I can clear one matter up quickly. The only passenger trains that changed power at Pot Yard would have been specials and special sections that did not board or discharge passengers at Washington Union. Because the electrification to Pot did not run south of Washington Union. The electrification extended into the tunnel only as far as required for the GG-1's to run around the southbound train. The electrification was only via the freight line that bypassed Washington Union Station. I doubt that very many special pasenger trains did this, since Pot Yard was even busier than Washington Union if that is possible.
Thank you Dave soo much for the history lesson.Anytime I have a chance to read personal accounts of things people actually experienced I never pass it up ! I really wish that more men from your generation would write these kind of things down more often. If I have learned one thing from my bible teacher it is this, much of what is written as history is not the complete truth. There is always more to the story. It seems that what is being taught in our schools is a watered down version of history, if not in some cases an outright lie. ....Mike
I second what Mikec6201 said! Dave, keep telling us "like it was"! Those of us who missed the steam era and the great days of the passenger train will always want to hear from those who were there. And Mike, as a student of history my whole life I won't say a lot of it's an outright lie, but a lot of it has been definately left out. I'll tell you, I heard stories from some Pacific Theater vet's that would make your blood run cold, things that never made it into the books and never will. But that's a bit beyond the scope of this thread.
In addition to trips southward to visit sisters and their families, and other relatives, each summer meant a trip to New Hampshire for my stay at Camp Wah-kee-nah. My first visit was before I became a camper, and was at the age of five, in 1937. My then 18-year -old sister Gertrude was a Junior Counselor at the sister camp, Wi-ko-su-tah, and my recently deseased cousin Lester, a camper at Wahkeenah. We took the overnight boat to Boston, with dinner on board, a cab to North Station, and the Boston and Maine to Plymouth, where we were met and driven to the camps. I recall the return train trip sitting in the rear of the last open-platform coach, and being upset when somewhere along the way, a head-end car of some type was attached to the rear and blocked by wonderful view out a window to the side of the bulkhead door. When I was six, I began my seven year run as a camper at that camp, meeting campers and counselors at an appropriate sign in the Grand Central Terminal concourse, and then boarding our special 12-and-1 Pullmans. I had a lower birth and remember awakening to find we were moving in the opposite direction. The two sleepers for my camp and the two for the sister camp were attached with the regular Concord sleeper to the State of Maine, and the Concord sleeper always reversed direction at Ayer or Lowell when picked up by a Boston - Concord train. Both camps used chartered buses from Concord, even though train service to Plymouth was available and closer to the camps at Newfound Lake near Hebron, NH. The return from camp was the reverse. This was the pattern through the summer of 1943. However, the return at the end of the summer of 1939 was different. I won't discuss the traumer, which affected me seriously until recently in connection with the outbreak of war, the sinking of the boat Atrhena by a German submarine, and the loss of my very best friend, my cousnin Bell's son Janti, my vitual twin. But my sister took ill, was in a Franklin, NH hospital, and my parents came to be with her. So I was driven by a counselor, a local New Hampshire native, to be with them. For two weeks I amused myself by exploring Franklin and watching B&M trains at the Franklin station. Then with my sister going back to U of Michigan in Ann Arbor, my parents and I took a B&M local to Concord, had dinner in a Chinese restaurant, watched a movie with the newsreels of the German invasion of Poland and the construction of the Warsaw Ghetto walls, and then boarded the regular Concord - Grand Central Terminal Pullman, with me in an upper birth. The news of the Athena tragedy awaited us at our Manhattan home. In 1944, Pullmans for camp specials were no longer available, so the round-trip to Concord was in regular coaches on the Day Express. On the return the special coach where I was assigned was on the rear, and I remember seeing a Coffeen feedwater heater B&M Birkshire in Ayer or Lowell, with a long freight train, and seeing several Boston and Albany Hudsons in Worcester. The counselors did not mind my riding the rear platform, and the trainmen didn't mind either. The coaches were regular non-airconditioned New Haven cars, with light grey interiors and thin blue and red stripes at the bottom of the cleristory, just above the junction with the side portions of the ceiling. In 1945, the camp was no longer at Hebron on Newfound Lake, but near Center Barnstead. Regular trips to the dentist in Concord in gave me four opportunities, missing the first of five Concord visits, to ride the Suncook Valley mixed to Pittsfield in returning to camp. This line had one switchback, meaning the 2-6-0 or 4-6-0 ran in reverse for part of the trip in both directions. The trip to camp that summer was not on the Day Express as in the previous year, but in special cars to Boston, then Boston Elevated with change a Summer-Winter-Washington St. (now Dowtown Crossing) to the Washington Street Tunnel to North Staiton, and then special cars on the Alouette to Concord, with a CP 4-6-2 up front and a parlor-observation at the rear which we of course could not use. The New Haven had a Pacific I-4 on the head end from New Haven to Boston, and I don't remember which of the EP-2 - EP- 4 electrics pulled us from Grand Central. The return that summer was via Concord Junction, with a B&M 2-6-0 and a train of ex-PRR P-54 coaches with owl windows in the end between Concord and Clairmont Jc., then a short wait for the southbound Day White Moutains Express from Berlin, NH, and the usual plane Jain New Haven coaches for a through ride to Grand Central. I remember seeing the trolley wire around Clairmont or Clarmont J., and again at Springfield Jc., wher we were met by two of Sprinfield Terminal's combine interurban cars, an electric operation I never did get a chance to ride.
The New England railroads were not as overloaded as lines to the south of Washington, because there was no choke point like the Potomac River Bridge. So trains ran reasonably close to schedule. I am pretty sure I saw at least one New Haven frieght with an Alco DL-109 two-unit diesel as power, but I am not certain when or where.
To daveklepper: It's taken a few days to figure out what I wanted to say. I've read of the sinking of the "Athenia" within a few hours of the opening of WW2. I knew 118 people died in the sinking, including 22 Americans, but I've never "met" anyone with a direct connection to the tragedy. Please accept my condolances on the loss of your cousin, even if it's 70 years after the fact.
Thanks. Appreciated. Interestingly enough, I had blocked the incident out of my mind (the newsreel seen in Concord was trauma enough for a seven-year-old) and did not think through the whole experience until sometime after I moved to Jerusalem and have a number of friends who are children of Holocaust survivors.
Janti and his mother Bell were survived by Janti's brother, older by two years, Danny, who teaches law at Cambridge U, England, and Bell's husband, their father, Ed Wilkes, who was Pediatrician, now deceased. My Dad and Ed were both physicians and good friends. Dad advised Ed and his family not to take their usual Scottish vacation. Before that summer Mom, Dad and I would visit Ed. Bell, Danny, and Janti at their Sunnyside, Queens, home. Up to the summer of 1936, my age four, we would take the 86th Street crosstown streetcar to the 90th Street East River Ferry and then walk or use a bus to the Wilkes home. I remember being very upset when we had to take a bus instead of streetcar, with the 86th St. Crosstown being the very last of the GM-owned Green Lines routes to be converted. The Ferry stopped running when the Triboro Bridge opened, and then we used the subway system. Danny and I remained friends, and I visited him at Princeton and he visited me at MIT, but we never ever discussed the tragedy. Not only the loss of his mother and brother, but what an exprience it must have been to be in the Atlantic in a lifeboat for many hours until rescued. I've written Danny but he does not reply to my letters, and I am not assured that he receives them. When Danny started studying for his Bar Mitzvah with our Aunt Leah, my Dad and his sister, Aunt Leah, decided Danny's progress would be greater if two youngsters started studying together. So, being two years younger when starting, I had an advantage. Studying with my Aunt, and this continued for a time after my own Bar Mitzvah, meant riding the Broadway streetcar each way (Third Avenue Railways did not convert to buses until after WWII), so I looked forward to my lessons.
Turning back to railroading. The New England trains could keep pretty close to schedule becuase the network was much denser than elsewhere in the USA. Between NY and Boston the New Haven had several options on routing traffic. In addition to the Shore LIne, there was the old White Train direct line from New Haven through Willlamantic and Blackstone. Or it could go up on the Central's Harlem Division and then east on the Maybrook line. Or from New Haven to Hartford and then east through Wiilamantic. Or on the Shore Line to Bridgeport and up to Watgerbury and then to Willamantic.
Between NY and Montreal, there was, of course, the CV ship to New London and then CV-CN rail. The NYC to Troy or Schenectidy and then the D&H and CP. Or to Troy and then the Rutland and CN. The New Haven to Springfield, B&M to White River Jc., then the CV and CN. Or similarly but B&M to Wells River Jc. and then the CP. Or the New Haven to New London and then the CV and CN. Or the NYC Harlem Div via Pittsfield to North Adams and then the B&M to connect either with the CV-CN route at White River Jc. or the CP at Wells River Jc.
The B&M had most of two routes between Boston and Portland still in place, one via Haverill and one via Lynn, Salem, and Portsmouth. I once ran a freight on the latter (Newburyport to Salem or Lynn, GP-7, modified, 1567 or 1568) when working on my MIT SB-EE thesis and a dollar a year employee with the B&M under Ernie Bloss's direction..
.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.