On a long passenger train strung out across a fairly tight curve the engine cab could most definitely end up at an angle to look into the window of a car far back in the train, but one would need binoculars to identify a particular face.
The rest of that story sounds pretty fanciful, and I've never heard it anywhere before.
It could be a combination of several stories, Perlman's disdain for steam is very well known and I have read of other cases of engine crews falling or jumping out of the cab for one reason or another.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Dude, let me tell you a secret ---
it was a joke.
=J=
JuniathaDude, let me tell you a secret --- it was a joke.
Overmod wrote: " the 'excessively serious' who were apparently not quite sure it could happen that way..."
Well, it seems to happen with me every now and then. Last time I wrote a story about the 'coffee preheater' and the 'cylinder-less engines' was some years ago. It might be possible to check it way downstream the Styx where all postings float away and disappear in the fog and clouds of the internet ...
Lithonia Operator wrote: "One way or another, it's a hell of a story!! "
Thank you!
The Excessively Serious
It is not the excessively serious readers who need to be told the story was a joke. It is the many readers who are not as knowledgeable as some of the "experts" who contribute posts. You can easily mislead some of the readers who are trying to learn something here and that is not a good thing. If this is the place for tall tales let me know -- I can fabricate some real whoppers.
Maybe I'm being unfair, but maybe the "excessively serious" may want to lighten up a bit? This Forum's supposed to be about fun and maybe, just maybe, learning a little from each other. At least I see it that way.
And if you're being silly, that's what an emoticon at the end of the tall tale is for!
Kind of like this one, one of my favorites!
This one's good too!
Well, thank you Flintlock - that's the right spirit!
To anyone to whom it concerns: if you read right to the end you will surely see that end remark which was a pick-up from an earlier posting by Lithonia Operator, remarking on doubts he had about 'memories' that create themselves. If picking up that same remark didn't open your eyes I don't know. Guess that's why postings just to make you lighten up are so rare: nobody wants to get hassle when they only wanted to create a smile.
At least everybody should be well aware of the fact I know this métier and when I say 'know' I really mean it. I thought a lighter story now and then might brighten things up a bit.
JuniathaLast time I wrote a story about the 'coffee preheater' and the 'cylinder-less engines' was some years ago. It might be possible to check it way downstream the Styx where all postings float away and disappear in the fog and clouds of the internet ...
The cylinderless locomotives were here ... not only with the joke, but with the answer provided for the thread's OP at the end...
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/741/p/190040/2076489.aspx#2076489
The coffee preheater appears to have lost a 'missing link' post somewhere between a discussion of funereal Coffin feedwater preheaters and the romantic notion of the Italian 'Amaretto express' locomotives and the somewhat New Orleans & Fiddler's Green prospect of the locomotives of the Southern Comfort Railway...
I suspect that if Eli Gilderfluke had survived to the modern era he would assuredly have figured more than one method of 'augmenting the Rankine cycle' to produce both the proper bloom and then the tempered 185F coffee feedwater from a boiler with effective high-pressure water treatment...
(On the Model Railroader forum there's a discussion starting up that appears to raise the issue about what happens when you diseaselize That Long Black Train... I never really thought about it, but there'll be a good story in there somewhere. Probably now including the Haunt of Hunter... who made a point about keeping steam off anything he was involved with helping to run... )
Coffee water preheater?
Ewww?
Semmens and Goldfinch "How steam locomotives really work" talked about drawing water for tea (this is England, you know) from the boiler of a reproduction of one of their pioneering steam locomotives, but the authors say they don't recommend it.
Wardale in The Red Devil talks about a resourceful driver (locomotive engineer) on the long work days gather over-the-road performance data, much of which were spent in "loops" (sidings) because Control (the dispatcher) was giving priority to every other train.
The man had a cooking pot that he could connect to a steam line, maybe from the injector? I gather that the food in this pot was not exposed directly to boiler water with its high dissolved solids in an attempt to replicate Porta's recommendations on water treatment along with whatever pathetic excuse the SAR had for anti-foam chemicals.
Wardale described how potatoes, sausages, onions and tomatoes all went into that pot, and after a couple hours simmering, it was delicious. Wardale offered that it was a whole lot better than trying to roast food on the blade of a scoop shovel held just inside the open firebox doors.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul, never mind, it was a play with words:
Coffin preheater - coffeine, coffee preheater - and the whole posting.
I remember it was understood as a fun story back then.
