsTex on vacation or something?
daveklepper IsTex on vacation or something?
>> PRR-PC Juniata? No - unfortunately I am not familiar enough with those shops to comment>> Paducha No - right magnitude, don't think the mileage between other shops works out. I would put Paducha as the 2nd most recognizable rebuilds with their GP9M (GP8, GP10, GP11) project.
Hmmm trying to think of another hint that won't totally give it away. Shops still show up on Google Maps.
Cleburne ?
DSO17Cleburne ?
Source - Santa Fe Locomotive Faciilties - Gulf Lines by Crump.
http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Locomotive-Facilities-Russell-Crump/dp/0965189678/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1282154561&sr=1-2-fkmr1
Your turn to ask a question.
Texas Zepher DSO17Cleburne ? Yes, that is the one. Santa Fe's Cleburne Shops. Home of the 233 CF7s. The last major rebuild projects done at Cleburn were apparently the GP38-2 and GP38-3s. The rebuild of the U23Bs to SF30Bs never happened. Source - Santa Fe Locomotive Faciilties - Gulf Lines by Crump. http://www.amazon.com/Santa-Locomotive-Facilities-Russell-Crump/dp/0965189678/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1282154561&sr=1-2-fkmr1 Your turn to ask a question.
I don't have a question ready. Somebody else please ask one.
OK, the following question is indeed railroad-related, and that's the hint:
Who was the individual inspired to create and develop Sun Valley, Idaho?
Harriman, of UP - SP fame?
Dave, is there anything you don't know?
from Wikipedia:
William Averell Harriman was born in New York City, the son of railroad baron Edward Henry Harriman and Mary Williamson Averell, and brother of E. Roland Harriman. Harriman was a close friend of Hall Roosevelt (brother of Eleanor Roosevelt).
Harriman was a career financier and a versatile yeoman (and donor) to the Democratic Party in the Sixties, and had been Governor of New York in the Fifties. He was also, though his business connections, Chairman of the U.P. from 1932-1936. Sun Valley was his idea, in, part, because it generated traffic for U.P. trains during the Depression (recall that back then, private railroad co's WANTED people to ride their trains!). Also according to Wiki, it was the U.P.'s engineering department in Omaha that invented the first skiing chairlifts! He died in 1986, going on 95 years old.
He was survived by his third wife, Pamela Harriman, who was onetime U.S. ambassador to France and a leading "doyenne" in Washington D.C. social affairs and politics. She died in 1997. She had previously been married to Winston Churchill's newphew Randolph, and Broadway producer Leland Hayward. It doesn't get much more insider than this, guys.
Okay, daveklepper, the next question is yours! - al
John L. Bevan, president of Illinois Central, and Averill Harriman at Vicksburg, Miss. in 1939
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