Miningman ... 4) Maybe not strange but was this a normal or usual occurance? Ok, an express boxcar, a baggage car and likely a coach rider for the conductor and crew, perhaps in lieu of a caboose, then a whole train of boxcars. They don't appear to be reefers but maybe they are, maybe just boxcars. Perhaps a whole train of express but would they not use baggage cars for that? So what do we see here? ( besides the spiffy GG1).
...
4) Maybe not strange but was this a normal or usual occurance?
Ok, an express boxcar, a baggage car and likely a coach rider for the conductor and crew, perhaps in lieu of a caboose, then a whole train of boxcars. They don't appear to be reefers but maybe they are, maybe just boxcars. Perhaps a whole train of express but would they not use baggage cars for that? So what do we see here? ( besides the spiffy GG1).
Fifty years ago I rode a Pennsy mail train that ran Pittsburgh-Chicago the long way via Richmond, Ind. It had a long mix of mail/baggage cars and box cars and a coach or two in the middle. The forward box/express cars would had to have pass-thru steam lines.
Miningman3) Cute little semaphore! On the Lehigh Valley.
Isn't that Aldene? From CNJ track level?
If so, adding insult to injury the railroad on that skew bridge is the Lehigh Valley.
4 is a very typical mail and express consist as seen between Philadelphia and New York as late as the latter Seventies. The ones I observed late at night appeared to be some of the fastest trains on the railroad.
I went by the description that went with the photograph that identified it as Lehigh Valley. From my vantage point in the sub Arctic Northern Saskatchewan I can only pass that along, but! .. should it be a slap in the face to CNJ fans then please know there is no insult intended.
So be it ... CNJ it is.
...and photo 1)? Can a locomotive get 'twisted' in situation like this?
As long as REA handled express in New York City PRR (and PC) ran the trains that were mainly made up of express boxcars. They represented a regular "freight" move that used Penn Station. Since the cars were listed in the ORPTE they were technicaly "passenger trains."
Unsless the engine splitting the switch is a diesel-hydraulic, the most likely damage is to the motor cables and blower ducts. The engine bed in the frame will see very little flexing if the trucks stay on the rails.
I have a question: did some railroads actually use box cars to handle express and/or storage mail? All the cars that I saw on the Southern carrying express or storage mail seemed to be built like baggage cars and, of course, had steam lines. Many is the time I saw storage mail switched out in Charlotte in the moring.
Johnny
Stock box cars, no, I don't think so. Cars for express and mail that looked like standard box cars were modified with high-speed trucks plus steam and signal lines to make them compatible with cars used in a typical passenger train consist.
Certainly, if you didn't know what to look for they'd appear to be plain ol' boxcars.
rcdrye-- good good ! A regularly handled freight move listed as a passenger train, now that answers things. Also on the split switch inquiry thanks for the input. Likely many factors involved as to the outcome but it does look painful!
Flintlock76 Stock box cars, no, I don't think so. Cars for express and mail that looked like standard box cars were modified with high-speed trucks plus steam and signal lines to make them compatible with cars used in a typical passenger train consist. Certainly, if you didn't know what to look for they'd appear to be plain ol' boxcars.
Express boxcars (AAR Class BX), in addition to the passenger trucks and steam and signal lines, were often painted in passenger car colors. I can remember EL express boxcars in maroon and gray and Monon express boxcars rebuilt from Army kitchen cars in black and gold.
CSSHEGEWISCHExpress boxcars (AAR Class BX), in addition to the passenger trucks and steam and signal lines, were often painted in passenger car colors.
I had an O scale model of an express boxcar in five-stripe Fleet of Modernism livery. I have not seen a prototype picture including such a car, nor did I ask whether the design was copied from a real car or 'fantasized'. But I'll bet someone like Jones1945 will be interested enough to look for 'the rest of the story'...
Some PRR mail and express trains also had steam and signal line equipped cabin cars (cabooses to the rest of you). Express boxcars often got leaf springs in their otherwise ordinary truck frames. On the PRR, it was hard to tell if they were painted in "passenger" colors or not.
Overmod CSSHEGEWISCH Express boxcars (AAR Class BX), in addition to the passenger trucks and steam and signal lines, were often painted in passenger car colors. I had an O scale model of an express boxcar in five-stripe Fleet of Modernism livery. I have not seen a prototype picture including such a car, nor did I ask whether the design was copied from a real car or 'fantasized'. But I'll bet someone like Jones1945 will be interested enough to look for 'the rest of the story'...
CSSHEGEWISCH Express boxcars (AAR Class BX), in addition to the passenger trucks and steam and signal lines, were often painted in passenger car colors.
I've got one of those, a K-Line product, looks like this...
https://worthpoint.com/worthopedia/line-k761-1892ic-pennsylvania-prr-1900314179
Whether it's prototypical or nor I have no idea, but it sure looks cool!
Looks even more cool when it's behind my Lionel post-war Pennsy Turbine with the Lionel streamliner cars!
I think they don't quite know what that number is supposed to mean; it's a 1, not an I or i if it's the car I remember. (They also made a toy-train version in the K641 series with less-detailed paint)
I can find no mention of this X29 in FOM. References indicate it in service in both shadow-keystone and circle-keystone paint, with 'REA' referenced; there's a picture of 2469 in Sweetland's PRR Color Guide (Morning Sun, 1992) but of course not in anything remotely resembling FOM by 1962 when photographed. K-line itself of course is effectively gone and I have no idea who would know where the documentation for this scheme may have come from.
I also never heard of any X29 boxcar painted F.O.M, the livery itself was too exquisite for freight cars, it was difficult and expensive to maintain even for passenger trains. Besides front end cars like the Class BM70nb mail car Nos.6529,8616 and Class B70 baggage car Nos.6051,6054 rebuilt for the Broadway Limited, only newly built lightweight, rebuilt heavyweight and some Pullman heavyweight cars got the F.O.M treatment.
The model in Wayne's link is beautiful and attractive, though the spacing between those golden stripes doesn't match with the standard F.O.M livery.
http://cs.trains.com/ctr/f/3/p/271607/3086796.aspx
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
As I reported on this Forum on another thread a few years back, during WWII, right behind the GG1 and ahead of the lightweight baggage-dorm and coach consist of the Southerner and the two Champions, leaving Penn Sta., NYCity, often was a PRR boxcar. I did not see the trucks, given the high-level platforms. Obvioiusly, the car had pass-through steam and communications connections. My understanding this was for priority delivery of Long Island manufactured aircrarft parts for delivery to further assenbly points in the South.
PRR seems to have had both types - more or less conventional X29 boxcars equipped with steam and signal lines, and X42 cars equipped with equalized passenger service trucks. The other difference would probaby be a passenger-type AB valve.
1). A robot controlled bizarre looking locomotive .. 1936! Is this duplex drive? Whatever it is it's pretty darn freaky.
2) Kind of sticking with a Metallica theme here is a locomotive that might be a Transformer. Kind of spiffy though.
3) Futuristic streamlining craze gone a bit wacky. Is this the front or the rear? What are those things facing us on the side... curtains???
4) Belgium 'out there' #1 A 6-4-4-2-4-4 and something past that probably another 6. Precursor to the Jawn Henry look?
5) Italian 'out there' #2 A Cab forward no doubt... stack in the back of the tender with big connecting pipe. You would think more railroads would develop Cab forwards.
6) French 'out there' #3 Not exactly like a 2-6-6-2 we would find over here. What is that thing between the 2 sets of drivers that seems to skate along the tracks?
Isn't #3 the back end of one of those early Talgo trains? Perhaps even the one with the huge stereotypical-Tojo cowcatcher grin and the SR-71esque canopy?
You may be well on your way to a Canadian hat trick, though, with those "French" locomotives. Your #1, you see, is Belgian and your #2, Italian. The 'skate' in #3, which looks more 'colonial' than metropolitan-French, is of course the ashpan for the deep firebox -- that's why the external steampipe arrangement. Very sensible, with a sensible cylinder arrangement. You can see a comparably very deep arrangement in the side-unloading version on the N&W TE-1. Good capacity and a minimum fall and potential spark drift when dumped.
When I saw your #2 I immediately thought it had to be related to the Slovak class 755 experimental ...
and come to find, I was right!! Cutting-edge modern circa 1998.
https://trainstation.fandom.com/wiki/ŽSR_Class_772
Look carefully! those are C trucks!
Ok thanks.. I edited them to reflect the correct country.
As to the Slovak class locomotives... fierce looking! Still look like Transformers though. I'm looking close and do not see C trucks but I'll take your word for it.
Look carefully at the shadows under the 'beam' of the truck. The axleboxes are all similar or identical; you can see the two wing-pedestal springs and the pivot at the bottom, and if you then know what you're looking at you can see part of the journal-box cover.
It helps greatly to know that the 'enthusiast stats' on the engine mention that it is C-C. Otherwise I wouldn't even have thought to look...
I was correct in my distant memory of the Talgo observation car. I'm astounded Mike didn't find this, but look here for the car with its doors open, and the grin directly underneath...
And I think we covered this one before, but -- looking at that Meyeresque locomotive you have as French #3, wouldn't it be far stranger if you turned the engine units around to put the little wheels in the middle?
... and stranger still if the locomotives were successful for decades, as apparently they were...
Miningman5) Italian 'out there' #2 A Cab forward no doubt... stack in the back of the tender with big connecting pipe. You would think more railroads would develop Cab forwards.
So it's the back end of the Sardonicus train with the Rictus Grin. Built in an umbrella factory. It is truly a Very Strange Thing!
rcdrye- Coal fired! Wow, must have made for a nasty cab and small capacity too.
I'm reasonably sure that thing on top of the cab is the bunker fill opening, and supposedly only the left side was used for fuel storage. It's hard to believe they had much range, but then, they probably tried to use as little fuel as possible... There were quite a few of them at one time. The one in the photo is the lone 672-class engine rebuilt with a Franco-Crosti boiler, apparently successful, but not repeated. The 670- and 671- class engines had a more conventional stack. The tender was for water only.
The North Coast Railroad, later part of the Northwestern Pacific, rebuilt a wrecked 4-4-0 with a marine water-tube boiler and ran it cab-first around 1900. It was in service a matter of weeks since the crews hated it.
The thing sticking up at the back(?) end reminds me of a hand-crank pencil sharpener. But since there's a pantograph I'll say it's a travelling electric pencil sharpener.
Are we sure that's not a young Hiyao Miyazaki?
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Is that a prototype for an anti-Godzilla armored assault locomotive?
Shinji! Get in the train!
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Hey, Zugmann's here! Cool! You belong here man!
The fella with model is Jiro Aizawa, so states the original photo caption .. dated 1936 and titled Robot Controlled Train ( perhaps that little figure in front of the electric pencil sharpener).
Flintlock76 Hey, Zugmann's here! Cool! You belong here man!
I got lost.
Jiro Aizawa More information on the man and his Robots .. quite astonishing Thanks to Mike for supplying this.
Miningman 1). A robot controlled bizarre looking locomotive .. 1936! Is this duplex drive? Whatever it is it's pretty darn freaky.
Inspired by Henry Dreyfuss, willing to learn from the best
Foresaw the benefit of "duplex engine"
Foresaw (AI)Robot (will) replace professional jobs
Foresaw the streamlined shrouding should not cover the running gear
Foresaw the domination of electric power in high-speed rail
Foresaw the decline of passenger trains (no passenger car attached)
Didn't look at the camera, care more about his work than fame
Must be a very smart guy.
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter