Mikec6201 narig01 has the correct answer.if he would like to ask the next question. Johnny, I was not aware of a trunk line with the same name in the 1890's. Was this a steam road?
narig01 has the correct answer.if he would like to ask the next question.
Johnny, I was not aware of a trunk line with the same name in the 1890's. Was this a steam road?
Johnny
I regret this I am going to out of easy internet access for the next week. Mike could you or someone else post a question. My apoligies
I did remember the name Ohio Central had been reused. I'm at the house for a few and had a chance to look it up. No Ohio Central was not an interurban. The only interurban to use that name was 1:87 size.
Rgds IGN
Happy New Year!
Excerpt from The Century Chronicle Devoted to the Capital City (1901)
The Ohio Central Lines.
The Sunday Creek R. R., built in 1879, Atlantic & Lake Erie, started prior to that time, and several other smaller interests, as well as the Toledo & Ohio Central and the Kanawha & Michigan are now known to the public as the Ohio Central Lines. The two latter with through passenger and freight connections under one management, maintain distinct organizations, but work in unison. The K. & M. was completed to Charleston in 1883, and the route finished by various consolidations, from Corning to Gauley, a distance of 163 miles ten years later. There is now 583 miles in the O. C. L. system and branch lines are being built up Smithers Creek and Boomers Branch for accommodation to the rapidly developing coal interests of that region, which at this time is one of the most important coal mining sections of West Virginia, producing a high grade of steam, domestic and gas coals.
Excerpt from The Railway Agent and Station Agent magazine (1892)
The Ohio Central Lines: Moulton Houk, general passenger agent of the Ohio Central Lines, comprising the Toledo & Ohio Central, Toledo, Columbus & Cincinnati and Kanawha & Michigan railways, writes to us: "Some doubt or misunderstanding as to how business should be routed via these lines seems to exist upon the part of many station agents. With the view to more clearly placing the matter before them I take the liberty of enclosing to you a circular issued by these lines affecting this matter." The circular is as follows:
To General Passenger and Ticket Agents: For purposes of advertising and ticket representation, these railways will hereafter be known as the "Ohio Central Lines." One coupon will be sufficient from any junctional point of these lines to any station upon the same, and connections are respectfully requested to prepare issues of tickets reading via Ohio Central Lines through the various junctional points to the following important stations, viz.: Athens, O.; Bowling Green, O.; Bucyrus, O-; Charleston, W. Va.; Columbus, O.; Findlay, O.; Fostoria, O.; Kenton, O.; Middleport, O.; Mt. Gilead, O.; New Lexington, O.; Pt. Pleasant, W. Va.; Toledo, O.
We shall at once reorganize our issues of coupon tickets, and any favors received will be liberally reciprocated. Kindly acknowledge receipt upon enclosed card, and advise me the representation that you will accord us upon this request. From and after January 1st, 1892, all reports of ticket sales from connections should be made to J. Landgraf, Jr., auditor T. & O. C. R'y, Toledo, O.
http://timetabletrust.com/images/10761-1904oct.jpg
http://timetabletrust.com/images/10761-1911sep1.jpg
Well I'll be darned :) Guess I learned something today.
OK heres an easy question. Does anyone know the locomotive number, and where it now resides of the only existing Pacific style locomotive,from Norfolk and Western? Extra bonus points for the last year in which it ran.
Mikec6201 OK heres an easy question. Does anyone know the locomotive number, and where it now resides of the only existing Pacific style locomotive,from Norfolk and Western? Extra bonus points for the last year in which it ran.
Edit - Well what do you know. On our own forum - http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/t/176950.aspx
Guess youre close enough T Z, 578 is still there at ORM. About 5 or 6 years ago I got a crew together and we repainted her as best as we could. Unfortunately the gold lettering is comming off, and the black is starting to fade, but it still looks better than it did. Jerry did look into leasing, or buying her 10 or 15 years ago, even went as far as doing a boiler test. But neither party was able to come to an agreement.
Got to take off the extra credit though, As far as I know the last year it ran was the summer of '79. I think it was taken out of service because the rods were wearing out.
Sure would be nice if Jerry could take it on for restoration, looks like he is going to have a real nice shop complex......Mike
Ok another easy one. Who can answer without looking it up.
