Trains.com

Classic Train Questions Part Deux (50 Years or Older)

856681 views
8197 replies
1 rating 2 rating 3 rating 4 rating 5 rating
  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 21,669 posts
Posted by Overmod on Saturday, September 2, 2023 5:44 PM

But what about the Bankers?

Note that 81 and 82 did not have this characteristic, probably since their understood purpose was service to and from Maine.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, September 3, 2023 4:36 AM

One of the Washington - Boston day trains was the Senator, and the other the Colonial.  You can tell me which name was assigned to the train arriving at Boston (or Washington going the other way) late  evening.  I should assume the other, passing throlgh New Haven in the afternoon, had a similar Hartford & Springfield connection, and, if the train I rode was the Connecticut Yankee, then that train must have been The Bankers.

I might add that I waited until making the transfer before using the dining car, to avoid rushing through my dinner.

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 21,669 posts
Posted by Overmod on Sunday, September 3, 2023 8:06 AM

I'm chuckling because you essentially answered the question and don't even recognize it!

Why is the Montrealer/Washingtonian not just the 'Montrealer'?

Find me a schedule for a south/westbound Connecticut Yankee.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Monday, September 4, 2023 8:59 AM

Connecticut Yankee's southbound counterpart was un-named train 79, which carried the Springfield-New York parlor car and the Sunday-only through coach from White River Junction.

The "Washingtonian" name was mainly at the request of the New Haven.

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 21,669 posts
Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, September 5, 2023 8:50 AM

Reference I saw said that, at least at the time in question, the Bankers was the counterpart to the Connecticut Yankee as the Washingtonian was to the Montrealer.  If that is not so, the entire premise of my question falls to the ground.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, September 6, 2023 2:42 PM

Anyway, here is the next Question. 

Nate Gerstein reported (via my posting) on a different thread, I think on the Trains  Transit Forum, about the last days of the remnant of the 9th Avenue Elevated, the Polo Grouds Shuttle.  One morning he woke up, looked out vhis  ewindow, and behold the Shuttle had been made sunglke-track, with the two-car train changing ends at the northbound 167th street side-platform, instead of reversingb om the middle track north of the station.  This meant, of course one train only, a 20-minute instead of 12-minute headway.

Then Jehova's Witness held a Convention using both the Polo Gronds and Yankee Stadium.  Multiple thousands attended. Service was increased on the  D and C (or CC) and the Lexington Avenue Woodlawn service,  The single Shuttle train was increased to four cars, and the Jerome Avenue entrance of the Shuttle's Jerome-Anderson Station was reopened for the time of the Convention.  About two months later the Shuttle was abandoned.

What event (eventually) prompted the Shuttle's reduction in service, with plans for eventual abandonment?

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 21,669 posts
Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, September 6, 2023 3:06 PM

I always thought it was the Giants decamping to Frisco, followed by the great urban-renewal slum construction project on the site of the Polo Grounds.

The "Maj Deegan Expressway" also had something to do with it.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, September 8, 2023 4:50 AM

An event before the Giants' miove and rail related.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Friday, September 8, 2023 7:30 AM

End of NYC service on the "Put".

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, September 10, 2023 11:18 AM

I'll assume you mean passenger service and state that you are the winner.  Freight service did survive well past the end of the Polo Grounds Shuttle.  Look forward to your question.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Sunday, September 10, 2023 12:29 PM

I did mean passenger service.  The 9th Avenue El didn't handle much freight.

Some transit systems did handle freight.  Chicago Rapid Transit/CTA's service (for the Milwaukee Road) was well known.  In one case an interstate transit sytem had about 10 miles of freight trackage, that was all in one of its states, with direct interchange to four class one railroads and an interurban (that did run to the other state).

Big hint - it was west of the Mississippi, and some of the freight operations were near a country club.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, September 11, 2023 10:25 AM

Kansas City Public Service. 

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, September 12, 2023 7:02 AM

KCPS did a fairly profitable freight business until the late 1950s.  Among other notable things about their operations was one of the last "interurban-style" steeple cab freight motors built by GE.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, September 14, 2023 9:00 AM

The Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway could not employ electrictrack swithces.   Why?

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Friday, September 15, 2023 7:28 AM

Hint:

If they had employed normal streetcar electric switches, they would  have worked, but safety would have been compromised.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Saturday, September 16, 2023 6:28 PM

I guess it depends on which type of switch actuators they used.  Magnetic read actuators were often pedal-actuated.  O & CB cars, at least later ones, used foot actuated brakes where the brake was released by full depression of the pedal (New York's TARS used the same system on many cars.  Actuating the pedal would have left the operator in a dangerous position (TARS cars had hand-actuated gongs for the same reason).  

Trolley contact actuators would require passing the actuator with power on or off, depending on which way the switch was to be set.  Use of contact actuators may have been rejected, considering that the grades in Omaha, at least, were steep enough that cable traction was used at one point.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, September 17, 2023 1:56 PM

You are on the right track.  Study the Omaha  & Council Bluffs  rolling stock, and complete the answer and ask the next question.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Monday, September 18, 2023 6:26 AM

Most of the O&CB's cars were single-ended.  Like many companies, they equipped single-ended cars with trolley wheels instead of shoes (O&CB's double-ended Birneys had shoes).  Wheels don't consistently trip trolley contactors.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, September 18, 2023 10:31 AM

You jumped the track; that was not the issue.

Study the car's equipment,  Not the trolley poles.

And, yes  there were Ohio Brass contactors that worked with both trolley-wheels and streetcar carbon-insert shoes.

The shoes the North Shore used were different and may have provided a probklem even then.

If you had ridden the carsm you would know the answer.  Ditto inside any preserved in operating condition.

But many people that did not know the system are surprised by the facts.

And there were second-hand work cars that would not have had the problem.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, September 20, 2023 4:50 AM

Give-away hint:  O&CB followed the practice of only one other system, and exanmples from the other system do survive in trolley museums, incliding Seashore.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, September 20, 2023 7:29 PM

Got to be the brake stand and controller interlocks.  I haven't run Seashore's 631 in quite a long time (it's been out of service with motor bearing issues).  It was set up to be run while seated.  The door controls were tied into the the key position.  

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, September 21, 2023 11:55 AM

631 us  third asvenue tranait, and Rc ia correct that O&CB copued TATS-TARS control system exactly.   Would he like to give the detailed explanation?

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Friday, September 22, 2023 12:24 PM

The brake on the TARS/O&CB cars is pedal-operated.  When the pedal is up the brakes are fully applied.  Brakes are released when the pedal is fully depressed.  Since the brakes are self-lapping the pedal position controls the amount of braking in effect.  Doors are push-button operated, and won't open unless the car is stopped.  The reverser position controls which doors open.  The controller is an otherwise-standard K-35 with an LB-2A line switch for start-stop control without pulling an arc on the K controller fingers.  When the brakes are applied, the line switch cuts out regardless of the controller position.

TARS 631 has no control for a reed-type switch contactor.  I suspect TARS used isolated sections of the conduit rail as contactor segments.  It's also possible the controls were removed during the car's time in Vienna.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Saturday, September 23, 2023 2:32 PM

Good.  O&CB used the same system.  Next question.

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Sunday, September 24, 2023 5:12 PM

This railroad's train 15 carried much of the mail to Union Pacific at Council Bluffs.  The train was later combined with one of the railroad's signature trains.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, September 27, 2023 3:14 AM

Overland Limited?

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Wednesday, September 27, 2023 7:30 AM

I wasn't a railroad normally associated with the Overland route.

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, October 1, 2023 8:43 AM

Illinois Central 

Land-o-Corn

  • Member since
    May 2012
  • 5,017 posts
Posted by rcdrye on Sunday, October 1, 2023 1:09 PM

The railroad I'm looking for competed directly with UP to points further west than Omaha.

The train #15 was later combined with ran as train #11 until the mail contract was lost. 

  • Member since
    June 2002
  • 20,096 posts
Posted by daveklepper on Monday, October 2, 2023 1:10 PM

Then the railroad is either the CB&Q or the RI, but the RI did not really compete with the UP and even relied on trackage riughts on the UP to reach Denver, with its own main terminating at Colorado Springs.

The  CZ  was not the CB&Q's signature train, as was the DZ, so the DZ must be it.

I do know that the Q did handle a lot of mail west from Chicago.

SUBSCRIBER & MEMBER LOGIN

Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!

FREE NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter