New York Central Train Masters?

[wjstix]

BigJim

 

Overmod

I can't find any information about that record...

I have a dumb, but serious question: how do you distinguish a TrainMaster by ear from a CPA24-5?  Wheel sound over rail joints or frogs?

 

 

Very sorry, my mistake. The CD is "Living With Steam" by John Prophet.

I have no idea what a CPA24-5 is, but, you can tell it is a Trainmaster by reading the liner notes.   On other recordings, a Trainmaster sounds like an airplane to me!

 

 

Most likely the train had one or more of NYC's H-16-44 hood diesels. After the H-24-66 TrainMaster was introduced in 1953, FM changed their H-16-66 and H-16-44 diesels to use the same hood sections, cab, walkway parts etc. as the TrainMaster - easier to build engines when they use a lot of interchangeable parts. I've seen even otherwise knowledgeable railfan magazines mix-up FM hood diesels in their captions / articles, since they were so similar in appearance.

 

Diesel locomotive identification in the transition era was pretty unreliable / incomplete. A picture of a GP-9 might just describe it as a "1500 HP GM diesel". Most likely whoever was taking notes for the recording saw an FM hood diesel and wrote down "TrainMaster" and it ended up in the liner notes.