rcdrye Pretty funny to think of them choosing George Carlin as the narrator for a kids' show (The seven whistle signals you can't use on television...)
Yeah, I couldn't help but wonder how many parents were ready to leap across the room to cover their little one's ears, "Just in case!"
But I've got to hand it to ol' George, he did a fine job! Not as good as Ringo, but just fine just the same. And George was "old school" enough to remember "There's a time and a place for everything!"
What I found interesting comparing Richard Starkey and George Carlin was how one wore a British guard's uniform and the other wore an American conductor's uniform.
More random Classic pics perhaps worthy of discussion
1) Lethbridge Alberta .. nice pic capturing an eclipse
2) We could use a bit of this these days, sell some advertising !
3) Here's one for Johnny . Atlanta, Georgia 1954. Quite a lineup, obviously passenger trains still relevant, .. but for how much longer?
4) Tennessee Central. I'm thinking these guys could use some rock bolts and screening along those slopes.
Algood Hill, Cookville, Tennessee Apr. 63
5) Quite the sight of days gone by.
Thinking in order.
SS Constitution or Independence
SS America
SS United States
unknown
RMS Queen Elizabeth ( arriving)
RMS Mauritania
6) A formidable scene ...
Good shots all! Let's see now...
Photo 1) That Lethbridge Alberta bridge reminds me of the Erie's "World Famous" Moodna Viaduct. I've excursioned over Moodna twice, quite a thrill!
Here's a C&O 614 / Jersey Transit excursion from 1996. I might have been on this one, they ran over several consecutive weekends but I don't remember which weekend I rode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJkwkOVpNuo
Photo 2) Yeah, freight trains would be a LOT more interesting if billboard boxcars hadn't been banned in 1937. Some of them were quite colorful, like the Heinz cars advertising pickles, relish, and euchered figs.
Photos 3 and 4) Not a big diesel fan, but who doesn't like "Superman Diesels?"
Photo 5) New York harbor! I remember seeing sights like that as a boy, and let me tell you those classic old liners were impressive as hell!
Photo 6) That's one fine assortment of fixed wing (CV) and helicopter (LHA) carriers! The last time I saw something that awesome was in the Philadelphia Navy Yard in 1975. Mothballed heavy and light cruisers, a few light carriers, and two "Iowa" class battleships, the Iowa herself and the Wisconsin. Depending on the flight path you can get a view like Photo 6 of the navy base from a commercial airliner flying into and out of Norfolk VA. Quite a sight.
Photo 6.
Some comment on the 'Blue Line' in #2 might be in order -- this is likely a kind of express car, with 'sold' billboard advertising on the sides, not just a privately-owned car like a contemporary billboard reefer. The Blue Line was one of many 'express lines' that acted somewhat as TV networks would a few decades later: they put together the priority traffic for 'manifest' freight and arranged for higher speeds, better rights, etc. that railroads at the period were less willing to dedicate to freight service on 'their own' nickel. Remember Vanderbilt complaining about how no one important benefited from express-train speed competitions, and how he'd rather 'charge what the traffic would bear' at the minimum speed and cost? This was a way to get benefit for the shareholders from high speed with minimum marketing or other risk...
Somebody missed that there's an aircraft carrier in #5 as well as #6. Someone astute could probably recognize the type of the many aircraft visible when you realize what you're looking at. I grind my teeth yet again looking at the West Side Highway.
"Cookeville" has an 'e' in it.
Thanks for the comments Wayne and Overmod.
Interesting about the Blue Line. Wonder if some kind of modern day equivalent could come about... might get rid of that graffiti. Most railroading is not in the publics eye any longer but still at some point they cross paths.
Yeah I didn't mention the aircraft carrier in #5. Wanted to focus on the ships. Consider it a subliminal lead in to #6. Good eye though!
Not familiar with why you "grind your teeth yet again" regarding the West Side Highway. Can you expand that a wee bit.
MiningmanNot familiar with why you "grind your teeth yet again" regarding the West Side Highway. Can you expand that a wee bit.
In my childhood, when the New York Central yard at about 57th to -72nd St. was alive with all kinds of presumably fascinating trains, and the docks were still alive as far as the eye could see down the river (which wasn't far) the elevated parts of the West Side Highway begun in the Twenties, in part for the Holland Tunnel connections, offered a complete multiple-lane route from close to the George Washington Bridge south, up in the air and grade-separated, all the way around through a tunnel at the southern tip of Manhattan and up the similarly grade-separated East River Drive (I don't remember hearing anyone call it the FDR drive back then) up past the old Harlem Speedway. In my relatively early youth a massive building program put a lower deck on the George Washington, with enhanced highway approach ramps on and off that circumferential road. One of the things I looked forward, for years, to being able to do when I got my license was to drive that elevated road, just like low-level flying.
Now, in that era a New Jersey driver could get their license at 16, but it wasn't legal to drive in New York for another year. I cheated a bit, in the old '62 Thunderbird my father had kept for a 'training' car (it was the ideal car for low-level flight, for a variety of reasons) and so it was that I found myself, on a beautiful fall day, driving south with the top down, over the traffic on the streets, around the curves, watching the river view, and going through the tunnel around to the other side. No lights, no stopping -- it was just like flying. And by April I could do it any day I wanted... just like going up to the top of the World Trade Center.
Then some moron in an illegal overweight truck went through part of the road, and the bankrupt Democrats who ran the city didn't have the money to fix it. There was an ongoing project to put some parts of it on a new higher-speed highway out in the river -- that foundered over concern for the fish who supposedly thrived around all the rotting piers and PCBs. And what we got in the end was exactly what I was afraid of ... dozens of blocks of multiple-lane taxis and trucks, stopping every few blocks at lights, in a welter of heat and exhaust ... forever.
Somebody missed that there's an aircraft carrier in #5 as well as #6. Someone astute could probably recognize the type of the many aircraft visible when you realize what you're looking at.
I think I was being targeted there...
The Carrier is a "Midway" class, the others being Coral Sea and Franklin D Roosevelt.
I spent some time looking at the most visible aircraft and came to the conclusion that they were Grumman Panther or Cougar fighters. I can't tell from the low res photo if they have straight wings (Panther) or swept wings (Cougar).
Peter
Mike to the rescue
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/522065781776399640/
Nuts! I missed the carrier in #5! I can see why, I wasn't looking for it, dazzled as I was by the liners. But look at how well that navy "Battleship Grey" blends into it's surroundings! No wonder I missed it.
Per the Mod-Man's reminisences, I got my NJ drivers license in 1970 at 17, which was the minimum age at the time. I suppose Overmod's a bit younger than me, but I don't remember them dropping the age to 16.
I DO remember them dropping the legal drinking age from 21 to 18 in 1973. Woo-hoo! No more drives up to Rockland County NY!
It was quite common for freight vehicles to carry the name of the manufacturer as a promotion at this time, for use in print advertising.
This usually indicated features of the car concerned. However, this could be advertising for other products of the car builder.
Miningman Mike to the rescue https://www.pinterest.com/pin/522065781776399640/ RMS Queen Elizabeth and “from the bottom to the top one can see the Independence, the SS America, the SS United States, the TSS Olympia, the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, the RMS Mauretania.”
While I note the reference, I'd still give the carrier as a Midway and not an Essex, given that on the Pinterest page there is another (B&W) view taken at the same time from a different angle which shows more of the carrier. It is nearly the same size as the Queen Elizabeth. The separate stack and the tripod mast are not features that the Intrepid ever carried, and it is smaller than the Midway class.
From Magic Mike somewhere in his Long Island Fortress Of Solitude
The 4th picture down showing the massive NYCentral Yards must be what Overmod was talking about earlier.
Those walls are pretty high so I can well imagine a kid would be very frustrated trying to get a glimpse of all that.
West Side Highway
An 1897 "Official Railway Equipment Register" shows hundreds of "Blue Line" cars operated by carriers as disparate as the New York Central & Hudon River, the Montpelier & Wells River and the Michgan Central, owner of the pictured car. The operation was something like Pullman for high value freight shipments, with the "Blue Line" acting as an intermediary between shippers and the actual railroads. The scheme doesn't seem to have lasted very long. There were other competing "Lines" as well. Part of the "Blue Line's" revenue stream were car-side advertisements like the one for Jackson Wagons. Referigerator "Lines" lasted much longer, a few even into the 1970s.
MiningmanThose walls are pretty high so I can well imagine a kid would be very frustrated trying to get a glimpse of all that.
In the 'old days' all the walls were effectively that high: down the West Side, across the GWB upper deck, toward the interesting end of Pa. 115N. Combine that with a kid who was patient with interminably waiting to grow a bit bigger to be able to see out ... not realizing that the whole opportunity would be changing out of reach before he did.
I don't remember the 60th St. yard being that large by the time I was looking out for it, which would be hazily in the late '50s but not really until several years into the '60s when I began to recognize things to be looking at. One great memory was from the mid-Sixties, when we were riding north in a taxicab and what should burst from the end of the tunnel at nearly our speed, just to my right, but a NYC-painted Alco FA. That was as good as seing a GG1 arching close on the Lincoln Tunnel approach side of the New Jersey Turnpike, which I missed for a couple of needless years when I started driving because I used the default 'western extension' that had recently opened, thinking that the 'Lincoln Tunnel' route was exit-only...
That was before the great collision on the West Side line, which also involved FAs ... and then the great slowing-down, and then the abandonments. You can imagine my delight at the opening of the Empire Connection... which opened just as I left, forever as it turned out, for the South.
With the IRT power house in the picture, just had to improve it:
1) Missouri Pacific #8, Little Rock, Arkansas 1960
Not much left if you take away the mail and express.
Wow that's a lot of head end!
2) St. Clair Tunnel ( essentially CNR) July 1958 heading for the St Clair Tunnel.
Its days are coming to an end. As goes the Steam, so goes the Electrics.
3) CB&Q Unemployed in Beardstown, Illinois Apr 1960
Interesting 3 completely different stacks and differing front headlights.
Also they just kind of 'end' in the grass.
4) On the CE&I at Glover Tower, near Urbana, Illinois Aug 1959
Weed sprayer. Nice forward view!
5) Far cry from the glory days of the Ambassador. 1 Baggage, 2 for the folks.
CVR 4928 with the Ambassador near the end of its life. July 1966 Kevin Day Collection GP9 equipped with steam generator. EMD 23995 12/1957
I like this photo. Monon 'Thoroughbred' in Chicago June 1967
Running long hood forward with a nice looking Alco C420 and a matched consist!
I wonder what station the Ambassador is at.
rcdrye might be able to identify .. its a pretty distinctive structure .
Mike to the rescue once again!
Montpelier Junction
Montpelier Jct is still in service - or at least will be when the Vermonter's suspension is lifted. Served by a volunteer attendant like the rest of the Vermonter's stations.
The photo with 4550 is interesting - freight unit with no steam line. Of course it's summer... Note also the train order blade down. CV kept up timetable and train order operation into the 1970s at least - the only signals on CV-owned track before 1987 were the ABS signals between White River Jct and Windsor, a section which operated under B&M rules. In the photo with 4928 the St. Albans & Springfield RPO is a Canadian National car, nicely marked "United States Mail Railway Post Office". The other RPO route served by CN cars was Island Pond & Portland, on the Grand Trunk.
Volunteer Attendant ? What's that all about?
Miningman Volunteer Attendant ? What's that all about?
Johnny
Yeah I get that... how could you count on someone? Is this not Amtrak?
Just a guess on my part, but maybe the volunteer attendants get something out of it? Say, use of the facilities for local functions, or as a meeting place for local train clubs, historic or model? Or other things?
You know, a "One hand washes the other" kind of thing?
I'm not a cynic mind you, but I can't see volunteers keeping facilities up out of the goodness of their hearts, not for long anyway, unless there's some kind of appreciation shown.
Might be some quid pro quo however I'm thinking these are guys that just luv it and are eager to get there.
Interesting concept for Amtrak though, make it all volunteer from the CEO all the way down. Engineers, cooks, everybody ! Run the whole thing as a 'service to your country and love of trains'.
If so then I would consider retiring and do something 'gentle' on board the trains or at the station... I like Wyoming, anything in Wyoming?
Central Vermont
Extra CV 4549 leads train 490 (Chicago-New London, CT) from Montreal to St.Albans, VT. St.Lambert, QC. 1968
Anything in Wyoming? Occasionally, when the Zephyr is detoured; there are no station stops, only a crew change in Green River, Wyoming.
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