What became of the Great Northern's two monster W1 class electric locomotives when they dieselized the Cascades in 1956?
They went to the Pennsy and were used for a while in pusher service out of both Peoli and Enola. As soon as they needed overhauling, were scrapped/
daveklepper They went to the Pennsy and were used for a while in pusher service out of both Peoli and Enola. As soon as they needed overhauling, were scrapped/
You made me curious and I had to look, Those were really huge, about the size of a GG1 I am guessing? I wont give away the answer though.......Mike
Mikec6201 You made me curious and I had to look, Those were really huge, about the size of a GG1 I am guessing? I wont give away the answer though.......Mike
Texas Zepher Ok another easy one. Who can answer without looking it up. What became of the Great Northern's two monster W1 class electric locomotives when they dieselized the Cascades in 1956?
Deggesty Texas Zepher: Ok another easy one. Who can answer without looking it up. What became of the Great Northern's two monster W1 class electric locomotives when they dieselized the Cascades in 1956? The Virginian bought them?
Texas Zepher: Ok another easy one. Who can answer without looking it up. What became of the Great Northern's two monster W1 class electric locomotives when they dieselized the Cascades in 1956?
Hmm; the N&W bought them, reworked them, and used them as slugs?
I believe that one of them was scrapped and the other provided the second unit of UP's ill-fated coal-fired gas turbine, the first unit started life as a UP PA1.
CSSHEGEWISCHI believe that one of them was scrapped and the other provided the second unit of UP's ill-fated coal-fired gas turbine, the first unit started life as a UP PA1.
It was almost a crime to see such fabluous locomotives meet such an early demise. I am quite certain they would have outlasted the GG1s.
Like many interurbans, South Shore operated dining and parlor car equipment. What was the distinguishing feature of South Shore's dining and parlor cars?
No other interurban running dining and parlor cars were equipped for 1500V DC overhead wire. The Sacramento Northern came closest with 1200V DC overhead equipped cars. On most other interurbans, but not the North Shore, dining and parlors were always trailers, not motor cars. The South Shore and the North Shore had such cars with motors and controllers. Also two vestibules, one at each end, were a rarety, but that was consistant with the controllers..
South Shore's diners and parlors were all trailers with no pantographs and the diners had no end windows or controllers. Start at the bottom.
I'll hazard a guess. The cars had either 6-wheel trucks or truss rods - possibly a combination of the two. Most interurbans had to navigate around sharp turns when traversing city street intersections which precluded 6-wheel trucks. Of course the CSS&SB had some street running, but I don't know of any place where it's tracks made a sharp turn at a street intersection so it wasn't limited to only 4-wheel trucks.
Mark
Or, more likely, they may have been "blind motors", possibly with only two motors instead of four as usual, but with motors and not pure trailors. Blind motors were often used on rapid transit systems, motors without controlers or end windows. I don't think they had truss rods, because other interurbans did have diners and parlors with truss rods, and these were largely wood cars. The South Shore may have had wood diners and parlors at one time, but with Insull management re-equipping, they did go to an all-steel passenger fleet/ Six wheel trucks? There cars were shorter than usual railroad equpment until some were lengthened in the post-WWII era, and their track structure could take a pretty heavy car with four-wheel trucks.
KCSfan I'll hazard a guess. The cars had either 6-wheel trucks or truss rods - possibly a combination of the two. Most interurbans had to navigate around sharp turns when traversing city street intersections which precluded 6-wheel trucks. Of course the CSS&SB had some street running, but I don't know of any place where it's tracks made a sharp turn at a street intersection so it wasn't limited to only 4-wheel trucks. Mark
We have a winner!!! South Shore 301-302 (diners) and 351-352 (parlors) were the only interurban equipment to ride on Commonwealth 6-wheel trucks.
Your question, Mark.
Up to what year and on what US common carrier railroad were link and pin couplers last used?
MONSON railway ,last revinew train in 1943 ??.....Mike
I thought this question might stump everyone for a time so I'm impressed you were able to answer it so quickly Mike. The 2 ft. gauge Monson RR in Maine did indeed employ link and pin couplers on its rolling stock right up to the time of its abandonment in 1943. The next question is yours.
Thanks Mark. I just happened to remember a discussion on one of the model railroad boards about link and pins a while back..
