Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

[KCSfan]

CSSHEGEWISCH

The LIRR "Cannon Ball" ran between Long Island City and Montauk on Fridays only, and may have been an all-parlor car consist.

The other would be the N&W "Wabash Cannon Ball" between Detroit and St. Louis, which ran until April 30, 1971 and had no first-class accomodations at the end.  It may have had a parlor car at earlier dates.

I was not aware of the LIRR having a train called the Cannon Ball. Was this an official name appearing in the timetable or a nickname given to the train?

The Det-StL Wabash Cannon Ball was one of the two that I had in mind. Throughout the 1950's it carried a brass railed open platform parlor/observation car complete with one drawing room. IIRC the car was owned and operated by the Pullman Co.

In a later reply Mike correctly identified the other train I had in mind, N&W's Cannon Ball, No's. 21 & 22 running between Norfolk and Petersburg. It carried a 10-6 New York - Norfolk sleeper and ran between Petersberg and Richmond as ACL No's. 20 & 29.  The train is shown as the Cannon Ball only in N&W timetables. No's, 20 & 29 are un-named trains in the ACL timetables.

As to the winner, It's almost a toss up but I think we should award it to Paul who in addition to getting the Wabash part correct also identified a third Cannon Ball, that of the LIRR.

Mark 

[henry6]

Yes.  In fact in 1978 or 79 the Tri State Chapt. NRHS did a fan trip on the Sat. AM train with the Parlor Cars including the then LIRR owned former DL&W Phoebe Snow Tavern Lounges quite reconfigured (as I recall).  Train was regular Sat. morning train, not the Cannonball but had the parlors, and we left from NYP changing at Jamaica.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

The May 1968 issue of TRAINS had an article titled "Parlor Car East" which covered LIRR's parlor car service and featured the "Cannon Ball".  The parlor cars at that time were heavyweights which previously served as Pullman Parlor Cars on PRR.

[henry6]

Just looking at the LIRR online page and schedules...Friday's only there is a 3:58PM departure from Hunterspoint Ave to Montauk with limited stops with a 2 hr 50 minute point to point running time, there is a later train at 2 hrs 59 minutes and three other trains at 3 hr 20 minutes to 3 hrs 30 some odd minutes.  And this is summertime service which began May 18th.  Nowhere, however, on the web, is there any indication of extra services or extra fare services. In the printed schedule I have ending 5/17 the Friday only train leave Hunterspoint at 4:06 and arrives 6:38, a two hour and 32 minute race.  And the printed timetable also does not indicate any premium services or fares.  But I had heard or read somewhere that there was bar car service up until quite recently.

[al-in-chgo]

henry6

Wasn't th other one the Hooterville Cannon Ball to Petticoat Jct.?  And the LIRR CB was Parlor Car Service under the old Pullman Co. auspicies, then LIRR services.  Even today the train gets better than average commuter services but I'm not sure what.

henry6

Wasn't th other one the Hooterville Cannon Ball to Petticoat Jct.?  And the LIRR CB was Parlor Car Service under the old Pullman Co. auspicies, then LIRR services.  Even today the train gets better than average commuter services but I'm not sure what.

(Courtesy Wikipedia):  The Montauk Line has heavy ridership and frequent service as far as Patchogue and commuter service as far as Speonk. In the summer, with travelers going out to The Hamptons, Fire Island and other beaches, additional service is operated to the far eastern terminal at Montauk, such as the Cannonball, a Friday afternoon train departing from Hunterspoint Avenue and running non-stop between Jamaica and Westhampton.

 

[Texas Zepher]

KCSfan

Over the years many railroads had trains that were either officially or unofficially named "Cannon Ball". To the best of my knowledge only two remained by the mid 1950's. What railroads ran the last two Cannon Balls, what were their routes and what first class accommodations were available on each of the two trains?

Seems like the folk lore of Casey Jones has him on the point of the Cannon Ball.  That would make the railroad the Illinois Central and the date around 1900.   The train ran from Chicago to New Orleans as a low cost companion train to the Panama Limited.  The train later was renamed to the City of New Orleans, but I don't know when nor what the consist was.  The best class would have been parlor.

