That Quechee Gorge deserves \more mention than that. It's 165 feet deep at its deepest point, the deepest in Vermont (not a state particularly lacking in mountains and gorges) and sometimes called a 'little Grand Canyon'.
An interesting story all 'round. Now who was the author who wrote about this and other esoteric New England railroad subjects?
I think I'm going to try a different question. The anti-smoke ordinance resulted in New York Central rebuilding Grand Central Terminal. In the process NYC threatened to require steel cars by tenant NYNH&H for use in the Park Avenue Tunnel, something that didn't actually happen until later. The tiny Woodstock Railroad's wooden bridge across Quechee Gorge (Town of Hartford VT) was inspected to see if it would handle a steel Pullman and was found to be nearly incapable of supporting its own weight. By the time the steel replacement bridge was completed in 1912 Pullman was no longer willing to operate the car. The replacement bridge was taken over by the state of Vermont when the Woodstock was abandoned in 1937, and used for what became U.S. Highway 4, which it still serves today. Woodstock then and now was home to various Rockefellers, along with Frederick Billings, one of the drivers of the Northern Pacific. I'll post a different question before tomorrow.
Why do I think this involves Lenox, Massachusetts and a Hudson River bridge?
No boats. Nowadays golf and skiing.
"Late Thirties" immediately makes me think of the Fall River Line boat train for some reason.
It wsn't the Naragansett Pier. Even after the Pullman was dropped, the line lasted int the late 1930s running to a town noted for wealthy residents. The "fix" that would have allowed the Pullman to resume is still in service, though not for railroad purposes.
The short line was not the Narraganset Pier and was away from the coast?
Wouldn't have anything to do with gas lighting, would it?
None of those had anything to do with the NYC ordinance, and the change the railroads (esp. NYNH&H) made to respond to it. You need to get away from the coast...
Possibly neither the Owl nor (later) the Federal stopped at Kingston anymore, or the NYNH&H did not have a night switchers available to remove the car and attach it, or there may not have been any place to keep the sleeper on heat and power at Naragansett, or the track layout at Kingston changed to make shifting a sleeper a more complex operation.
The shortline could have handled steel cars after 1911... What changed?
Narraganset Pier Railroad, Kingston - Narraganset Pier. The two sleepers they owned were wood.
The last passenger service was as steel-wheeled blue school-bus hauling or pushing a four-wheeled utility trailer. Rode it. Ran backward one way.
I think they also had a GE 44-ton to move freight cars. Rode it winter 1949-1950. Rode the New Haven Boston - Kingston and return.
May find the negatives some day.
That's a hard bar to jump over! Here's another New England railroading question.
This shortline's daily (except Saturday night) Pullman ran from New York to what, even now, is a place frequented by the rich and famous. It was discontinued because a change required by a New York City ordinance would have made it impossible to continue. By the time the condition was corrected the former Pullman passengers had either gotten used to the line's coach or had hired chauffer-driven cars. The "fix" remained in service until the line was abandoned in the 1930s (with occasional private car traffic) and then re-used - it's still in use today at an important scenic spot.
Railroad and approximate year. This was well documented in a small book by an author who wrote a bunch of similar books about New England short lines.
You know what? I can't take credit for that answer; every bit of the critical information was stuff I didn't know. I say rcdrye should ask another.
MiningmanHow do you tell liquid cyanide from water....you cannot.
Au contraire - you can tell quite easily. But by the time you do, it may be too late... Death is ever vigilant, and his friend Finagle loves to help out.
I confess I'd expect there would be more in an organic qual sample than just one comparatively simple unknown... part of the lesson being taught in differential diagnosis that combinations of unknown compounds rule out whole families of others. An important reminder, though, is that chemically pure ethyl alcohol is not something to treat the same way you did the citric acid!
Part of railroading in the Deep South involves penury, another part involves various levels of corruption and carpetbagging, later another part involved empire-building and collusion. I am still a bit sick at heart that the 150mph straight route north through Louisiana and Mississippi was never built. THAT would have become an interesting railroad corridor today. Likewise the result if Scott of the PRR had finalized his plan to consolidate southern railroading, and someone like Cassatt then engaged in systematic strategic construction and physical improvements...
and OM, the question?
Cyanide made me think of this:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4417898/man-treated-for-cyanide-poisoning-from-apricot-kernels-says-selling-them-like-nuts-is-nuts-1.4417904
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Now thats an accident waiting to happen. ChemLab 101...never ever use any flask of any kind as a drinking or storage vessel.
How do you tell liquid cyanide from water....you cannot.
SD70M-2Dude Miningman Maybe start a thread "The South explained A-Z! Better make some sweet tea first, and lots of it!
Miningman Maybe start a thread "The South explained A-Z!
Maybe start a thread "The South explained A-Z!
Better make some sweet tea first, and lots of it!
When I was taking the Organic Qual course in college, one of my unknowns was citric acid. At the time I did use sugar and lemon in my tea, so after I determined what it was, I took the leftover citric acid to the dining hall (in a 50 ml. Erlenmyer flask), and used it in place of lemon juice until it was all gone.
Johnny
Deggesty- Well of course I know the birds eye view picture but Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana always look like a birds nest of trackage. The East to West routes and all their intersections and lots of smaller short lines. Of course this isn't the place to do that.
Miningman Great information rcdrye. New England railroading has always been a bit of a confusing mystery to me. My understanding has advanced considerably with these questions and answers over time. Now if someone can explain railroading in the Deep South in ten million words or less that would be a start.
Great information rcdrye. New England railroading has always been a bit of a confusing mystery to me. My understanding has advanced considerably with these questions and answers over time.
Now if someone can explain railroading in the Deep South in ten million words or less that would be a start.
The Southern served the South--along with the ACL, SAL, L&N, CG, GA, WPRte, GM&O, FEC, and a little bit of the Frisco. The C&O and N&W were Pocohontas District roads that served Virginia.
OvermodRailroads are likely as not the B&M and the CV, but I have no idea about the connecting line and so will hand it over to someone with better knowledge.
I'm going to take that as a complete answer. The B&M and CV shared the Conn River Line as a result of an incredibly complex bunch of leases and stock transactions. At the turn of the 20th Century the line consisted of the following segments north of the junction between the CV's line to New London and the B&M's line to Greenfield and Springfield:
E. Northfield - Brattleboro VT via Hinsdale NH B&M (Ashuelot Railroad)
E. Northfield - Brattleboro VT via Vernon VT CV (Vermont and Massachusetts)
Brattleboro -Bellows Falls VT B&M (Vermont Valley)
Bellows Falls-Windsor VT via Charlestown and Claremont NH B&M (Sullivan RR)
Windsor -White River Jct VT CV (Vermont Central)
The names in parentheses are the original owners, though ownership was not a straight line in some cases. The line was operated as paired track between E. Northfield and Brattleboro, northbound via B&M, southbound via CV (except for one train that carried northbound mail). Line was operated under B&M rulebook, and dispatched by B&M, even the CV-owned sections.
Around 1910 someone at the B&M figured out that if the B&M built a line from Cornish NH, just across the bridge from Windsor, up Blow-Me-Down Brook through the village of Meriden (town of Plainfield NH) and down Great Brook to a connection with the B&M's own Northern RR line from Boston in the town of Lebanon NH, trains could run all the way from Springfield to White River Jct on B&M rails. Keep in mind that the B&M ran all the way to Stanstead Quebec at the time, and considered CV's Grand Trunk ownership a real threat.
Of course the whole project came unstuck. Even before CV dropped the Southern New England scheme money was getting tight, and trying to fight Woodrow Wilson's personal friend Winston Churchill (the novelist) and his associates was a non-starter. The line would not have been all that easy to operate - there is a 1.5% ascending grade out of White River Jct towards Lebanon that was a helper district in steam days.
The joint/paired arrangement remained unchanged until B&M's bridge at E. Northfield had a complete abutment failure in 1970, and all trains began to use the CV in both directions. In 1987 CV got ownership when Amtrak sued B&M for reducing maintanence to near zero. Successor New England Central still plays host to Pan Am (B&M) trains running on trackage rights granted in the 1987 settlement. Today's Conn River is CTC-signalled with a 79 MPH speed limit, far greater than the 50 MPH max on the line in B&M and CV days.
Well, I'll help the matter along; the colony was in part founded by the man commemorated in the NHS, Augustus St. Gaudens of gold-coin fame; the colony was at Cornish, NH, and the summer White House was owned by a Winston Churchill ... just not the famous British PM.
Railroads are likely as not the B&M and the CV, but I have no idea about the connecting line and so will hand it over to someone with better knowledge.
The artists' colony included several nationally known illustrators, a novelist, and close friends of the then-President, who made the colony his summer White House for a couple of years. The right-of-way would have skirted what is now a National Historic Site named after an internationally famous sculpter who died just as the planning was getting under way.
No, it's a little further east than that. The Joint Line does have an interesting history, right up to gun batles, but it was always (or at least mostly) between the railroads, and not the landowners.
I think the railroads are the AT&SF and the DRG&W, the Denver - Pueblo Joint Line, with the Pueblo Creative Center or Corridor the artists colony.
Hard to believe that SD40/45s are already over 50 years old...
A joint track arrangement existed in the early 1900s that even then had been around for a couple of decades. Just before WW I one of the railroads thought about how to break it, and give itself a competitve advantage. To do this, the railroad would have had to build about 15 miles of track to connect its portion of the joint line to the rest of its system, bypassing the section owned by the other railroad. The project was an early NIMBY victim, for though it was surveyed completely, property owners balked at settling, particularly at one end where the line would have run through a politically well connected artists' colony. The financial difficulties after 1914 doomed it completely. The original arrangement remained in place until 1970, a modified version until 1987, and a remnant of the joint track arrangement remains to this day. Name the two railroads and the artists' colony.
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