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Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

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Posted by Miningman on Sunday, July 23, 2017 10:10 PM

Allright then Gents and Penny.

What is this. Hint: Not a '57 Chevy

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Posted by wanswheel on Saturday, July 22, 2017 2:01 PM

Aw gee it's tough there must be something we can do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Tm0oCQjpg&t=1h1m8s

 

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Posted by jeffhergert on Saturday, July 22, 2017 1:39 PM

Even later to the party.  Going by memory, I thought they had a little more time to get him to the hospital in the Windy City.  More like 14 or 16 hours, still not enough to get there from Montana.  However, I don't know that the location was ever specified.  The only thing I can think of that kind of set the location was a letterhead on a letter for the Trans-Missouri Division.  (Missouri in this case being the river, not the state.)  So although people can recognize the actual location, the setting really is never defined.  In a case like that, 6 or 16 hours is pausible.

It is, or was, possible to view the movie free, on-line.  The one I watched was a edited version, the same that shows up on TCM from time to time.  This version has 10 to 15 minutes cut out.  It misses a scene or two that while not crucial to the story, were missed by me. 

Jeff   

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Posted by Firelock76 on Friday, July 21, 2017 6:53 PM

NP Eddie

ALL:

I enjoy the many crotributors to this thread and had forgotten that the IC had the experimental switchers prior to WWII.

A retorical question: In "Danger Lights" how can a steam engine go from Miles City, Montana to Chicago in six or so hours without fueling and watering? Quite a feat only in the movies and television.

Ed Burns

 

I'm a bit late to the party on this, but...

How could a steam engine go from Miles City Montana to Chicago in six hours without stopping for fuel and water?  Because Dan Thorne, the tough division super with a "heart o' gold" was on board.

It wouldn't DARE do otherwise!

I've seen the movie.  Trust me.  I know.

And as they say in the movie, "Oh yeah?"  "YEAH!"

RME
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Posted by RME on Monday, July 17, 2017 11:34 AM

Well, if we rule out Stephen King magic, the only possible effects can be time dilation ... or the effect of warp (hyperluminal) speed in the local reference frame.  And while it might be noted that the imortant thing to 'minimize' with time dilation is the patient on board the train, the effect from the movie's point of view is external clock time. 

But the Lombard issue introduces a new complication.  I am tempted to invoke the spirit of that Speedy Gonzales Volkswagen commercial to figure out how going further would make the trip faster -- charging the flux capacitor with the 3kV field, perhaps?  They'd have little trouble getting an F6 above 88mph but someone more familiar with MILW power will have to comment about the F5s.

There is something of a precedent for using LVDC for 'super' power -- Tommyknockers come to mind; what works with batteries ought to work really well with MILW catenary voltage!  So perhaps the excursion made some sense.  How much of the actual run is recognizably east of Miles City after the shots at Lombard -- before we start to see close-in Chicago?  Hmmmm. 

So it may be time to bite the bullet and start discussing Doc Smith inertialess drives to make the higher speed over the rails workable.  Some sort of technological deus ex machina is definitely being called for.  Then we could explain why it was such a heroic exercise to make the run in six whole hours when any sufficiently advanced technology could arrive at the hospital almost before the incident requiring medical attention...

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Posted by erikem on Monday, July 17, 2017 10:49 AM

RME

 

 
erikem
This introduces a follow-up rhetorical question: What was the Pacfic doing going through electrified territory???

 

At least 170mph. Big Smile

(I couldn't resist a straight line like that!)

 

Hmmm, doing 170 through the combination of the curve at Lombard and the electric field set up by the 3kV catenary must be doing the same kind of slingshot effect as when the starship Enterprise does warp 8+ when going near the sun...

What's depressing is that episode was aired ~37 years after Danger Lights was filmed.

FWIW, Miles City is at mp1119, Lombard is at mp1430 - going from Miles City to Chicago via Lombard would involve some very fast running.

 - Erik

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Posted by Deggesty on Monday, July 17, 2017 8:03 AM

RME

 

 
erikem
This introduces a follow-up rhetorical question: What was the Pacfic doing going through electrified territory???

 

At least 170mph. Big Smile

(I couldn't resist a straight line like that!)

 

LaughThanks; there's nothing else like a good laugh before breakfast.

Johnny

RME
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Posted by RME on Monday, July 17, 2017 5:08 AM

erikem
This introduces a follow-up rhetorical question: What was the Pacfic doing going through electrified territory???

At least 170mph. Big Smile

(I couldn't resist a straight line like that!)

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Posted by erikem on Sunday, July 16, 2017 11:00 PM

NP Eddie

A retorical question: In "Danger Lights" how can a steam engine go from Miles City, Montana to Chicago in six or so hours without fueling and watering? Quite a feat only in the movies and television.

Especially if it is going through Lombard on the way.... This introduces a follow-up rhetorical question: What was the Pacfic doing going through electrified territory???

I did get a kick out of seeing the locomotive shoving contest, which I first heard about from my dad who remembered the movie being filmed in MIles City. Don't know if he was part of the crowd watching the shoving match. The weirdest thing for me was seeing the smokestack by the roundhouse in the movie and just knowing it was Miles City.

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Posted by Miningman on Sunday, July 16, 2017 3:10 PM

SD70M-2 Dude- Believe it was an F5 Pacific 69" drivers, 46,000 + change # tractive effort. Pulled just the one passenger car. 

They cleared everything off the track ahead of time. 

The rest of the story is like a Western, where the good guys 6 shooter has an infinite amount of shots. 

The staged contest tug of war scene between 2 steam locomotives is pretty nifty..night shot to boot! Pretty good. 

...and of course it's the Milwaukee Road where anything is possible. 

RME
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Posted by RME on Sunday, July 16, 2017 1:31 PM

NP Eddie
how can a steam engine go from Miles City, Montana to Chicago in six or so hours without fueling and watering?

Must have had an ancestor of Ophelia Todd dispatching.

I do have to wonder if Grumpy Anderson could have wheeled 'em through even faster ... if you told him time was of the essence.

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Posted by SD70M-2Dude on Sunday, July 16, 2017 1:21 PM

NP Eddie

In "Danger Lights" how can a steam engine go from Miles City, Montana to Chicago in six or so hours without fueling and watering? Quite a feat only in the movies and television.

I know it's retorical, but answering seems just too fun.  Haven't seen "Danger Lights", but to make a run like that said engine must have been oil-fired with about 10 extra tenders. 

Oh and it would have to be something capable of very high speeds a la a MILW Hudson.

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by NP Eddie on Saturday, July 15, 2017 8:08 PM

ALL:

I enjoy the many crotributors to this thread and had forgotten that the IC had the experimental switchers prior to WWII.

A retorical question: In "Danger Lights" how can a steam engine go from Miles City, Montana to Chicago in six or so hours without fueling and watering? Quite a feat only in the movies and television.

Ed Burns

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, July 14, 2017 10:05 PM

Thank you very much RME! I did not know that being backed up against the Cloud could affect ones phone. I will go with that route and for the whole $1.29 a month buy the extra 50 GB's which should get me to the end of time. 

Saw a TV show where a person tossed another persons phone down the toilet to which the perpetrator said "Don't worry, everything's in the Cloud these days". Hmmm. Thanks again. 

RME
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Posted by RME on Friday, July 14, 2017 7:36 PM

Miningman
Been getting a lot of messages, like 10 times a day that my i Phone needs to be backed up and any backups failed and need to purchase more storage.

This tells me a great deal.

First, that you need to get the phone connected to some local computer that you can back the phone up to.  Right now you're backing up to iCloud, which is the default, you probably have taken a bunch of new recent photos, and you have used up the 5GB of free storage (or whatever additional storage you may have paid for).  The iPhone does NOT like running with most of its storage used up, and may become unstable when that happens.

The first thing is to arrange for a full physical backup to a local computer (you can make that choice in iTunes settings, which is (go figure) the application where you do this for iPhones.  This is a separate action from iCloud backups, but you can go into the phone settings and adjust the items crApple saves in an iCloud backup -- don't save something like a Photostream if you don't want to pay for all the storage to keep it packratted.

Yes, you can back up to a Windows computer; no, I don't know exactly how.  (There will be many, many threads on the Web, many of which will not be exactly correct.  Caveat lector.)

When you have backed it up, go through and clean out all the files, photos, etc. you no longer want or need to keep on the phone.  You'll be surprised how many that is.  Keep the aggregate storage as much below the physical capacity of memory in the phone as you can, and if backing up to iCloud either keep it trimmed well below 5GB or 'purchase additional storage'.

And make arrangements to get on a WiFi network and update your iOS as soon as you can, if you don't have an older phone that is already running the 'latest' version it can.  Be sure you are backed up and have your four-digit password set before you update, and be prepared to have to set a new 6-digit password if it goes to the latest version of iOS 10.3.2.  I do not recommend 'opting for' second-factor authentication until crApple gives you a free device to be the second factor.

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, July 14, 2017 6:37 PM

Hmmm...well first off thanks for the response RME. Log in was just 4 digits. Been getting a lot of messages, like 10 times a day that my i Phone needs to be backed up and any backups failed and need to purchase more storage. Not sure if that is related to the incident or not. 

Thought it was going to blow! Quite startling. 

RME
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Posted by RME on Friday, July 14, 2017 5:08 PM

Miningman
I'm sitting at the table this afternoon and my iPhone starts humming like a phaser on overload on Star Trek...it's shaking like crazy and the pitch increases ..then the screen goes black...I stare at it and just as I pick it up the Apple logo comes on staring at me for 2 minutes...then it comes back on and asked me to log in as if nothing happened.

Probably crApple forced update.  They claim they don't do that, but I've observed it happening on at least one occasion, and seen the results (including multiple effective device brickings and permission corruptions) on other occasions.  At one time the 'control channel' they used was a protected API in crApple Messages ... sneaky!

When you logged in, did it ask you for anything unusual, like setting 6 digits of password instead of 4, or enabling their crap second-factor authentication?

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, July 14, 2017 1:18 AM

Dave- Well he did say "on that subject".  Deggesty likes questions from the Official Guide, mileposts, connections and such, yourself favours interurbans, traction and NY City but other subjects as well, I seem to gravitate toward Canadian things and so on. Each has it's own strengths and bias and we all benefit. It's just that we are down to a very small group and I dare say "a pretty long in the tooth" bunch at that. It's working OK I suppose but it would be better if we could expand the circle a bit. Also not everyone has the time to do intricate research, read all the posts, come up with items and so on. 

I know this is all a bit Captain Obvious.

We only need a dozen or so more participants out of the whole planet!

Hey, I got a question for you guys...I'm sitting at the table this afternoon and my iPhone starts humming like a phaser on overload on Star Trek...it's shaking like crazy and the pitch increases ..then the screen goes black...I stare at it and just as I pick it up the Apple logo comes on staring at me for 2 minutes...then it comes back on and asked me to log in as if nothing happened. I think it's Russians! Gotta be. 

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Posted by daveklepper on Friday, July 14, 2017 12:55 AM

But you have lots of knowledge of railroading in general, and we have learned from your postings.  Transit is just a fraction of the total railroad picture.

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Posted by Deggesty on Thursday, July 13, 2017 8:49 PM

Yes, Miningman, I miss seeing several posters who used to be quite active. There was one (whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person three years ago) who has passed away (KCSfan), and once in a great while one or another of the others will chime in. 

I have very little transit knowledge, so I can only read the questions and responses on that subject. 

Johnny

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Posted by Miningman on Thursday, July 13, 2017 7:59 PM

Poor RME- He now has 3 questions to ask! One on each quiz and one still owed. Thankfully we know he is more than capable! 

We need to get additional folks involved somehow. Down to a small cadre. The questions provide a great deal of not that easy to get information and are exceptionally informative. 

In all of North America and railfans throughout the world you would think there are any hundreds, if not thousands. C'mon fella's!. 

 

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Posted by rcdrye on Thursday, July 13, 2017 7:15 PM

All yours, RME!  The TR1 (two pairs, 9250A/B and 9251A/B) was IC's next stab at a transfer locomotive after the 1936 experimentals.  Lasted into the mid-1960s, longer than most contemporary FTs.

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Posted by NorthWest on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 8:37 PM

The TR1s were mechanically equivilent to FTs, of which IC never owned any. (RME can have the question.)

RME
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Posted by RME on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 8:12 PM

Those would be TR1s, with Blomberg trucks, more like road locomotives than cow-and-calf switchers.  I believe they shared parts with NW3s

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Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 7:21 PM

IC's fourth and fifth transfer locomotives, delivered in early 1941, were the closest IC came to owning examples of this landmark locomotive design.  Looking for the model names of the transfer engines and the engines they shared many parts with.

The "long hill" came down to the IC lakefront line's grade level just north of Roosevelt Rd.  Between there and the north end of the yard at Water Street is only about 1.6 miles, with the junction with the IC freight line and the yard throat to fit in, all restricted speed territory.  An article in Classic Trains about riding the Soo Line's Laker incidentally showed the "long hill" in the background.  (The Laker used the "short hill" to get to the StCAL).

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 7:02 AM

Never knew those three units existed.   Very interesting indeed.

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Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, July 12, 2017 6:54 AM

I wouldn't characterize the experimentals as particularly unsuccessful.  It was more IC's adoption of the TR cow-calf units, with a ready parts supply and superior visibility that really made them less valuable. All three of them survived until after WWII.

The 100,000+ starting tractive effort number came from an IC diagram book.

IC 9201

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Posted by Miningman on Tuesday, July 11, 2017 10:23 PM

Acknowledged..thanks for a thorough answer. 

Didn't suppose it was buried in a barn somewhere along side the perpetual motion machine. 

RME
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Posted by RME on Tuesday, July 11, 2017 8:16 PM

One difficulty is in the characteristics of an engine that size with the shocks, bumps, dirt, and temperature changes of typical railroad service of the kind that can use the full horsepower of a single unit.  I'd be a little concerned about the torsional stress in a ten-cylinder engine's crank given the vee angle; the eight-cylinder engine might have its own difficulties with balance issues.

I have not done a measured drawing, but I get the impression the Busch-Sulzer engine was relatively large and tall, which might have made the engine somewhat top-heavy; I don't care much for the truck configuration (I am tempted to bring up the Gravel Gerties; Commonwealth trucks with associated large traction motors not having real good equalization or riding at the nominal high geared speed indicated, and the trucks are out toward the ends of the unit).

Other issues, possibly including inadequate cooling, would be more specific to the 9201's specific detail design as a transfer unit, and not necessarily applicable to road power.  Note that by the time Alco was touting single-unit 2000hp engines, in the late '40s, it was using a lightweight engine with substantial turbocharging to make the trick work...

Having said all this: I think the 'real' answer was that all the builders involved were substantially involved in their own detailed engine designs by no more than a couple of years past 1936 ... Baldwin, in fact, had four separate serious engine designs in the pot by 1939.  None of the major builders had any particular reason to outsource to Busch-Sulzer; the closest perhaps being Ingalls which went to double Superiors and Bowes mechanical drive to save weight.

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Posted by Miningman on Tuesday, July 11, 2017 7:52 PM

The locomotive itself certainly looks ahead of its time. 

So RME, what is your consideration why there was no evident future for this in first generation dieselization? 

Capitalization? Onset of war? Could they have gone to Baldwin or Lima with some proposals? 

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