Overmod SD70Dude Imagine how Timetable/Train Order operation and walking along the top of moving railcars would be thought of these days... ... and how owners would push PSR to get rid of the need for pesky single-pipe air brakes, and complicated knuckles and pins that break. On the other hand we might just be able to bring back the Bishop coupling knife as the meaningful productive tool that it was!
SD70Dude Imagine how Timetable/Train Order operation and walking along the top of moving railcars would be thought of these days...
... and how owners would push PSR to get rid of the need for pesky single-pipe air brakes, and complicated knuckles and pins that break.
On the other hand we might just be able to bring back the Bishop coupling knife as the meaningful productive tool that it was!
Who needs brakes if you know exactly where each train will stop many days in advance?
Perhaps the coupling knife could be combined with the brake stick and 'knucklemate' (the legendary drawbar aligning tool that no one has ever seen in these parts) into one handy multi-purpose tool.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Miningman Lot of risky business in Mining and if I go back each decade to the 70's when I started it got crazier and much more risky.
Lot of risky business in Mining and if I go back each decade to the 70's when I started it got crazier and much more risky.
Railroads were the same. Imagine how Timetable/Train Order operation and walking along the top of moving railcars would be thought of these days.....
Flintlock76Well now, since this Forum's back in the land of the living it's time to get busy!
I'm still a bit guffoofled. Have to use Google Chrome instead of Firefox to get anything to work even close to normal plus I had to recreate my account. Modern technology, what a joy!
Same me, different spelling!
Yeah we are back in business .. hooray!
Thanks for the comments Wayne. Lot of risky business in Mining and if I go back each decade to the 70's when I started it got crazier and much more risky.
Well now, since this Forum's back in the land of the living it's time to get busy!
Photo 1) "Jeez! Thank God it's Friday!"
"Yeah, you ain't kiddin' Chuck!"
I wonder if there's 50 guys crammed in the cab to provide counterbalance?
Photo 2) Now I know I'm getting old, the first thing I noticed was the steam pumper! Still, she looks pretty good for a chick from the 1920's!
Photo(s) 3) Oh, yeah, the fabled Roanoke junkyards. If I recall correctly those 4-8-0's were still there as late as the 1990's, but that articulated (Class Y?) is long gone.
Photo 4) Pick-up or delivery? I suspect it's the latter, the ground around the S1's not paved or landscaped. Probably the "American Railroads" exhibit at the '39 Worlds Fair was still under construction when the locomotive showed up.
AHA! Found something on those "Lost Engines of Roanoke!" I knew I remembered something about 'em!
http://lostengines.railfan.net/scrapyard.shtml
Geez... I could have at least read the tender... sometimes I wonder about myself! So in essence it's brand new.
#4 is either being placed or removed from 'special duty' at the Fair -- note the tender lettering and the tower behind the engine.
1) There are plenty of pics of locomotives breaking thru the roundhouse and dangling away from a height, but this one captures the workers blocking it up it a most hazardous situation. By todays standards it is almost unbelievable.
2) This is kind of racey for turn of the last last century but I like it!
3) Steam titan and holdout N&W .... bones. In Roanoke.
4) Something happened to the S1 ... off the rails?.... again!!! Then again maybe not?
3) That's a lot of levels along the roof line. The 'Peacemaker' .. I'm told it's based on a Volkswagen! ??
The higher trim level of Volkswagen Microbus (called a "Kombi" in Australia) had the curved window panels in the roof corner above the windows in the doors and the rear side windows. I think that may have been the inspiration for the curved roof windows. I assume that this is a sleeper conversion of a conventional road coach.
Peter
From what I have seen, the tunnel/interlocking/bridge/interlocking setup is a real bottleneck for CN. The tunnel itself has a 10 MPH speed limit, the BNSF line is heavily used and the bridge is opened quite a bit in advance of barge traffic. Apparently the CP and BNSF crossings and the bridge are interlocked in some way so that a CN train can block both CP and BNSF for quite a while.
Even Gomez didn't have the sneak T-Bone attack from a tunnel!
Can you imagine the ridicule if you built that on a module or layout.. and yet there it is. Do you tip toe across or zoom as fast as possible ?
Did I hear someone mention the Addams Family layout?
You'll note, only the diesels get blown up. Coincidence? I think not!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZ7ghPp-8Bk
And the steamer that doesn't get blown up is a 2-6-4!
No we all know the rest of the story. Here I thought it was a screenshot from the Addams Family layout! Thank you rcdrye.
2) above is the tunnel in East Dubuque Illinois where IC's Iowa Line crosses the CB&Q at grade just before crossing the Mississippi. Still in use by CN and BNSF, the crossing is interlocked. The quarter mile long tunnel was built in 1867, so BNSF is the "junior" road here. At one time Chicago Great Western also used the tunnel.
The tunnel has a 90 degree or so curve, cut into the limestone hill. CB&Q had rights through the tunnel to Dubuque, so maybe BNSF still does. The Mississippi River bridge is a swing span that often has to open to barge traffic. CP's ex-Milwaukee Road line on the other side of the bridge is also crossed at grade.
Indeed, fascinating!
Have no idea what part of this is 'Volkswagen'...not much I would guess.
There is more than one #3!
https://twelvetribes.org/peacemaker-bus
Be interesting to find out from them how much of the body is Volkswagen. Nothing in the running gear is...
And yes, it warms my heart that anywhere you see it, you're welcome aboard. That is one of the spirits we need more of in America.
Miningman 1) Irony? A Safety message involving a caboose 60 feet above your head! Does one not need a permit for something like this? In any case it's striking! Edmonton, Alberta.
1) Irony? A Safety message involving a caboose 60 feet above your head! Does one not need a permit for something like this?
In any case it's striking! Edmonton, Alberta.
That's been up there for probably 30 years now. I still drive by it on a regular basis, on both rubber and steel wheels.
It's located here:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/53%C2%B031'31.2%22N+113%C2%B022'43.5%22W/@53.525335,-113.3796638,198m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x0:0x0!7e2!8m2!3d53.5253348!4d-113.3787434
Technically it is in Strathcona County, as it is just outside Edmonton's legal city limits.
It's more than just eye candy, that place is a safety training and research centre.
2) More risky business. Must have some kind of fail safe thing in place.
That 2035 "Blockbuster" (first picture) Becky's got is so impressive I've gotta get one too! Haven't run into a decent one yet, but I'm patient! I can wait.
daveklepper Just what in the World prompted Lionel to put a four-wheel trailing truck on a locomotive that would have closer to many North American prototypes with a two=wheel trailing truck? But they did build them well!
Just what in the World prompted Lionel to put a four-wheel trailing truck on a locomotive that would have closer to many North American prototypes with a two=wheel trailing truck? But they did build them well!
The 4 wheel trailing trucks were just a simple sheet metal design as on this 2035:
They were cheaper and easier to manufacture (so say the history books) than the cast 2 wheel truck used on locos manufactured before 1942 and immediately after toy production resumed in 1945:
Here's a 2025 with the 2-wheel truck which was made from a modified 224 type boiler:
Replacing the truck allowed Lionel to label a loco as "new". Notice also that my 2035 (top) lacks the fancy driver rims of the earlier 2025. That was a neccessary modification to give the K type pseudo pacifics Magnetraction.
But yes. The Lionel Lines was the king of 2-4-2's and 2-6-4's!
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Overmod As an honorary Canadian, I am further honored. Eight years of Obama, and still no Cohibas here. Now coming up on years of the big blue House, and not even a shred of interest in Cohibas here. Go ahead and rub it in. If we can trade happily with the Communist regime in Vietnam, we could assuredly do so in geriatric Cuba.
As an honorary Canadian, I am further honored.
Eight years of Obama, and still no Cohibas here. Now coming up on years of the big blue House, and not even a shred of interest in Cohibas here. Go ahead and rub it in. If we can trade happily with the Communist regime in Vietnam, we could assuredly do so in geriatric Cuba.
You should take a trip down there using your Canadian status one day.
Maybe bring back a pair of EMD standard gauge export A1A trucks while you're at it.... ...could probably hide plenty of Cohibas in their crate as well!
daveklepperJust what in the World prompted Lionel to put a four-wheel trailing truck on a locomotive that would have closer to many North American prototypes with a two=wheel trailing truck?
(In the other hand, I still haven't forgiven them for getting the Russians to give arming codes directly to field commanders... )
I confess that I always thought of the NW4s as being early versions of the NW5s (they were only 100hp apart) with the same logic in preserving the end-cab that the FM H20-44s would use. Of course in those days MoPac still ran long, heavy steam-heated trains to lots of places, which would keep those two busy until long after EMD wised up to what actual secondary-service traffic would need...
David, I have no idea why Lionel used that wheel configuration! No-one else seems to know either! The first version came out pre-war, I don't remember the model number but I was lucky enough to handle one and it was a beast! Weighed at least four pounds! In effect it was kind of a lower-priced variant of the scale 700E Hudson.
The 2018 I linked isn't quite that heavy, but it pulls well just the same!
OvermodAnd while we are on the subject of world-famous designs, the Golsdorf 2-6-4 is surely in that category, a full and long-lived success and one of the last, if not indeed the last, design of that famous designer.
Actually, the most successful 2-6-4 design wasn't built by Golsdorf, it was built by Lionel! Looky...
http://www.postwarlionel.com/motive-power/steam/prairie/2018-prairie/
One of Lionel's variations on the theme. They made thousands of 'em!
I've got one, a great little puller, and it runs just as strong as the day it was made 60 years ago!
Eric_Mag: Hate to burst your bubble but you are way off. I was hoping someone would follow through with the location and I suppose I should have included it with the pic but then it would detract from the whole mystic meaning. I'm rather surprised no one did come forward.
...so .. This is in the vast moorlands of Devon county in SW England at Dartmoor National Park and that is in the Okehampton Firing Range now part of the park. That is the target railway shed, a part of the target railway in place including gun emplacements, steel targets and various aspects of targeting railway structures. Interesting eh?
Don't tell Flintlock/Wayne or he will be running around all over the place having a ball taking out railway infrastructure.
You can almost hear the hounds of the Baskervilles and see Sherlock Holmes about.
Plenty of good pics on their website.
Overmod-- The Bull Moose! Cohiba for you. May Smarties and ice be upon you.
#1 -- there's more of interest than the offset doghouse. That is a 'Bull Moose' 2-8-8-0, I think from the 1925 order, probably after it was converted to a simple articulated (!) -- it is a ROAD locomotive, not a hump or local engine, and was used over Sherman Hill until the 1950s. The four-wheel trucks indicate 'helper service' which probably explains something about the doghouse position outboard.
That Argentine locomotive is perhaps the most famous 4-8-0 ever built: Porta's first, a 'pull-out-the-stops' design that is still one of the most efficient designs built. It actually survives, in severely dilapidated form, and a number of us on steam_tech put together an effort to save and restore it -- which foundered BADLY on the rocks of dog-in-the-manger 'national treasure' policy. It deserves far better.
And while we are on the subject of world-famous designs, the Golsdorf 2-6-4 is surely in that category, a full and long-lived success and one of the last, if not indeed the last, design of that famous designer. There are reasons ... good engineering reasons! -- for what look like strange proportions and odd features. (There is a Krauss-Helmholtz bogie on the front, so the engine 'guides' like a 4-4-4)
One of these was actually restored to operation (in fact, I think the picture shows the restored example)...
Am I the only one who thinks of Sigi Strasser when I look at the 'gamer special' with the upper-half drivers? And who remembers the 'designer' (Colani?) engine with the drivers banked for high speed like the wheels on a racing wheelchair? (Designed for the then-abuilding BAM in Siberia at the end of the 1970s)
Here's a strange thing for Penny:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpSlht21WI4
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