Frying on the shovel blade: I had one crew of an Ol49 (no, not old 49er) doing the same during a turn around at Sulechóv (near Zielona Gora - former Grünstadt, Schlesien): they fried meat and sausages on the shovel in the fire hole. Then they offered me some with high hopes. I managed to negotiate it down to a tiny piece and pretended to bite into it, turned around and - woosh - spent it to the mice and craws out there. Sorry, but it just wasn't the right thing for me - przepraszam! (speak~ psheprasham - excuse me)
Juniatha
Paul MilenkovicCoffee water preheater? Ewww?
Overmod as our trains barista -
who would have thought of what this thread comes to
and what insights it eventually reveals!
Great cultural deeds are being unveiled here!
It all sums up to one consequence:
steam really was abandoned much to early - if it just were for the teas
and coffees all those passengers could have had from crews when in stations.
I guess I have to get me a cappoccino to go with this ...
"The Long Black Train?"
Did someone on the Model Railroader Forum pick up on my annoyance (and run with it) that the "Long Black Train" in the Josh Turner video was pulled by a steam locomotive and not a diesel?
Just curious.
.
The quiet brook is doing its babbling again.
Flintlock76Did someone on the Model Railroader Forum pick up on my annoyance (and run with it) that the "Long Black Train" in the Josh Turner video was pulled by a steam locomotive and not a diesel?
Now as SCP5850 is often described as "That Hell-Bound Train", and as having been reported since 1924 but now its advent is usually presaged by a 'horn', it has had some spectral power switch over the years...
To my knowledge, none of the classical tropes on this (from the Celestial Railroad and Freud's association of black, fire-filled locomotives with death and Hell through all the metaphors for separation that trains used to provide) are involved in that thread. (Or in the SCP community, where perhaps they are badly needed.)
Someone who appreciated the Bridge of San Luis Rey could probably work up a proper story of the Long Black Train and how its passengers choose to ride it. Whether it is Hawthorne's or Durrenmatt's or Van Allsburg's needs to be decided... and do the passengers have the choice, or does the spectral equivalent of Amtrak's personnel by now thoroughly tired of, well, working and deadheading at the same time, much like Vanderdecken's poor crew, make their trip a misery with uncertain prospects of reaching the destination?
Since a camelback thread is inherently about suffering, misery, and sudden death... well, one wonders if a Long Black Diamond Train would be pulled by one. Perhaps the suggestion ought to be made over there in MR. Certainly he won't get far with either 4-axle dynamic or independent...!
Supposed To Be About Fun
Forgive me for misunderstanding the purpose of this forum. I will try to lighten up as recommended and try not to believe everything I read here. I promise that in the furure I will assume what I read could be written to make me laugh and not inform. I may have the weakness of sometimes being too serious and sometimes fail to see that nonsense is really humor. I think I have been around long enough to recognize when my leg is being pulled but I am serious when I say that there are probably readers who can't tell fact from fiction and you have to be careful about not misleading. The tall story about the engineer and fireman falling out the cab window to see Perlman dining was nonsense but it was written in a way that could lead some readers to think the writer was serious. Not all readers are as smart as the "experts". Maybe I'm being a prig but there are a lot of gullible people out there. And nonsense takes on a life of its own -- I wouldn't be surprised if in a future issue of Trains there is a story that claims the downfall of the NYC Niagara was due to an engineer falling out the cab window.
OvermodNow as SCP5850 is often described as "That Hell-Bound Train", and as having been reported since 1924 but now its advent is usually presaged by a 'horn', it has had some spectral power switch over the years...
Never having heard of SCP5850 I just used the "Google Machine" to look it up.
O-kaaaaaaay....
Got to admit that's a new one for me.
Meeiinnee Güüüteee! I am sorry to say, but nhrand you are such a dreary head, no insult intented, but: unbelievable!
Now Juni for one time invented a tall story to pick up on that one the other user had told before (why don't you attack him?) and I have read it now and I found it both humorous and also quite clearly a story from which not to draw the date of this and that and other historical data. Then there was this remark about the driver weighing as much as the boiler pressure is, now this was obviously making fun of the habitual growing fat of men when they get elder? Ok, perhaps you didn't like it, sorry then. But it is also well written, readable and flowing - do you criticise this? If someone does think this is dead ernest he should get the wake-up ringing when he reads the closing lines, no?
But, ok, if it is not your thing, why don't you just go on and read something else? There are so many postings ... The forum is very informative, I believe it will stand a little fun from an otherwise really knowing and wise person. It also brought up some interesting details, like the gabarit vehicle profile is so closely approached that things standing next to the line may come within inches to a moving locomotive - something that is not at all acceptable in Europe because of the dangers described by some members. That you cannot see a passenger behind his window glass in a curve also points towards this is not a fully serious a story. Interesting again, at least to me, was to learn the cuttings of the curves on the Hudson river banks are also left to stand so close to the train that you cannot look back and see the cars. Again: on European railways you could! Even on the Brenner Pass in most curves you can see at least half of the train or more. It makes me think that if railways over here would fill their free space so closely as did the NYC then they could perhaps have an equally large profile or an even larger one. It is only the safety margin is so much wider!
05003 SARA
Flintlock76 Overmod Now as SCP5850 is often described as "That Hell-Bound Train", and as having been reported since 1924 but now its advent is usually presaged by a 'horn', it has had some spectral power switch over the years... Never having heard of SCP5850 I just used the "Google Machine" to look it up. O-kaaaaaaay.... Got to admit that's a new one for me.
Overmod Now as SCP5850 is often described as "That Hell-Bound Train", and as having been reported since 1924 but now its advent is usually presaged by a 'horn', it has had some spectral power switch over the years...
Sounds like it is constructed of unobtainium in mass quantities.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Aftermath To Tragedy
Juniatha's tall tale about the enginemen falling out the cab window of a fast moving passenger train did not reveal the full story. The following may provide readers with insights into the results of an unfortunate accident. The first response of the NYC was to appoint a task force to counter the possible bad publicity of a NYC train runing for some distance with no one at the controls. It turned out to be a moot point since the story was carried on the back page of a local news paper and no one seemed to question why a train was delayed for so long because an engineer had to be found. The NYC's explanation that the enginemen probably leaned out the window and door a bit too far to investigate an odd sound in the running gear was accepted without question. The Central representative said that "those big engines often lurch unexpectedly even on the ultra-smooth roadbed of the New York Central".
The family of the engineer and fireman who broke their necks were generously compensated after signing a non-disclosure agreement. The lawyers convinced them that there were no witnesses or evidence to prove negligence on the part of anyone other than the engine crew. The police and coroner who investigated the deaths also agreed that it was accidental and consequently little attention was given to the matter since railroading is known to be dangerous. Weeks later the NYC CEO was asked in an interview about the event and he responded, "It was just one of those things. Steam is dead on the Central and my men don't fall out of cab windows on diesels."
The only problem for the NYC was the Brotherhoods. In contract negotiations they used the event as a wedge to obtain concessions. The threat was that they demanded that all steam locomotives should be equipped with a "dead man foot pedal" that would set the brakes if not kept depressed. They made other demands and management was forced to take an easier stance on the issue of "featherbedding" by diesel fireman. The ICC also got involved at the urging of the Brotherhoods and drafted a rule that would require all locomotive cab windows be reduced to two square feet or be equipped with bars. They also said that all steam locomotive tenders had to be clear vision tenders -- one commissioner said "I never want to see an engineer backing an engine while sitting on the arm rest to be able to see to the rear". The ICC eventually tabled the motions for lack of support.
The details of the event first described by Juniatha are now lost in the attic of history. This recounting is based on an unreliable source so should be read with caution since research has not uncovered any truth to the story.
Bravo, nhrand, that's much better!
Now let's close this chapter and go on with the historical discussions.
Let's all remain friends, all about the same general subject
SARA 05003
nhrandForgive me for misunderstanding the purpose of this forum.
Hey, I'm just trying to figure out the purpose of this thread!
Sara -- I hope you don't believe I would attack women during National Women's History Month. I have faults but thinking badly about women is not one of them. Some of my favorite engineers are women, not to mention the CEO of the BNSF who I admire greatly. I admit I think women should behave but I think men are the ones who mainly need to behave. ------ your friend --- Ed
Sara TSorry, nhrand, but I have a suspicion really this is only because for you it is not appropriate for a woman to make jokes, we should sit back and behave, no?
Oh please.
Sara TLet's all remain friends...
Overmod Sara T Let's all remain friends... And we can all get some advice on jokes, too!
Sara T Let's all remain friends...
And we can all get some advice on jokes, too!
I'm good. I've got "The Soupy Sales Joke Book!"
(double posting deleted, see next)
nhrand,
Thank you for your answer.
I have deleted the paragraph that had disturbed you and
believe we should drop that issue and go on with steam.
0S5A0R0A3
Flintlock wrote "Never having heard of SCP5850 I just used the "Google Machine" to look it up."
Me too. And now what? Where is a mystery? A-n-y-t-h-i-n-g Mysterious? Anywhere? Dunno ...........................................................................?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKh-oGdBkAc
going over the country roads in France in a Renault 4 on a nice sunny day - looking for the last of steam ...
Yet for the camelback: this is about as much as can be threaded on it's back? No more camels, no more backs up? Next maybe the camelbag, an entirely unexplored, so far rarely known species of the mystery of early steam for shopping, or was it ?
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