Well since we are talking about couplers, everyone knows that link and pin couplers were eventually replaced by knuckle couplers. The first being the Janney coupler invented by Eli Janney. But there was a type of coupler that was patented sometime between the two. It was only used on passenger cars , and was really an integrated system involving the car platform and buffers. Can anyone name the coupler, its inventor, and the first patent date?....Mike
The JANNEY WAS NOT GENERALLY USED ON TRANSIT EQUIPMENT, AND THE TOMLINSON HAS BEEN THE MOST POPULAR, INTEGRATING ELECTRICAL AND AIR CONNECTIONS. OTHER EXAMPLES ARE THE WESTINGHOUSE (USED BY NYCTA) AND THE SCHAFENBERG (SP?) BUT I DON'T THINK ANY OF THESE ARE THE EXAMPLE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR AND i THINK ALL CAME AFTER THE JANNEY
Ezra Miller's "Improvement in Car Couplings" patented March 31, 1863
http://www.google.com/patents?id=MAcAAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true
Ezra Miller's "Improvement in Car Couplers and Buffers" patented January 31, 1865
http://www.google.com/patents?id=RigAAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true
Ezra Miller's "Improvement in Railroad Cars" patented July 24, 1866
http://www.google.com/patents?id=xFkAAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true
Excerpt from Notes on Railroad Accidents by Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1879)
The original passenger cars, however frail and light they may have been, were at least, when shackled together in a train, continuous in their bearings on each other, that is, their sills and floor timbers were all on a level and in line, so that, if the cars were suddenly pressed together, they met in such a way as to resist the pressure to the extent of their resisting power, and the floor of one did not quietly slide under or over that of another. The bodies of these cars were about thirty-two inches from the rails. This was presently found to be too low. In raising the bodies of the cars, however, the mechanics of those days encountered a practical difficulty. The couplings of the cars built on the new model were higher than those of the old. They at once met, and, as they thought, no less ingeniously then successfully overcame this difficulty, by placing the couplings and draw-heads of their new cars below the line of the sills. This necessitated putting the platform which sustained the coupling also beneath the sills, and in doing that they disregarded, without the most remote consciousness of the fact, a fundamental law of mechanics. With a possible pressure, both sudden and heavy to be resisted, the line of resistance was no longer the line of greatest strength. During thirty years this stupid blunder remained uncorrected. It was as if the builders during that period had from force of habit insisted upon always using as supports pillars which were curved or bent instead of upright. At the close of those thirty years also the railroad mechanics had become so thoroughly educated into their false methods that it took yet other years and a series of frightful disasters, the significance of which they seemed utterly unable to take in, before they could be induced to abandon those methods.
The two great dangers of telescoping and oscillation were directly due to this system of car construction and of train coupling,-and telescoping and oscillation were probably the cause of one half at least of the loss of life and the injuries to persons incident to the first thirty years of American railroad experience. The badly built and loosely connected coaches of every train going at any considerable rate of speed used then to swing and roll about and hammer against each other after a fashion which made the infrequent occurrence of serious disaster the only fair subject for surprise. In case of a sudden stoppage or partial derailment, the train stopped or went on, not as a whole, but as a succession of parts, while the low platforms and slack couplings fearfully increased the danger;-for, if the train held together, the cars in stopping were likely to break off the platforms, making of what remained of them a sort of inclined plane over which the car-bodies rode into each other at different levels; or, if the couplings, as was more probable, held and the train did not part, the swaying and swinging of the loosely connected cars was almost sure to throw them from the track and break them in pieces. The invention through which this difficulty was at last overcome, simple and obvious as it was, is fairly entitled, so far as America at least is concerned, to be classed among the four or five really noticeable advances which have of late years been made in railroad appliances. It contributed unmistakably and essentially to the safety of every traveller. Known as the Miller platform and buffer, from the name of the inventor, it was, like all good work of the sort, a simple and intelligent recurrence to correct mechanical principles. Miller went to work to construct cars in such a way as to cause them to come in contact with each other in the line of their greatest resisting power, while in coupling them together in trains he introduced both tension and compression;-that is he, in plain language, brought the ends of the heavy longitudinal floor timbers of the separate cars exactly on a line and directly bearing on each other, and then forced them against each other until the heavy spring buffers which played on those floor timbers were compressed, when the couplers sprung together and the train then stood practically one solid body from end to end. It could no more swing or crush than a single car could swing or crush. It then only remained to increase the weight and to perfect the construction of the vehicles to insure all the safety in this respect of which travel by rail admitted.
