You are correct Dave. Have never looked at it as symbolic of a transition but now that you pointed it out it certainly is. The political implications are frighteneing looking back at it.
Ezra Levant has pointed out much of these things with our dependence on conflict oil. Cannot built a pipeline to the West coast, or even reverse the flow of ones already built going east and Keystone XL blocked. All to bring in conflict oil at lower prices and prop up terrorist regimes and their supporters.
Before and after pictures of Castle Gate.
Really like the above picture...look at that roadbed!
It was also called "The Gateway to God"...which of course man destroys. See above photo!
Ok, get ready to throw some pie in my face,...Destruction of the magnificient Penn Station, hauled away and dumped into the swamps of New Jersey, amputation of Castle Gate so a 2 lane highway can become a 4 lane highway...whole thing reminds me of the Taliban blowing up those Buddist statues and ISIS hammering to dust anything they found offensive to them, which was just about everything historic. One was for extremist religious intolerance reasons, the other in the name of the God of Money disguised as progress. Progress was Cassatt envisioning and building Penn Station, not tearing it down. Blowing up Castle Gate to widen a highway is spitting in the face of God and continues with our betrayal, rejection and fall from heaven. Progress is all folks of different religions getting along just fine and minding our own business and not killing everyone and each other. I didn't see that as an utopian ideal..its just seems so sensible. Same goes for Penn Station and Castle Gate and many other short sighted and evil destructive forces. No sense. Incomprehensible.
No pie from me! I agree!
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Very profound Miningman, my compliments!
https://archive.org/stream/rangetogoldeover00woodrich#page/n5/mode/2up
Thank you very much Penny Trains and Firelock76.
Wanswheel- That colored print above with the little red bridge is very calming to look at. Wouldn't it be great to have been standing in that spot for an afternoon in that time.
daveklepper ... (It was destroyed because of the construction of the Interstate paralleling the D&RGW main line.) ...
US Route 6 is not an interstate. It's a 2 lane highway with some passing lanes (it's 3 lanes in the cut area). The valley appears wide enough that the highway could have fit, however, it probably would have required a dangerous curve. I have driven the road and it is not a casual drive.
The one tower was blown up in 1966 to widen the existing two lane highway. I assume this means one lane in each direction. Did read this am that they were replacing it with 2 lanes in each direction. If they actually have made it a three lane in total with passing lanes as you state then so be it. It got widened. Was there no alternate routing at all? It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad world as they said back then.
Thanks for the info Midland Mike.
Usually I do vacation in the south west every 3rd year or so. I will make it a point to go see this next trip.
I saw it was 3 lane from satellite photo at the following link:
http://www.mytopo.com/maps/?lat=39.7504&lon=-110.8846&z=16
The Castle Gate on the east side of the valley is identified, and the west side "gate" is offset just to the north. In an expanded satellite view you can see the road cut and the 3 road lanes. You can see the valley is wide enough for the road to cross over the RR tracks and back again to avoid the cut, but I would guess that it would have introduced a much sharper curve than the highway safety designers could have lived with on this mountain road. I would guess they would not have gone to the expense of blasting away this historic natural landmark if it could easily have been avoided.
Thanks again Midland Mike- Your assessment is likely correct. The only possible exception is that our way of thinking today was not the way it was in the sixties. We cannot accept applying today to that of the sixties. They destroyed Penn Station in '63. It was a new world and the future had little pity for what was perceived as outdated and useless in their minds regardless of wheter it was man made or nature. This could not happen today to either of these. In fact the pendulum has swung way far the other way.
Dave Klepper knows this loss and it must of been quite an unbelievable thing for a very few folks. First the best of steam, T1s, Niagaras, heck they were brand new and were the tomorrow...then soon all steam. Then passenger trains falling like flies, then the railroads themselves falling from grace and all in a very short period of time.
I well remember my last years of boyhood before my teens the funeral trains of steam locomotives interspersed between decrepit wooden boxcars heading to the blast furnaces in Hamilton. Many were recognizable favourites stripped of their dignity ....and those horrid whitelines. Earlier, maybe around 7yrs old or so, I remember well standing with my mom watching workers tearing up the street car tracks in Hamilton and their rails curled in the air like a giant octopus and bricks everywhere. The sense of loss is quite overwhelming. I loved those street car rides. Buses just smelled bad and would choke you up with their stinky exhaust...and no bell, clang, clang.
Dave's point was bigger. You cannot rebuild Castle Gate and his reasons for it being amputated are astonishingly correct. The interurban network that was lost is another tragedy that much of it would serve us well today. We could have taken a different path to our society and had the best of all worlds.
As Harry S. Truman said "What a paradise we could have if we dont make a mistake"
Whatever justification there was for this destruction vanishes for me upon learning that my memory was incorrect about it being for an interstate. When I studied Transportation Planning with Professor Ballbaugh at MIT in the first half of my Senior year in 1952, we learned that three-lane highways with center passing lanes were the most dangerous highways around, so dangerous that Massachusetts had a well-funded program to convert what could be converted to four lanes and to reduce the rest to two.
They could have put in a tunnel. And was the Thistle landslide the Eternal's retaliation for a truly vandalizing highway department destroying one of the Eternal's artistic creations?
Was there any outcry from environmentalists or anyone when this took place?
So they had to spend money on a tunnel anyway, under the Thistle landslide.
Note that if it had not been for the Golden Calf and cheap oil from coiuntirs that used the cash to promote intolerance and even terrorism, electrification would have been a real option. I would probablly have pursued my original goals of railway electrification engineering instead of architectural acoustics, and who knows but that an electrified indpendent D&RGW cojuld have really competed with the UP andn remained independent? (Third rail through the Moffet without clearances for catenary)
Again, anyone capable of doing the research on the lounge car Castle Gate?
D&RGW sold "Castle Gate" to the D&H
It then went to Guilford/ Pan Am
Only D&RGW picture I can find is a model
Interior shot of ex D&RGW Castle Gate, now Pan Am ST-101
Latest picture I could find...I think this is how she looks today but sadly does not have any reference or mention to Castle Gate.She looks pretty good though!
daveklepper Was there any outcry from environmentalists or anyone when this took place?
Too long ago, Dave -- same decade that saw Penn Station torn down.
People have learned something since then -- or their sensibilities have merely changed -- and now, if possible, we have gone too far in the other direction. But Castle Gate does make one shake his head. It seems such a no-brainer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL4c0_qi4fc&t=4m42s
Great scenes of the D&RGW in that film Wanswheel. During the coal mining scenes the commentator states " black magic that feeds the furnaces of progress". Now there's something you don't hear anymore.
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