Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

[wanswheel]

Mark, yes it was C&A, however John Quincy Adams referred to it as the Amboy and Bordentown Railway, which was descriptive until 1834. That was Cornelius Vanderbilt's first train ride too. I guess it's your turn. --Mike

[KCSfan]

Mike,

Was the railroad the Camden & Amboy?

Mark

[wanswheel]

That's right. Now what railroad?  Here's a large hint:

From New York to Philadelphia by John Quincy Adams

Friday, November 8, 1833

Blessed, ever blessed be the name of God, that I am alive and have escaped unhurt from the most dreadful catastrophe that ever my eyes beheld! We arrived at New York at half past six this morning. I took leave of Mr. Harrod, his daughter, my niece Elizabeth, took a hack with Mr. Potter, and crossed from the East to the North River, put my baggage into the steamboat Independence, Captain Douglas, and walked to the City Hotel. I found that my wife and family proceeded thence last Monday on their way to Washington. There was a card of invitation to attend a pubic dinner to be given to Commodore Chauncey to-morrow; to which I wrote a declining answer. I then returned to the steamboat, which left the wharf at eight, and landed the passengers at Amboy about twenty minutes past ten. The boat was crowded almost to suffocation, and people of every land and language seemed congregated in it — among the rest, a whole tribe of wild Irish, whose language I now for the first time heard spoken. The only persons of the passengers whom I knew were David B. Ogden, of New York, and Dr. McDowell, whom Dr. Condict introduced to me last winter at Washington, and who was then a Professor at Princeton College, but has since left it and has removed to Philadelphia. There were upwards of two hundred passengers in the railroad cars. There were two locomotive engines, A and B, each drawing an accommodation car, a sort of moving stage, in a square, with open railing, a platform, and a row of benches holding forty or fifty persons; then four or five cars in the form of large stage coaches, each in three compartments, with doors of entrance on both sides, and two opposite benches, on each of which sat four passengers. Each train was closed with a high, quadrangular, open-railed baggage-wagon, in which the baggage of all the passengers in the train was heaped up, the whole covered with an oil-cloth. I was in car B, No. 1, and of course in the second train. Of the first ten miles, two were run in four minutes, marked by a watch of a Mr. De Yong, in the same car and division with me. They stopped, oiled the wheels, and proceeded. We had gone about five miles further, and had traversed one mile in one minute and thirty-six seconds, when the front left wheel of the car in which I was, having taken fire and burned for several minutes, slipped off the rail. The pressure on the right side of the car, then meeting resistance, raised it with both wheels from the rail, and it was oversetting on the left side, but the same pressure on the car immediately behind raised its left side from the rail till it actually overset to the right, and, in oversetting, brought back the car in which I was, to stand on the four wheels, and saved from injury all the passengers in it. The train was stopped, I suppose within five seconds of the time when our wheel slipped off the rail, but it was then going at the rate of sixty feet in a second, and was dragged nearly two hundred feet before it could stop. Of sixteen persons in two of the three compartments of the car that overset, one only escaped unhurt — a Dr. Cuyler. One side of the car was stove in, and almost demolished. One man, John C. Stedman, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was so dreadfully mangled that he died within ten minutes; another, named, I believe, Welles, of Pennsylvania, can probably not survive the day. Captain Vanderbilt had his leg broken, as had Mr. West, minister of the Episcopal Church at Newport, Rhode Island; Mrs. Bartlett, wife of Lieutenant Bartlett, of the U. S. Corps of Engineers, and her sister, dangerously hurt; her child, about three years old, is not expected to live; Mr. and Mrs. Charles, of St. Louis, Missouri, severely cut and bruised; a Mr. Dreyfuss, of Philadelphia, cut in the head and sprained in the back; and six other persons, among whom are Dr. McDowell and a young lady with him, gashed in the head and otherwise wounded. The scene of sufferance was excruciating. Men, women, and a child scattered along the road, bleeding, mangled, moaning, writhing in torture, and dying, was a trial of feeling to which I had never before been called; and when the thought came over me that a few yards more of pressure on the car in which I was would have laid me a prostrate corpse like him who was before my eyes, or a cripple for life; and, more insupportable still, what if my wife and grandchild had been in the car behind me! Merciful God! how can the infirmity of my nature express or feel the gratitude that should swell in my bosom that this torture, a thousand-fold worse than death, has been spared me? At my request, a coroner's inquest was called upon the deceased. The other dying man was left at Hightstown, three miles beyond where the disaster happened; and, after a detention of nearly three hours, the train was resumed, and, leaving the two broken cars behind, the rest proceeded to Bordentown, thirty-five miles from Amboy. The coroner's inquest, held by a magistrate of the court, had been sworn, and I had given my testimony before we left the fatal spot. Several of the wounded were left at Hightstown. The rest were transported on cushions from the cars over the railway to Bordentown, and thence with us, in the steamboat New Philadelphia, to Philadelphia. On reaching the wharf, the Rev. Mr. Brackenridge came on board, and told me he had heard I had been seriously injured by the accident on the railway. Apprehensive that such rumors might circulate and reach my family, I wrote on board the steamboat to my wife, at Washington, and to my son Charles, at Boston, and dispatched the letters to the post-office at Philadelphia. We landed at Chestnut Street wharf between six and seven in the evening, and I took lodgings with Mr. Potter, at the United States Hotel. I resolved to proceed on my journey to-morrow morning, but called and spent an hour of the evening at Mr. John Sergeant's...

http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/doc.cfm?id=jqad39_178

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

wanswheel

Actually former President and incumbent Congressman in 1833.

That would be John Quincy Adams

[daveklepper]

Andrew Jackson?

[wanswheel]

Actually former President and incumbent Congressman in 1833.

[Texas Zepher]

wanswheel

Five months after Andrew Jackson's ride on the B&O in 1833, who was the second President to ride a train and on what railroad?

Do you mean who was the person that road a railroad five months after Andrew Jackson....who later became president?   Jackson's term didn't end until 1837, so another president could not have ridden the railroad five months after that be it in 1833 or 1834.....

Van Buren hated railroads and is the one who at one time tried to get them outlawed.  Probably mostly because he was invested in canal companies, but it could have been because he road on one.

My guess would be Polk, he seems a progressive kind of guy.
 

[wanswheel]

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c10000/3c16000/3c16400/3c16412v.jpg

Five months after Andrew Jackson's ride on the B&O in 1833, who was the second President to ride a train and on what railroad?

Mike

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

Vice President Gypsy Rose Lee unveiled the Lancaster & Chester miniature railway?

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_0.jpg

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_1.jpg

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=717

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1494295

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1531648

Well, Mike, you got two out of three. If you look at your fourth link, you will see, in the background the object that was publically unveiled--the headquarters building of the L&C. The locomotive in the picture is fouling Lancaster's Main Street; the Southern's Kingville-Rock Hill-Marion line crossed Main Street a little bit north. A few years ago, the L&C bought what was left of this Southern line that was south of Lancaster, adding not quite two-thirds to its length. Thus, the railroad now serves another of the Springs mills, in Kershaw.

As to Springs Park, it was really a nice place in the mid to late forties. I do not remember just what year it was, but our Sunday School teacher took us up there twice. For its size, the railroad gave a nice ride. There were two WWII fighter planes and one WWII bomber there; I do not remember just what they were; we could get into the cockpits and pretend that we were flying them. Another attraction that I remember was a duckpin alley.

I regret that I never did get a copy of the L&C timetable or of the L&C diner menu (if so desired, you could order filet of flounder or floundering filly, along with many other interesting items).

W. F. (Bull) Halsey was in charge of obtaining Emperor Hirohito's white horse to satisfy General Jonathan Wainwright's desire to own it.

Now, how will you amuse us today?

Johnny

[wanswheel]

Vice President Gypsy Rose Lee unveiled the Lancaster & Chester miniature railway?

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_0.jpg

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/mags/qf/c/MechanixIllustrated/2-1952/baby_railroad/xlg_baby_railroad_1.jpg

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=717

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1494295

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1531648

[al-in-chgo]

That Lucius Beebe, he could sure turn a phrase.  But some of his paragraphs were godawful. 

 

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

Johnny, that's right, your turn.

This question is about a one-of-a-kind shortline. This road was named for its endpoints--it actually ran between them (it has, comparatively recently, been extended beyond one of them, and now passes through the town in which I grew up). Among other Vice-Presidents, such as "in Charge of White Horse Supply" (W. F. Halsey), "in Charge of the Internal Audit" (Lucius Beebe), it had a "Vice-President in Charge of Unveiling."

Name the railroad, the Vice-President in Charge of Unveiling, and the object unveiled.

I could not tell you how many times I passed by the object.

Johnny

[henry6]

Ahhh  yes...knew you'd know...I did get to ride the remnant Queensboro Bridge car not too long before its demise.  BTW, the conversation I referred to was in conjunction with the release of an upcoming book on the Unadilla Valley RR.

[wanswheel]

Johnny, that's right, your turn. I'm guessing H. E. Salzberg regarded HT&W as scrap metal before he sold it to his son-in-law Samuel M. Pinsly. Readsboro, Vermont was the first terminal before the Wilmington extension opened in 1892, and as far north as the tracks went on the 1948 map.

http://middarchive.middlebury.edu/u?/vtpostcards,728

Sam & Company

http://www.pinsly.com/page1127.html

Henry, I think you're referring to former electric transit, the remnants of New York & Queens County Railway and the Steinway Railway that became bus lines.

[henry6]

Just discussing this same family and empire over dinner this evening (obvious with railfan friend)...and it being so easy with Mark's clues...lets add another question mark if only for extra credit:  What NYC enterprise did they also own?

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

A short line in Arkansas and three in Florida are owned by a company whose president is Harry E. Salzberg's great-grandson. What was the first railroad this company owned, nicknamed the Hoot, Toot & Whistle?

Mike

Everybody should know of the Hoosac Tunnel and Wilmington. It ran north from a junction with the B&M.

Johnny

[wanswheel]

Taps

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/19200/19278v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/13300/13355v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c30000/3c32000/3c32700/3c32799v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ppmsca/13300/13352v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g06000/3g06200/3g06266v.jpg

A short line in Arkansas and three in Florida are owned by a company whose president is Harry E. Salzberg's great-grandson. What was the first railroad this company owned, nicknamed the Hoot, Toot & Whistle?

Mike

[daveklepper]

The New York Central operated steam into The Bronx on the Putnam untilo about 1949-1950.   And the New Haven had two steam 0-6-0T shop switchers in operation at the Van Ness Bronx electricl locomotive and mu shop until 1956.  Revernue steam on the NYNH&H ended in 1952 in the Boston area.

[henry6]

I was in the WAG shops when those units were being painted and one stenciled!  Good question, Mark, And, Mike, are there pictures you don't have?!!!

[KCSfan]

wanswheel

Louisiana & North West? Gibsland (Yazoo & Mississippi) to McNeil (Cotton Belt).

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS185462+10-Jun-2008+BW20080610

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=680468

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=853336

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=853323

Mike

Mike's nailed this one and it's now his turn to ask the next question.

Mark

[wanswheel]

Louisiana & North West? Gibsland (Yazoo & Mississippi) to McNeil (Cotton Belt).

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS185462+10-Jun-2008+BW20080610

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=680468

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=853336

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=853323

Mike

[henry6]

GOOD SHOW, MARK!

[KCSfan]

OK here's the next question.

At one time the Salzberg family owned and operated a number of shortlines one of which was the WA&G. Most of these have been long abandoned. Which of the former Salzberg roads was the most profitable and continues to operate today in its entirety and under its original name? Name the RR and its end point terminals.

Mark

[Deggesty]

wanswheel

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=54892

That's purty; dig those red counterweights!

Why no connecting rod on the front truck?

I agree with Henry6.

Johnny

 

[henry6]

Mike...do you actually own all the neatest pictures in the world?  At least let me nominate you!!

[wanswheel]

Johnny, thanks for the question. I never got to see that cool 1908 Singer Building or Hudson Terminal, the first skyscraper train station. Singer's New Jersey plant had a GE 50-ton locomotive, later transferred to their Thurso & Nation Valley logging railroad in Quebec. Evidently nowadays it keeps company with a 1919 Central Vermont crane, which my grandfather must have seen when it was brand new.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=54892

http://www.railways.incanada.net/thurso/tnvrthurso2.JPG

http://ovgrs.editme.com/OCR2005

http://www.railways.incanada.net/thurso/tnvrhist.htm

Mike

[Deggesty]

KCSfan

Johnny,

I believe this would be the New Jersey Indiana & Illinois RR which the Singer Sewing Machine Co. built to access the Wabash from its plant in South Bend, IN. I think the NYC was the road whose freight rates Singer objected to.

Mark

Mark, you have it! I do not remember just where I learned the details, but I also recall that it was the NYC that irritated the Singer Sewing Machine Company (my mother had one of the foot-powered machines, and I learned to use it. I never did like the electric machines; they went too fast for me). The June, 1916, issue of the Guide shows the line as being 11.6 miles long, and operating two day, daily except Sunday, trains between South Bend and Pine; two connected (from and to) with Wabash #6. The January, 1930 issue shows only full miles, and has only the trains that carried the South Bend-Detroit drawing-room sleeping car.

Mike, again, you have come through with excellent pictures and commentary on the subject of a question. Thanks.

Mark, you should have a question ready by now.

Johnny

[wanswheel]

Lots of pictures

http://www.monon.monon.org/rr/njii2.html

http://www.monon.monon.org/sobend/singer.html

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3c20000/3c23000/3c23500/3c23578v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/ggbain/10600/10624v.jpg

http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/ny/ny0400/ny0428/photos/119895pv.jpg

[KCSfan]

Johnny,

I believe this would be the New Jersey Indiana & Illinois RR which the Singer Sewing Machine Co. built to access the Wabash from its plant in South Bend, IN. I think the NYC was the road whose freight rates Singer objected to.

Mark

[Deggesty]

What twelve mile short line in Indiana was built by a sewing machine manufacturer becaue it did not like the rate it was paying one Class I railroad, and what other Class I did it build to? It ran an overnight sleeper in conjunction with its new connection. Tiebreaker: name the manufacturer.

Johnny