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Classic Train Questions Part Deux (50 Years or Older)

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 10:20 AM

The railroad is Southern Pacific, the name is the "Owl", between Los Angeles and San Francisco via the Central Valley and Houston and Dallas.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, March 30, 2023 9:55 AM

You get the gold star!

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, April 16, 2023 7:26 AM

Hey, Mr. South Shore, when do we get your question?

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, April 16, 2023 7:41 AM

Hey, Mr. Slouth Shore, when do we get your question?

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, April 27, 2023 4:33 PM

Bumping this - he doesn't want any incredibly obscure questions and asks if anyone has a fun one.

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Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 9:21 AM

Pennsylvania Trolley Broad Gauge (5'2 1/2") was, and still is, used in Pennsylvania on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia systems.  It was also found in at least four other states, and on at least one interstate bridge.  Name any two of the states.  The interstate bridge is still in use for other (standard gauge) railroad purposes.

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Posted by daveklepper on Friday, May 5, 2023 8:10 AM

Ohio (Cincinnati), Indiana (New Albany), Kentuky (Louiville)  New Albany - Louiswville Bridge 

The Daisy Line interurbasn over the bridge, was on dual-gauge track on the brfidge.

And Cinci at one time had three gauges.  

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, May 5, 2023 11:00 AM

The fourth was West Virginia (Wheeling).  The K&IT bridge between New Albany and Louisville had the standard and broad gauge tracks set up as a gantlet (no shared rail).  The bridge is still in use by Norfolk Southern. Columbus Ohio and Wheeling had dual-gauge track.

New Orleans also used (and uses) 5'2 1/2" gauge, but no one called it Pennsylvania gauge. 

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, May 8, 2023 2:12 PM

As did Cincinnati. not sure how long, however.  Some 75 years ago in Railroad Msagazine, anyone remember it, about asn incident in a ysard with three gauges, used by one or more interurbans, local streetcars, anfd a freight railroad that itself had both standard and narow  (3c ft. I think).

Another New cYprk City streetcar question.

The World's original street railway, opened with horsecars with stage-coach-like bodies, on Park Row, the Bowery, and Forth Avenue - Park Avenue South, including thec tunnel that is now the Park Avenue Vehicular Tunnel, was repliced by the 4th & Madison Avenues bus line, replacing the 4th & Madison Avenues streetcar line, in Dece4mber 19i35.  I never road, to my knowledge, that specific streetcar line.  The last Manhattan streetcar lines went bus 29 June 1947, although lines from The Bronx entered Manhattan until late Spring 1948.

Yet I did ride a portion of that original line, possibly as often as ten or fifteen times.  How can I claim that?  Even photographed streetcars on it and posted them on as thread on this Forum?   How can I claim that?  And that thread has a track diagram that should suggest the answer.

   

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 4:12 AM

Maybe I should  ask questions that don't involve NYCity streetcars?

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 10:08 AM

daveklepper

Maybe I should  ask questions that don't involve NYCity streetcars?

 
That's a major reason that I dropped out of these quizzes.
The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by daveklepper on Friday, May 12, 2023 1:03 AM

Here is my replacenent question:

Whwn the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad moved from a Union Station further south to the new Grand Central Depot, predicessor of the existing 113-year-old Grand  Central Yrtminal, the New York New Haven & Hartfard delayed in moving in.  What was unusual about its continued operation south of the new Depot, even furnishing a spectator-sport in the process?

The answer to the  bypassed question is that upon coversion of 4th & Madison, NY & Harlem - NY Railways strretcars to bus, the remaining Third Avenue Railways Third & Ansterdam "T" linw moved from thee outside of the  4-tracks on the Bowery and Park Row to the inside tracks that were from the original line.

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, May 12, 2023 8:43 AM

daveklepper
What was unusual about its continued operation south of the new Depot, even furnishing a spectator-sport in the process?

Pulling the trains with horses through the tunnel?

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, May 14, 2023 2:26 PM

Right.  One or two cars for each team, because the law now forbade steam south of 42nd SWt5., except for 11th and 12th Avenues.

Your question.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, May 22, 2023 2:55 AM

And Overmod is up on this thread, also.

Yes, having a good brain and lots of facts does have its price.

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 5:55 PM

I have the question, but I can't find the references to ask it correctly...

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Posted by daveklepper on Saturday, May 27, 2023 11:51 PM

Your best attempt should be  good enough!

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, May 28, 2023 3:35 PM

It might be good enough, but it also has to be generally interesting and not induce progressive MEGO syndrome in whoever is still here.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, May 29, 2023 2:51 AM

OK.  Anyway I can helkp with your research?

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, May 29, 2023 10:50 AM

As a quick placeholder (and example of the wrong sort of question): when the Ryan Metropolitan Street Railway organization came apart after the Panic of 1907 and the complaints about the 'trust-like' merger with the Interborough system, one of the two resulting companies was named 'New York Street Railways'.  There was a specific reason for the plural; what was it?

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, May 29, 2023 11:28 AM

.

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, May 31, 2023 8:53 AM

Was not the other system the Third  Avebue Railroad System?

New York Raiways included Eighth & Ninth Avenue Railway and other street-specific (some crosstown, possibly Grand Street and/or Canal Street) that were all separate companies before the Metropolitan merger and probably had different ultimate actual owners with separate accounting required.

