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Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

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Posted by NP Eddie on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 4:48 PM

Overmod:

I believe you are looking for the Southern Pacific's cab forwards. They burned oil. The original premise was to have the engine crew ahead of the smoke, etc. in the various tunnels. If my memory serves me correctly they were Class AC. I have never seen other railroads using that type of arrangement.

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, April 3, 2018 1:50 PM

It's been said 'there's a prototype for everything'.  One thing that often causes model train people agony is to see a steam locomotive positioned for auction pictures with the tender backward.  But there is at least one case of a modern engine actually made that way -- what is the engine, and the details behind having the tender backward?

[Note: extra credit for explaining much earlier photographic evidence of tenders with fuel bunker trailing...]

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, April 2, 2018 10:12 AM

Nearly all the speling mistakes in the preceding post were introduced in transmission, not in my writing.  The moderator is at fault for not permtting me the edit button.

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, April 1, 2018 11:33 AM

100% correct all three.  Regarding the particular tunnel with restricted clearanes, it is the "Nassau Cbefore ut" tunnel south of Broad Street station to the Motague Street tunnel still having revenue service with the R full time and the N late nights.  The M was the last refenue servie to the this tunnel before it was rerouted to Queens, Forest Hills via 6th Avenue.   The tunnel had been regularly used by Culver trains, and before 1967 by West End Locals in one direciton during rush hours.  Before 1967 and the Christie Street connection, the south traks on the Manhattan Bridge went to Chambers Street and the Nassau Street line, so high-roof elevated cars could get to Coney Island via the Manhattan Bridge without goiing through the Cut tunnel with tis restricted overhead clearnce. Now those Manhattan Bridge tracks connect to Broadway (N and Q), the north tracks now to Houston Street and 6th Avenue (B and D).

Your question, please.

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, March 31, 2018 2:04 PM

Weren't the Qs retrucked because of loaded weight limits on the outer tracks?  With these things already in motor-trailer-motor triplets I can imagine more leisurely acceleration at full load.  We could test this as I believe the Qs in preservation kept the 1950 trucks...

Roofs reduced to fit through the tunnel to the Coney Island shops.

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Posted by daveklepper on Saturday, March 31, 2018 1:31 PM

Do I ever need the edit button!   No answer to all three so far?   If you know the answer to one of the three, go ahead and be the winner, and I will fill in with the other two reasons.

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Posted by daveklepper on Friday, March 30, 2018 1:47 AM

Around 1949, perhaps a year or two earlier, the joint operation of the Astoria and Flushing lines by both the BMT and IRT, then both parts of the New York City Transit Authority's rapid-transit system, ended, with the BMT running to Astoria with 10-foot wide cars, no change at Queensboro Plaza anymiore, and IRT with its 8+-wide cars to Flushing.  This made the BMT Q-Types redundant in Queens, and they replaced the composit cars in Third Avenue Elevated rush-hour Though-Express service.  But the Q-Types trucks were replaced by trucks fromt he composite cars.  Question one, why?   Two:  What sas the effect on perormance?

When the Manhattan portion of the Thrid Avenue Elevated was abandpned, everything below 149th Street, and pre-WWII subway cars took over the remaining Bronx portion, the cars were shifted to replace the last open-platform gate-cars on the system, on the Myrtle Avenue elevated.  They had to visit Coney Island shops and have their roofs lowered before this assignement.  Why?

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Posted by rcdrye on Thursday, March 29, 2018 7:30 PM

Yes, but Des Moines was Iowa's state capital (still is...)

You get the next question.

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, March 29, 2018 1:07 AM

Hmm.  Do I get to answer the nex question?   Waerloo Ceder Falls and Northern also cut back from the Ceder Rapids interurban station to a converted residence on the north side of Ceder Rapids.  This may have happened earlier than the Crandic cutack, probably when the streetcar ssytem went bus and WCF&N would have had to assume full costs for maintaing the streetcar tracks involved in reaching the station.

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Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, March 28, 2018 8:37 AM

Ogden was wasn't the state capital.

You were correct with your initial guess of Salt Lake City.  Bamberger used the Interurban Union Station there until rail ops ended in 1949.  The Salt Lake Garfield and Western was listed in early 1948 as "Service to resume May 1948" but that didn't happen.

