Ok I've tracked it down.
Former Virginian Rwy. Yard in Roanoke, Virginia Aug. 1985
' Some units stored but for most time has run out'
Identifiable:
Southern SD35's 3032 & 3066
Conrail SDP45's 6678 & 6683
N&W GP18 #941; Alco C630 #137
Chesapeake & Western Alco T6 #11
Erik_Mag When I first heard the name of that railroad, I thought it was in a l-o-n-g tunnel. Wayne probably remembers the Underground Railroad episode of "The Great Adventure" which aired early 1964. Would have loved to see the street running that took place between my high school and the jr high that I attended 8th and 9th grades. I would also liked to have seen the street running on two streets that I crossed to and from my 7th grade jr high in front of what is now the Nevada Governors Mansion.
When I first heard the name of that railroad, I thought it was in a l-o-n-g tunnel. Wayne probably remembers the Underground Railroad episode of "The Great Adventure" which aired early 1964.
Would have loved to see the street running that took place between my high school and the jr high that I attended 8th and 9th grades. I would also liked to have seen the street running on two streets that I crossed to and from my 7th grade jr high in front of what is now the Nevada Governors Mansion.
I sure do! The episode was called "Go Down Moses," and starred Ruby Dee as Harriet Tubman. Great performance by Ruby, she showed how tough Harriet really was.
And here it is...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYdS0Exk7oU
Street Running... how about ' Front Yard Running' !!
"Right in her own front yard". Rock Island train bound for Columbus Junction with former CRIP #1247 on the point.
Wow! The Rock looks like it's about to roll over! Are these tracks still there?
Don't know. It's in Burlington, Iowa. Considering Iowa has lost a heck of a lot trackage since and it's the Rock Island I would say the chances are pretty fair that it does not exist today, but that's only a guess. Someone here might know, or a good railroad map of the area.
GeoffS Wow! The Rock looks like it's about to roll over! Are these tracks still there?
I wouldn't think so, in fact from the look of that locomotive the tracks were probably poorly maintained at the time with the idea the line would be abandoned soon and the tracks pulled up, so why spend the money to keep it up? And wow, look at all the weeds along the right-of-way! I'd say that line didn't have long to live.
Must be gone. Mike Walker's atlas shows CRIP tracks abandoned from Burlington north to Columbus Junction and on although tracks still go east west in Columbus Jct. You can follow tracks north from Burlington for a short distance on Google satellite but they end near a trail (what else?). Must have been fun living so close to those tracks once!
Don't know if these are ex-EL long-chassis units, one of which certainly wound up in Roanoke for the longest time
The nearer unit definitely is an SDP45. On a standard SD45, the radiator casing extended right to the end of the hood. A narrower hood extension beyond the radiator is just visible on the nearer Conrail unit.
Peter
More fascinating items:
1) New York Central 4-6-0's with assigned commuter trains. Yorktown Heights NY Sept 9, 1951. Nice to see ten wheelers on the mighty Central this late in the game but I imagine their time will be coming up real soon.
2) Sticking with smaller steam, you just got to love an 0-6-0. Toiling away in obscurity for decades putting it all together. This one is interesting.
CN Stratford shop engine 7312 (an 0-6-0 built by Baldwin in 1908 for the Grand Trunk Railway) is pictured just removed from service in March 1960. 7312 would soon be sold to the Strasburg Railroad in Pennsylvania for tourist service, where it acquired the number 31. It is still in service today, restored to its previous CN number 7312
3) You know for a while The Pennsy actually looked pretty good, even their gons!
4) The seldom talked about Monongahelia. Along with N&W these are small rural town scenes that are now vanished.
5) Here's one for NDG. Henry Morgans ( not the famous pirate) department store on St. Catherine St. in Montreal 1890. It was Canada's first department store. Simply called Morgans , Henry eventually opened stores across the country. They were also kind of higher class, really a cut above. I remember the Morgans in Hamilton and their fabulous windows and at Christmas the decorations were breath taking. By the way the building is still standing. They were eventually purchased by Hudson's Bay.
6) Going to a Cubs game? Take the streetcar of course. Don't think you can do this any longer, maybe buses?
7) Breaking Bad made Albuquerque NM famous again but before that was Bugs Bunny making a wrong turn and before that was the Santa Fe and their sprawling magnificent backshop.
Progress or downhill ? .. the Roundhouse is gone!
8) At one time the New York Central was a household name. It was just a teenager when this pic was taken, it had a glorious future. It is hard to fathom it is no more, and so much of it's infrastructure is gone.
4-6-0s at Yorktown Heights: Ten-wheelers handled all Putnam Division trains, the peddler freight as well as passsenger trains. Most commuter trains ran only between Yorktown Heights and Sedgewick Avenue Terminal's connection to the 9th and 6th Avenue elevated trains, with a stop at High Bridge for transfer to Hudson Division MUs to and from GCT. Two trains each weekday each way ran to and from Brewster and the wye connection with the Harlem Div. there.
Thank You.
Wow! Great post NDG. I remember those wooden escalators in Hamilton, they made their own peculiar sound, I can still hear it, but it's difficult to describe. A powerful but rickety sound at odds with each other. Creaking and groaning but with purpose and calm certainty. They roared, not quiet. Those Eaton's models were superb. Nothing like that today, the care and the expense, man we had it good. It was a celebration not a gimmick.
Luved the article in Canada Rail about the CPR Electric Lines. We spent our summers and other holidays in Simcoe and Port Dover. What a rich environment we had. I just knew as a kid it was all to good, all too perfect, to last. You just know that somehow. For a short while, for me, we had Pere Marquette steam, Wabash steam, CNR steam, CPR steam, NYCentral steam and the Electric Lines. You could book a sleeper from the beautiful old Grand Trunk (CNR) station in Simcoe to anywhere in North America, and return, it was simple and normal to do.
All of that, every single rail, tie and spike is gone. 6 Railroads removed from the face of the earth.
I think, I know, they would give their eye teeth to have the Electric Lines back now but it would be impossible. They simply should have recognized with great certainty and clarity what they had and what they would lose.
So instead Morgan's is gone, Eaton's has vanished, Studebaker is gone, The Lake Erie and Northern is gone, the Grand River Rwy is gone as are all the CPR Electric lines, even the CASO is gone and CN and CP have left the area and now track way way North of it all, those branches hacked off. None of that makes a stick of sense to me, not at all. Something more to it all than meets the eye.
P S.
Not all customers would be going to the top floors, so Escalators would be narrower as you went up, to save cost.
Some Escalators had Electric Eye Beams at their bottoms.
When not in use, the motors would drop down to a low-idle speed, and soon as a patron broke the light beam, they would speed up.
As far as getting to Wrigley Field, the #22 Clark line and #152 Addison line (ex-Chicago Motor Coach) will take you there. However, the L is the best way to get there, with a stop on the Red Line right at Addison, only a block from the main entrance.
Some more great photos from Miningman!
Photo one, those 4-6-0's at Yorktown Heights? I'm glad David beat me to the punch commenting on those, he knows 'em better than I do. A fine sight. How long did they have to live? As far as I know NYC steam was gone in the Greater New York Area by 1954, although it did hang on a bit longer in the Midwest.
Now talk about hanging on! 7312 is definately alive and kickin' at Strasburg! If I remember correctly Linn Moedinger said 7312 was their "Old Reliable," their go-to engine when everything else was down. Linn said "It moans, it groans, it makes odd noises, but it never gives up!"
Ah, Photo 7. "Progress or downhill?" The missing turntable and roundhouse. Probably both. Many railroads found out pretty quickly, in most cases anyway, roundhouses just didn't work for diesels and had to upgrade their maintanance facilities quickly.
Wooden escalators. Man, it's been decades, but I think I remember wooden escalators at the old Packard's department store in Hackensack NJ. Emphasis on the "I think," Packards is gone now and I believe the last time I was in there I was 10 years old. I'm 66 now and some things are a bit hazy from when I was 10.
Flintlock76Now talk about hanging on! 7312 is definitely alive and kickin' at Strasburg! If I remember correctly Linn Moedinger said 7312 was their "Old Reliable," their go-to engine when everything else was down. Linn said "It moans, it groans, it makes odd noises, but it never gives up!"
For context on this, see here:
http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=44138
There's a memory. I was good friends with Frank Packard at Knickerbocker, and his wife gave me the definitive shrimp-and-artichoke-heart recipe (don't make 6lb for dinner; you'll try to eat it all...) Strange that I don't remember escalators in that store ... was too young and not looking around carefully enough. That was still the era of hand-operated crossing gates staffed from cabins not very far away, and when I was there I'd park in Packard's parking lot but not go in. Now I wish, again, that I could drive up there and do that.
There were wooden motorstairs (as they were called there) in what remained of Penn Station when I was young -- I think some of them went down to the 7th Avenue subway. They had the memorable klunk that has been mentioned. However, they did not hold a candle to the wooden 'escalators' at South Street Station in Boston circa 1974, which as I recall slanted downward like a bunch of pallets, with a well-worn finish to the wood that provided dubious traction: one held on to the rails very carefully, almost for dear life, as you racketed upward, watching the peculiarly stiff perhaps terror-based posture of the people clinging on above you. I wondered at the time if this was some sort of technical breakage in the escalator mechanism -- it was one of those things like the continuous European elevator systems that couldn't possibly be legal in any sane society, but apparently got built anyway.
Of course, Macy's (in Herald Square) memorably kept their many wooden escalators when they renovated half a decade ago, and you can ride them there... or find them on YouTube. Here is https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/nyregion/macys-historic-wooden-escalators-survive-renovation.html]the New York Times report on it. And here is an amusing recent account with Kalmbach-appropriate content reference included.
Perhaps Peter Clark can tell us about the ones in Sydney.
Thanks for relating the stort on 7312. It's been in service since 1908, imagine that, 112 years.
I'm sure it worked around the clock during the war years '39-45. The colour picture in March 1960 shows it just hours after being removed from service. Stack not capped, everything intact. Glad it avoided the blast furnaces.
FYI.,
Interesting, that "Rypn" page on 7312. Looks like it was working in 2007, which is probably when I read that Moedinger quote. Or earlier. What can I say, it stuck!
NDG-- That's a remarkable find. How many steam locomotives scrapped California to Newfoundland-- 100,000? In a short time frame too, post war to early 60's. Along with the scrapping came other scrapping, that of the builders themselves, the knowledge, the skills, the infrastructure, the tools, and most certainly the romance, admiration and wonderment.
When steam was scrapped the public left the railroads too, first in their minds and then with their wallets. That friendly and warm association was scrapped as well.
We hang on to a few threads of it all through preservation but I wonder if following generations will have that kind of commitment as it was not part of their daily lives.
2) Updated photo of those NYC 4-6-0's with their commuter line ups in 1951. Broader, wider photo, note old passenger cars in the background probably used for MOW.
NDG. You remember them as MUs. I remember the many two-car Montreal trains as motor and trailer, not MU. Am I wrong?
Before the massive "bustitution." Dorchester Avenue was a transit-free blvd., only private cars. On St. Catherins Street, one block south, the main commercial street, at each intersection four-to-six streetcars and streetcar trains would be lined up waiting for the green. At the green, each "Guard de Moteur" (Sp) would wind up his controller, trusting that the one ahead would be doing the same thing without any mechanical and electrical problems, and so every 1-1/2 minute around 1800 people were moved across the intersection, with 76,000 people handled in one lane. Streetcars doing a subway-line's jpb. To handle the same number of people with buses, half the routes had to be shifted to Dorchester Blvd.
Montreal had MU cars used in single-ended six motor sets, four on the lead car, two on the MU "trailer". Westinghouse P-K-35-GG controllers, basically K35 controllers mounted under the car - operated by air pistons controlled by low voltage air valves. This type of control was briefly used on ex-Connecticut Company open cars at Seashore Trolley museum in the 1960s. The "trailer" cars had master controls so they could be moved independently. The MU sets were used on lines with up to 13% grades.
Mr. Drye.
Thank You for posting this information!!!
Montreal had VERY STEEP GRADES on some routes.
On Rte 65 Cote de Neiges, often the Circuit Breaker above the Motorman would ' Open ' scaring everyone and causing the car to roll back at stop light at Cedar.
Older cars prohibited that had Trolley Voltage on Controller on Front Platform, and most Work Equipments.
P.S.
I do NOT know when MOTORLESS Trailers last used?? Sorry.
Depression changed Traffic Flows.
This is for the Mod-Man and myself, just a little North Jersey "remember when?"
You folks don't have to look if you don't want to, but I bet a lot of you will!
I remembered right about those wooden escalators in Packards!
http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php?topic=2573.0
NDG-- As a betting man I would have bet large that Montreal would keep its Streetcars (and Interurbans) and Toronto would have ripped up every single streetcar line. I would have lost large, still is a headshaker.
Liked your story about the Buffalo visit and the FM trio H10-44's working away ( over on String Lining).
So here is its big brother the H20-44. This one is in Avis, Pennsylvania but I think some of these were assigned to the branch that went up to Ottawa, Ontario and likely the last loco assigned to that service. It's a handsome beast, mighty long horn! Looks like a boss!
2) More NYC .. another view of X5313 that we discussed a while back. It ended up on the TH&B but here it is alongside rows of forlorn equipment.
3) Now this is a busy busy busy factory! Wonder what it sounded like with all the huffing, chuffing and whistles. Gotta luv it!
4) Ok, read 'em and weep boys. 5 New York Central complete resplendent train sets all lined up in LaSalle St. Station. How exciting to board and look forward to a great trip, good sleep, fantastic food. The Red Caps, the Porters, the no nonsense Conductor, that railroad scent that is unmistakable, the solid black steel steps and handrails... well you get the idea. All gone. All the trains, even LaSalle, even private enterprise passenger service in competiton.
Ya, ya, ya, I read 'Who Shot the Passenger Train', heard all the BS.
So get out there driving on a jam packed white knuckled highway surrounded with monster rigs galore and idiot drivers in their SUV's. Better still fight you're way to the airport, park and walk forever, pay big bucks, make sure you're 2 hours early, get frisked, poked, humiliated and scanned and sit in the runway for a long time, jammed in with nobody who wants to be friendly to you... oh and don't bring much luggage, and prepare yourself for certain misery... repeat on the other end.
Oh yeah, it's just brilliant we shunned our trains.
5) More great stations.
Boston North Station
If you don't like that you can always go to Boston South!
Louisvile and Nashville Union Station, Offices and Yards.
At least this is still standing but it's a Hotel.
A follow up to this:
Can you do this on a plane or in your car? Sitting face to face with family or a few buddies, or even interesting strangers and having a great dialogue with all. It's more condusive, more inviting, more behaved, more civilized on a train...it just is due to its very nature, setting and 'atmospheric's'.
Afterward you can go for a delightful meal all the while enjoying your surroundings and view. Try doing that in a plane!
Then you can walk around and find yourself relaxing here.
I would say this is the hallmark of a civilized society and not a brainwashed bunch of worker bee drones and ridiculous spin of Madison Ave marketing gurus lying for their masters.
We had it, had it all, wrecked it, wrecked it all. What's left is hanging on but even the railfans on these Forums are against what remains. They say it's 50's thinking, nostalgia, nonsense.
I say it's a mark of civilized society that knows the true value of wellness, calmness, a decent pace of life, excitement and the individual.
Oh man Vince, you bring up some brilliant points. That great way to travel, and now all gone. Why, indeed why?
Well, I think I have an answer, and in fact it goes back to the days of trans-oceanic travel and applies to trains as well.
While there have always been those who've travelled for pleasure, travel for most people involved something they had to do, not something they wanted to do. Whether it was for business, emigration from one part of a country to another or from one country to another travel was a burden. Ocean liners used to be furnished like floating hotels (depending on your class of course) because people didn't want to reminded they were on a ship and trains were the same, and since there was competition between carriers involved it made good business sense to make the trip as pleasureable as possible. But the big selling point was speed, speed to get you from Point A to Point B as rapidly as possible. It's why sail gave way to steam, and on land stagecoaches and canal boats gave way to railroads. Speed was the selling point. It always has been.
And then, affordable air transportation came along. Considering the tremendously shortened travel times the traveling public didn't mind being sealed in an aluminum tube and shot through the sky. And even in the beginning considering the competition the airlines tried to make the process as enjoyable as possible.
Now? Well, we can say the airlines have a monopoly on long distance travel so they don't have to try as hard to get the business. Paranoia over terrorism has made the process even more of a hassle. (Do you think any terrorist is going to try and hijack an airliner anymore? Seriously? They'd be torn apart by enraged passengers, no-ones just going to sit in their seats anymore and just take it. The authorities would pick up what's left of Mr. Terrorist in a Glad bag!) Short-distance travel, you might as well drive. The airlines don't want that business (most of 'em anyway) and Amtrak can't figure out how to get it.
Maybe that old world will come back if enough people are interested enough, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Times change, not necessarily for the better.
And if teleportation (Beam me up Scotty!) ever becomes a reality, kiss the airlines goodby.
Ah well, as Dr. Suess once said, "Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened!"
PS: Slight correction, stagecoaches are still around, but instead of saying "Wells Fargo" on the side now they say "Greyhound" or "Megabus." But jeez, who wants to travel by bus? Not me!
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