Then there was a Milwaukee train that supposedly ran until 1972 (past Amtrak?).  Called the Watertown Cannonball it was a commuter train that ran between Milwaukee and Watertown.  The Milwaukee applied to discontinue it in 1957 and again in 1958 both denied.  At its peek there were 30 trains a day.  Nothing but coach.

 Then the Boston and Main ran a Cannon Ball from Boston to Plymouth - also 1900s with no idea how long it ran.  I know nothing more about it.

[henry6]

Wasn't th other one the Hooterville Cannon Ball to Petticoat Jct.?  And the LIRR CB was Parlor Car Service under the old Pullman Co. auspicies, then LIRR services.  Even today the train gets better than average commuter services but I'm not sure what.

[wanswheel]

N&W had a Cannonball train in 1949, New York to Norfolk, one sleeper.

http://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/view_record.php?URN=ns3688&mode=popup

Roy Acuff might sing Wabash Cannonball, depending on the whether.

http://www.jazz-on-line.com/a/ramw/1938_223.ram

[al-in-chgo]

IIRC the Wabash Cannon, while old enough to fit this site, was not really a legendary train. The Wabash named its train in the late 1940s hoping that some of the glamour of the folk song would rub off.  That came home to haunt N&W in the late Sixties when they filed with ICC to discontinue the train, but were met with a great deal of opposition from people who had been told by media that the train was the last survivor of a glorious tradition.  The "tradition" was only about 20 years old. 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

The LIRR "Cannon Ball" ran between Long Island City and Montauk on Fridays only, and may have been an all-parlor car consist.

The other would be the N&W "Wabash Cannon Ball" between Detroit and St. Louis, which ran until April 30, 1971 and had no first-class accomodations at the end.  It may have had a parlor car at earlier dates.

[KCSfan]

Upon checking to see why there was no recent activity on this thread I was chagrined to see that Mike had declared me the winner of the last question and I was the one at fault for not posting another. Sorry about that guys but here's my long over due question.

Over the years many railroads had trains that were either officially or unofficially named "Cannon Ball". To the best of my knowledge only two remained by the mid 1950's. What railroads ran the last two Cannon Balls, what were their routes and what first class accommodations were available on each of the two trains?  

Mark

 

[Texas Zepher]

 Since Mark already listed my first choice, I'll guess the Perth & Amboy.

[wanswheel]

Mark, yes it was C&A, however John Quincy Adams referred to it as the Amboy and Bordentown Railway, which was descriptive until 1834. That was Cornelius Vanderbilt's first train ride too. I guess it's your turn. --Mike

[KCSfan]

Mike,

Was the railroad the Camden & Amboy?

Mark

[wanswheel]

That's right. Now what railroad?  Here's a large hint:

From New York to Philadelphia by John Quincy Adams

Friday, November 8, 1833

Blessed, ever blessed be the name of God, that I am alive and have escaped unhurt from the most dreadful catastrophe that ever my eyes beheld! We arrived at New York at half past six this morning. I took leave of Mr. Harrod, his daughter, my niece Elizabeth, took a hack with Mr. Potter, and crossed from the East to the North River, put my baggage into the steamboat Independence, Captain Douglas, and walked to the City Hotel. I found that my wife and family proceeded thence last Monday on their way to Washington. There was a card of invitation to attend a pubic dinner to be given to Commodore Chauncey to-morrow; to which I wrote a declining answer. I then returned to the steamboat, which left the wharf at eight, and landed the passengers at Amboy about twenty minutes past ten. The boat was crowded almost to suffocation, and people of every land and language seemed congregated in it — among the rest, a whole tribe of wild Irish, whose language I now for the first time heard spoken. The only persons of the passengers whom I knew were David B. Ogden, of New York, and Dr. McDowell, whom Dr. Condict introduced to me last winter at Washington, and who was then a Professor at Princeton College, but has since left it and has removed to Philadelphia. There were upwards of two hundred passengers in the railroad cars. There were two locomotive engines, A and B, each drawing an accommodation car, a sort of moving stage, in a square, with open railing, a platform, and a row of benches holding forty or fifty persons; then four or five cars in the form of large stage coaches, each in three compartments, with doors of entrance on both sides, and two opposite benches, on each of which sat four passengers. Each train was closed with a high, quadrangular, open-railed baggage-wagon, in which the baggage of all the passengers in the train was heaped up, the whole covered with an oil-cloth. I was in car B, No. 1, and of course in the second train. Of the first ten miles, two were run in four minutes, marked by a watch of a Mr. De Yong, in the same car and division with me. They stopped, oiled the wheels, and proceeded. We had gone about five miles further, and had traversed one mile in one minute and thirty-six seconds, when the front left wheel of the car in which I was, having taken fire and burned for several minutes, slipped off the rail. The pressure on the right side of the car, then meeting resistance, raised it with both wheels from the rail, and it was oversetting on the left side, but the same pressure on the car immediately behind raised its left side from the rail till it actually overset to the right, and, in oversetting, brought back the car in which I was, to stand on the four wheels, and saved from injury all the passengers in it. The train was stopped, I suppose within five seconds of the time when our wheel slipped off the rail, but it was then going at the rate of sixty feet in a second, and was dragged nearly two hundred feet before it could stop. Of sixteen persons in two of the three compartments of the car that overset, one only escaped unhurt — a Dr. Cuyler. One side of the car was stove in, and almost demolished. One man, John C. Stedman, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was so dreadfully mangled that he died within ten minutes; another, named, I believe, Welles, of Pennsylvania, can probably not survive the day. Captain Vanderbilt had his leg broken, as had Mr. West, minister of the Episcopal Church at Newport, Rhode Island; Mrs. Bartlett, wife of Lieutenant Bartlett, of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, and her sister, dangerously hurt; her child, about three years old, is not expected to live; Mr. and Mrs. Charles, of St. Louis, Missouri, severely cut and bruised; a Mr. Dreyfuss, of Philadelphia, cut in the head and sprained in the back; and six other persons, among whom are Dr. McDowell and a young lady with him, gashed in the head and otherwise wounded. The scene of sufferance was excruciating. Men, women, and a child scattered along the road, bleeding, mangled, moaning, writhing in torture, and dying, was a trial of feeling to which I had never before been called; and when the thought came over me that a few yards more of pressure on the car in which I was would have laid me a prostrate corpse like him who was before my eyes, or a cripple for life; and, more insupportable still, what if my wife and grandchild had been in the car behind me! Merciful God! how can the infirmity of my nature express or feel the gratitude that should swell in my bosom that this torture, a thousand-fold worse than death, has been spared me? At my request, a coroner's inquest was called upon the deceased. The other dying man was left at Hightstown, three miles beyond where the disaster happened; and, after a detention of nearly three hours, the train was resumed, and, leaving the two broken cars behind, the rest proceeded to Bordentown, thirty-five miles from Amboy. The coroner's inquest, held by a magistrate of the court, had been sworn, and I had given my testimony before we left the fatal spot. Several of the wounded were left at Hightstown. The rest were transported on cushions from the cars over the railway to Bordentown, and thence with us, in the steamboat New Philadelphia, to Philadelphia. On reaching the wharf, the Rev. Mr. Brackenridge came on board, and told me he had heard I had been seriously injured by the accident on the railway. Apprehensive that such rumors might circulate and reach my family, I wrote on board the steamboat to my wife, at Washington, and to my son Charles, at Boston, and dispatched the letters to the post-office at Philadelphia. We landed at Chestnut Street wharf between six and seven in the evening, and I took lodgings with Mr. Potter, at the United States Hotel. I resolved to proceed on my journey to-morrow morning, but called and spent an hour of the evening at Mr. John Sergeant's...

http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/doc.cfm?id=jqad39_178

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

wanswheel

Actually former President and incumbent Congressman in 1833.

That would be John Quincy Adams

[daveklepper]

Andrew Jackson?

[wanswheel]

Actually former President and incumbent Congressman in 1833.

[Texas Zepher]

wanswheel

Five months after Andrew Jackson's ride on the B&O in 1833, who was the second President to ride a train and on what railroad?

Do you mean who was the person that road a railroad five months after Andrew Jackson....who later became president?   Jackson's term didn't end until 1837, so another president could not have ridden the railroad five months after that be it in 1833 or 1834.....

Van Buren hated railroads and is the one who at one time tried to get them outlawed.  Probably mostly because he was invested in canal companies, but it could have been because he road on one.

My guess would be Polk, he seems a progressive kind of guy.
 

[wanswheel]

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c10000/3c16000/3c16400/3c16412v.jpg

Five months after Andrew Jackson's ride on the B&O in 1833, who was the second President to ride a train and on what railroad?

Mike

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

Vice President Gypsy Rose Lee unveiled the Lancaster & Chester miniature railway?

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_0.jpg

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_1.jpg

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=717

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1494295

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1531648

Well, Mike, you got two out of three. If you look at your fourth link, you will see, in the background the object that was publically unveiled--the headquarters building of the L&C. The locomotive in the picture is fouling Lancaster's Main Street; the Southern's Kingville-Rock Hill-Marion line crossed Main Street a little bit north. A few years ago, the L&C bought what was left of this Southern line that was south of Lancaster, adding not quite two-thirds to its length. Thus, the railroad now serves another of the Springs mills, in Kershaw.

As to Springs Park, it was really a nice place in the mid to late forties. I do not remember just what year it was, but our Sunday School teacher took us up there twice. For its size, the railroad gave a nice ride. There were two WWII fighter planes and one WWII bomber there; I do not remember just what they were; we could get into the cockpits and pretend that we were flying them. Another attraction that I remember was a duckpin alley.

I regret that I never did get a copy of the L&C timetable or of the L&C diner menu (if so desired, you could order filet of flounder or floundering filly, along with many other interesting items).

W. F. (Bull) Halsey was in charge of obtaining Emperor Hirohito's white horse to satisfy General Jonathan Wainwright's desire to own it.

Now, how will you amuse us today?

Johnny

[wanswheel]

Vice President Gypsy Rose Lee unveiled the Lancaster & Chester miniature railway?

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_0.jpg

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_1.jpg

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=717

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1494295

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1531648

[al-in-chgo]

That Lucius Beebe, he could sure turn a phrase.  But some of his paragraphs were godawful. 

 

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

Johnny, that's right, your turn.

This question is about a one-of-a-kind shortline. This road was named for its endpoints--it actually ran between them (it has, comparatively recently, been extended beyond one of them, and now passes through the town in which I grew up). Among other Vice-Presidents, such as "in Charge of White Horse Supply" (W. F. Halsey), "in Charge of the Internal Audit" (Lucius Beebe), it had a "Vice-President in Charge of Unveiling."

Name the railroad, the Vice-President in Charge of Unveiling, and the object unveiled.

I could not tell you how many times I passed by the object.

Johnny

[henry6]

Ahhh  yes...knew you'd know...I did get to ride the remnant Queensboro Bridge car not too long before its demise.  BTW, the conversation I referred to was in conjunction with the release of an upcoming book on the Unadilla Valley RR.

[wanswheel]

Johnny, that's right, your turn. I'm guessing H. E. Salzberg regarded HT&W as scrap metal before he sold it to his son-in-law Samuel M. Pinsly. Readsboro, Vermont was the first terminal before the Wilmington extension opened in 1892, and as far north as the tracks went on the 1948 map.

http://middarchive.middlebury.edu/u?/vtpostcards,728

Sam & Company

http://www.pinsly.com/page1127.html

Henry, I think you're referring to former electric transit, the remnants of New York & Queens County Railway and the Steinway Railway that became bus lines.

[henry6]

Just discussing this same family and empire over dinner this evening (obvious with railfan friend)...and it being so easy with Mark's clues...lets add another question mark if only for extra credit:  What NYC enterprise did they also own?

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

A short line in Arkansas and three in Florida are owned by a company whose president is Harry E. Salzberg's great-grandson. What was the first railroad this company owned, nicknamed the Hoot, Toot & Whistle?

Mike

Everybody should know of the Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington. It ran north from a junction with the B&M.

Johnny

[wanswheel]

Taps

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/19200/19278v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/13300/13355v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c30000/3c32000/3c32700/3c32799v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/13300/13352v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g06000/3g06200/3g06266v.jpg

A short line in Arkansas and three in Florida are owned by a company whose president is Harry E. Salzberg's great-grandson. What was the first railroad this company owned, nicknamed the Hoot, Toot & Whistle?

Mike

[daveklepper]

The New York Central operated steam into The Bronx on the Putnam untilo about 1949-1950.   And the New Haven had two steam 0-6-0T shop switchers in operation at the Van Ness Bronx electricl locomotive and mu shop until 1956.  Revernue steam on the NYNH&H ended in 1952 in the Boston area.