IRR ended operations in January 1941, the PSC of I runs to Seymour on the former IRR Louisville line that ran about another 8 months ran from a different spot.  Traction Terminal remained as a bus station until the 1980s.

Sacramento's relatively new Union Station lost service in 1940.

Des Moines Iowa had interurban service until 1954, but the last carrier, Fort Dodge, Des Moines and Southern, cut back its entry to downtown to the outskirts in 1938.  Having to cross 13 railroad tracks on the way into town may have had something to do with it.  The other Des Moines interurbans were gone before WWII.

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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 9:29 AM

Salt LakeCity was used by Bamberger to Ogden.  I realize the line west to the lake did not use it.

So it is Ogden, Utah, which was used both by Bamberger and the line north to Preston, which may also have operated through WWII, but did quit much sooner than BAmberger.  So, it is Ogden.

Indianapolis quit when the last Inidana Railroad operations under that name went bus, because the power company franchise run to Seymore, than ended in a tragedy, did not use the Terminal, and it stopped before WWII.   Detroit ended in the 1930's    Cleveland did not have an |Interurban Union; there the interurbans shared the Public Square loops (four) with the local streetcars, except of course for Shaker Heights, which was inside and under the Terminal.  Dayton quit before Indianapolis when Indiana pulled out.  Louisville quit when the Daisey line pulled out, after WWII but before Ogden.  Indiana had left earlier, 1939 or 1940.

Oh, yes, Sacramento lost its interurban passenger service on both the Central California Traction and Sacramento Northern before WWII, althogh both continued to provide local streetcar service toward the end of WWII, and electric freight service sometime after.

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Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 7:12 AM

I'm going to take them out of the list one by one.  The easternmost one that was known as Interurban Union Station was in Columbus Ohio, where its standard gauge tracks were reached over three-rail segments of the broad-gauge Columbus streetcar system.  It went with the near-simultaneous failure of the last of the Ohio interurbans in 1938.  That leaves four, all in state capitals, all known as Interurban Union Station except one, which was known as the Traction Terminal.

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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, March 27, 2018 1:55 AM

Salt Lake City

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Posted by rcdrye on Monday, March 26, 2018 6:49 AM

So - moving from rivalry to cooperation:  Of the five state capital Interurban Union Stations, which one was the last to service interurbans?

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, March 25, 2018 1:29 PM

I tried dereferencing the article from the link, but on an iPhone the forum software made that impossible.  It did seem interesting, though: those were still the years that competition between the Reading and PRR was still strong (and that some of the fastest trains in the world were being run as part of that) and this shows in part the strength of the rivalry at that time.

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, March 23, 2018 6:26 AM

It's right in the article the photo was in - Reading built a 2 1/2 ton replica  of Reading 134 on two Ford Chassis in their Camden shop. You can see the float structure behind the drivers.  1925 Atlantic City Parade - won first prize!  It was Reading's answer to PRR's win the previous year with a scale model of the Delair bridge.  Both PRR and Reading were represented in Atlantic City by subsidiaries - PRR's West Jersey and Shore, and Reading's Atlantic City Railway.  Both became part of the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in the 1930s.

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, March 23, 2018 3:43 AM

Here's a simple one:

How'd they get this to work in this particular location?

Explanation, place, year, and circumstances please.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Thursday, March 22, 2018 5:58 PM

Overmod
SD70Dude
The GP40TC's were also the only units to wear GO's original black-based livery, which I quite prefer to the plain green & white.

Here is a demo of the 'dirty' appearance (with green and white for partial comparison)

 

Ugh, needs a bath!  But think how much more dirt/soot/oil is obscured by the black background.  I prefer to think of them like this:

https://transit.toronto.on.ca/photos/images/go-602-pickering-1967.jpg

http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=32627

The green & white units could look pretty bad too if not washed or maintained:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J4LH9MEEFRE/TvziRYeG-7I/AAAAAAAAEx8/vJ2ZdNSZy9o/s1600/bloggo2.jpg

Same for Amtrak silver:

http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0604/amt193.jpg

I have never liked white paint on vehicles of any kind, just too much of a pain to keep clean.  GO seems to wash their equipment regularly now, there are not many pictures of filthy equipment.

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by Miningman on Thursday, March 22, 2018 12:57 PM

I've never considered the "unintended technology risk to the Soviet Bloc ". We were, back then, pretty fierce Commie fighters, nothing got by the RCMP Secret Service Division ( before CSIS)...had it made it to the Trudeau years then all bets are off.

Pierre would probably give Castro half a dozen of them as a birthday gift. 

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 7:07 AM

SD70Dude
The GP40TC's were also the only units to wear GO's original black-based livery, which I quite prefer to the plain green & white.

Here is a demo of the 'dirty' appearance (with green and white for partial comparison)

 
I have to to confess I have always liked the green and white since childhood. 
 
The Arrow was really an illustration that a country with so few taxpayers couldn't do military-industrial potlatch in the Cold Aar.  I would note, with more bitterness than miningman, that the whole future for advanced metals in airframe construction was aborted in those years ... in the case of the B70, twice.  And the future of the Orenda engine family was short-routed by the era of high-bypass fans on ginormous fuselages... not flying-boat or enhanced sleeper fuselages either, which left Saunders-Roe out in the cold.
 
No, it doesn't ease the sting.  On the other hand, we have more of the Arrow than I could have expected given the Dieffenbachia attitude and the usual make-the-inconvenient-truth-disappear scrap-the-jigs-and-tooling business.  (And there was in my opinion a ghastly risk of "unintended technology transfer" to the Soviet bloc had the Arrow been  carried through to production block series...)

 

 

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Posted by SD70Dude on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 12:12 AM

Overmod

both the original sets and the bilevels showed world class design and construction... a bit like a rail A.V.Roe.

One could say they flew down the rails like an Arrow!

EDIT:  Miningman beat me to that reference.

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by Miningman on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 12:08 AM

Not such a happy ending for the AVRO Arrow.

Still stings.

We need another Laurier. Fat chance.

We are "peoplekind" and dressing like a Bollywood bride!

The Beaver is back at least.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 12:07 AM

Overmod

GP40TC and those Hawker Siddeley diesel railcars (D700 to D708).

That's what I was looking for.  To you, Overmod.

The DMUs were powered by Rolls-Royce engines, which turned out to be quite unreliable.  They ended up being de-powered and converted into cab cars.

The GP40TC's were of course sold to Amtrak, who later had them rebuilt into GP38H-3's.  They are still running today, mainly in yard and work service but occasionally pinch-hit on passenger trains.

The GP40TC's were also the only units to wear GO's original black-based livery, which I quite prefer to the plain green & white.  Hides dirt better too.  I will have to look up some photos tomorrow.

Greetings from Alberta

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 11:49 PM

GP40TC and those Hawker Siddeley diesel railcars (D700 to D708).

Honorable mention to the ex-Ontario Northern FP7s.  

It was the Hawker Siddeley passenger consists that really defined GO for me, as both the original sets and the bilevels showed world class design and construction... a bit like a rail A.V.Roe.  I still miss them as a company.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 10:50 PM

Now for an easy question, and it is hard to believe this is over 50 years ago now.  

When GO Transit first started service what two models of motive power did they use?  A hint, both were unique to GO.  

Greetings from Alberta

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Posted by SD70Dude on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 10:36 PM

Even for diesels!

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by Miningman on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 10:21 PM

Ya gotta luv happy endings.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 10:03 PM

Ed,

IIRC = if I recall correctly, I was in a hurry typing on my phone.  GP9 #2 (later BNSF 1685) was indeed built in London as well.  It is still around, having been donated to the Prairie Dog Central in 2010:

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/our-communities/headliner/The-Prairie-Dogs-newest-member-99333819.html

Greetings from Alberta

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Posted by NP Eddie on Tuesday, March 20, 2018 11:30 AM

SD70Dude:

You are correct and get the next question. As information, the GN paid duty on about six or eight road switchers and three cabooses in order to run between Seattle and Vancouver, BC. Also I saw the BNML 2 in the Northtown Diesel Shop when I worked in the Material Department.  Was BNML 2 also built in Canada as I don't what the "IIRC" stands for? My guess is that the Diesel Shop in Grand Forks ND was downgraded to running repairs and all heavy repairs were sent to Northtown.

Ed Burns

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Posted by Miningman on Monday, March 19, 2018 10:13 PM

Above picture: Great Northern switching in Vancouver.

Photograph depicts the Great Northern Railway station in main street Vancouver. Image captured looking west with the CNR trackage to the left. Lifted track in the foreground used to be depot track. Visible are switchers and a sand car found behind them.

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