Overmod:  Is this the kind of question you like?

Name a specific railroad line constructed as one project that had two end points spelled with the same letters, one name the exact reverse of the other, with one having a specific meaning regarding the actual construction.

The two endpoints and the line's description and purpose,

The owning railroad.

The resulting change in freight and passenger traffic.

The owner today.

The other user today.

 

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, May 31, 2023 12:59 PM

But you didn't answer the question yet!

Yes, the other entity was TARS, but you'll notice it has a singular name 'system'.  There is a reason, and a very good one at the time, why the other entity was 'New York Railways' and not 'New York Railway System'...

This is the sort of question I like but virtually no one else here does.

What I was trying to find was the transit proposal that followed the general idea of Samuda's atmospheric railway, but that used "steam" as the motive power rather than compressed air.  The only reference I had from "long ago" didn't discuss just how the steam was supposed to be used -- my thinking is that it would have to be admitted to purge, then allowed to condense to vacuum with atmospheric pressure actually pushing the train, like a very long staged Newcomen engine on its side.  

The other thing is that I have pictures of a system very like a double-deck Listowel and Ballybunion, with a single rail carried high inside the car for suspension and lateral wheels bearing on what appear to be L braces for sway and lateral... there are gallery-car-like stairs up to a second deck with what does not appear to be complete legroom or access, but the vertical carrying wheels at each end of the car may just be drawn in improper detail.  Was this related to the Burrows plan that didn't quite come off?

I am reasonably certain that your question involves Dotsero and Orestod, and the Moffat Tunnel, but I'll leave that for someone else to flesh out interestingly.  But what about Foster and Retsof?

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Thursday, June 1, 2023 10:12 AM

Don't forget Colver and Revloc (Cambria & Indiana).

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, June 1, 2023 11:55 AM

You would have to prove to me that your answer to the New York Railways Systems answer is the correct one rather thsn mine.  It was basically the IRT that took NYR from receivership, and they had all sorts of corpotaye relaytionships to use for testing weird forms of urban transportation had they wished to do so.  But maybe both answers have some merit.

Only Dotaero - Orested had Dotzero for 0,0 start of distance for construction progress.  I did say a 1st-Class N. American Railroad.  

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, June 1, 2023 3:38 PM

Blaine has the answer to my question in his 1918 book on the development of New York's rapid transit.  He tells an intriguing and perhaps not wholly detailed version of the great IRT-NYR merger and what happened as the wheels fell off Ryan's finances between the Panic of 1907 and the reorganization in 1912.

 

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Posted by rcdrye on Thursday, June 1, 2023 4:46 PM

NY Railways included systems that were insolvent as well as systems that, on paper at least, were solvent due to lease payments (probably from other, insolvent, properties, some of which were also part of NY Railways...).  TARS was (more or less) a single entity with fairly understandable assets and liabilities.  The division of the various properties from the IRT allowed the accountants and lawyers to make at least a token attempt to straighten out the financial mess.

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, June 4, 2023 1:14 AM

Of course, in 1926, New York Railways was (were) bought very-indirectly by GM, looking to the future and  conversion to bus, once the transit bus that could compete with the streetcar was developed.  In 1934, NY&Harlem's two streetcar lines (4th & Madison Avenues and 86th Street Crosstown) were bought from the NY^Central and added to "The Green Lines System."  (They did have transfer privileges earlier.)  The conversion process started December 1935 and ended in somewhat complicared fashion (single franchise runs kerpt months on some lines) by the end of 1936.

Overmod, please tell us all you know about the changes produces by the Dotzero - Orested cut-off, and today's situation.

And RC can fill-in for you for the next question if you wish.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 5, 2023 4:41 AM

I am probably not a good authority on Colorado railroading by a long shot.

Dotsero has nothing whatever to do with surveying (in particular it is not 'mile marker 0' on the ex-D&SL/Moffat Tunnel 'cutoff' around Tennessee Pass that has 'Orestod' at its other end.

You will find references to Dotsero before the turn of the century.  Once again I miss wanswheel, who could have documented this in proper detail.  Apparently the name comes from the Utes, meaning 'something new', potentially referring to the most recent volcano in the region which was active only about 4200 years ago.  A boomtown constructed starting around 1882 adopted the name -- probably as a pun on the Indian meaning; it's apparently in Rio Grande timetables at least as early as 1902, which is obviously long before the Cutoff was even preliminarily surveyed.

https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=STP19340608.2.10&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN%7ctxCO%7ctxTA--------0------

Of course the 'old line' is still very much in existence, albeit (I think) embargoed, but there is interest in restoring service over it as an 'end run' around captive service (see Soloviev and his prospective grain traffic - a subject of a number of threads on the Trains forums).

According to Blaine (who was writing less than a decade after the events) the reason for 'New York Railways' was that 'New York Railway' was a registered corporation from the bad old days of the Tweed ring and their boodling boondoggle the Arcade Railway scheme -- and that corporation was still 'on the books' in 1912.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, June 5, 2023 11:24 AM

I do not have the reference with me on Dotzero, and cannot possibly win the naming argument with you without that reference. I did not make up the start of construction idea by myself, I assure you.  I rode the line many times (around 32 or 33) 1960 - 1995.  I recall the actual town name as Bond, and Dotzero is included within Bond if my memory is correct after 28 years.

 

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