Simple as these improvements were, and apparently obvious as the mechanical principles on which they were based now seem, the opposition for years offered to them by practical master-mechanics and railroad men would have been ludicrous had it not been exasperating. There was hardly a railroad in the country whose officers did not insist that their method of construction was exceptional, it was true, but far better than Miller's. It was maintained that the slack couplings were necessary in order to enable the locomotives to start the trains, -that a train made up without the slack, on Miller's plan, could not be set in motion, and that if it was set in motion it must twist apart at every sharp curve etc. The ingenuity displayed in thus inventing theoretical objections to the appliance far exceeded that required for inventing it, and indeed no one who has not had official experience of it can at all realize the objecting capacity of the typical practical mechanic whose conceit as a rule is measured by his ignorance, while his stupidity is unequalled save by his obstinacy. Even when Miller's invention for one reason or another was not adopted, the principles upon which that invention was founded,-the principles of tension, cohesion and direct resistance,-at last forced their way into general acceptance. The long-urged objection that the thing was practically impossible was slowly abandoned in face of the awkward but undeniable fact that it was done every day, and many times a day. Consequently, as the result of much patient arguing, duly emphasized by the regular recurrence of disaster, it is not too much to assert that for weight, resisting power, perfection of construction and equipment and the protection they afford to travellers, the standard American passenger coach is now far in advance of any other. As to comfort, convenience, taste in ornamentation, etc., these are so much matters of habit and education that it is unnecessary to discuss them. They do not affect the question of safety.
A very striking illustration of the vast increase of safety secured through this improved car construction was furnished in an accident, which happened in Massachusetts upon July 15, 1872. As an express train on the Boston & Providence road was that day running to Boston about noon and at a rate of speed of some forty miles an hour, it came in contact with a horse and wagon at a grade crossing in the town of Foxborough. The train was made up of thoroughly well-built cars, equipped with both the Miller platform and the Westinghouse train-brake. There was no time in which to check the speed, and it thus became a simple question of strength of construction, to be tested in an unavoidable collision. The engine struck the wagon, and instantly destroyed it. The horse had already cleared the rails when the wagon was struck, but, a portion of his harness getting caught on the locomotive, he was thrown down and dragged a short distance until his body came in contact with the platform of a station close to the spot of collision. The body was then forced under the cars, having been almost instantaneously rolled and pounded up into a hard, unyielding mass. The results which ensued were certainly very singular. Next to the locomotive was an ordinary baggage and mail car, and it was under this car, and between its forward and its hind truck, that the body of the horse was forced; coming then directly in contact with the truck of the rear wheels, it tore it from its fastenings and thus let the rear end of the car drop upon the track. In falling, this end snapped the coupling by its weight, and so disconnected the train, the locomotive going off towards Boston dragging this single car, with one end of it bumping along the track. Meanwhile the succeeding car of the train had swept over the body of the horse and the disconnected truck, which were thus brought in contact with its own wheels, which in their turn were also torn off; and so great was the momentum that in this way all of the four passenger cars which composed that part of the train were successively driven clean off their rolling gear, and not only did they then slide off the track, but they crossed a railroad siding which happened to be at that point, went down an embankment three or four feet in height, demolished a fence, passed into an adjoining field, and then at last, after glancing from the stump of a large oak-tree, they finally came to a stand-still some two hundred feet from the point at which they had left the track. There was not in this case even an approach to telescoping; on the contrary, each car rested perfectly firmly in its place as regarded all the others, not a person was injured, and when the wheelless train at last became stationary the astonished passengers got up and hurried through the doors, the very glass in which as well as that in the windows was unbroken. Here was an indisputable victory of skill and science over accident, showing most vividly to what an infinitesimal extreme the dangers incident to telescoping may be reduced.
Thank you Wanswheel, you have the correct answer. And may I say a very thorough answer also....Mike
Look forward to your question . A late use of this idea was on Gilbert American Flyer HO model train couplers. Not exactly, but very similar.
I gather these were only on passenger equipment. How many railroads used the idea?
Also, note that the original Jannay coupler had a slot to interface with existing link and pin equipped equipment.
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