Anybody into trains?

I took Amtrak from Chicago to Vegas once. It was...interesting.

good you did, can't do it anymore unfortunately

the Shay locomotives are pretty cool, steam powered all wheel drive. used in mountainous terrain.
http://www.gearedsteam.com/shay/shay.htm

I love steam and love Shay's, here's a pic of one in my Garden railroad.

As a third generation railroader myself (41 years of service come this April, I hired out in April of '74 with Penn Central) if you're ever in the Scranton, Pa check out 'Steamtown'. Our railroad the Delaware Lackawanna operates through it as we serve approx 100 miles over the former D&H as well as the 'original' Delaware Lackawanna.

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Streamliners
I may have brought this up before. About 10 years ago I came home from work, and knowing the dead woman's daughter across the street was hauling stuff out to the curb I jaunted over there to the end of the driveway to see what she tossed. Sure enough, still in the setbox was a 1935 silver streamliner with 3 passenger cars. Along with the catalogue. The box was missing the vestibules but I was later able to locate a few. She came out and yelled at me. I had a retort ready. And I used it.
 
When I was a kid, This was on display a quick bike ride from my house, We spent lots of time climbing around and all through it. In the late 70's they took it away to restore it, It was disassembled and has been moved several times but still not restored.

salisbury20park20train.jpg~original


Moving it to the park

Salsbury20park20train.jpg~original




Sounds very similar to story of the SP 1785 down in Woodburn, OR. We used to play on it when we were kids. That was long before they put the fence around it.



800px-SP_Engine_1785_Woodburn%2C_Oregon.JPG
 
When I was a kid, This was on display a quick bike ride from my house, We spent lots of time climbing around and all through it. In the late 70's they took it away to restore it, It was disassembled and has been moved several times but still not restored.

salisbury20park20train.jpg~original


Moving it to the park

Salsbury20park20train.jpg~original

what is the pedigree on this 10 wheeler? could not help but notice the belpaire...
 
good you did, can't do it anymore unfortunately



I love steam and love Shay's, here's a pic of one in my Garden railroad.

As a third generation railroader myself (41 years of service come this April, I hired out in April of '74 with Penn Central) if you're ever in the Scranton, Pa check out 'Steamtown'. Our railroad the Delaware Lackawanna operates through it as we serve approx 100 miles over the former D&H as well as the 'original' Delaware Lackawanna.

riddle me this: at auction about 9 months ago I got an oil caboose lantern, with the PC logo and penn central stamped in it. Why did they need these? also, I just found a glass ashtray with the green PC in the bottom. that I found these at all is amazing, no one loved that railroad and they could not wait to forget it. I lived across the street from the Pitcairn yard and have pics of me as a little kid on the porch of sd45s....
 
The B&O railroad museum & roundhouse in Baltimore is excellent. A visit to the famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, PA is also great.

horsesho.jpg


Having lived and traveled all over Europe by train for a decade, trains lost most of their nostalgic appeal for me though. America is just too vast for passenger rail other than the Northeast corridor and urban light rail, IMO.
 
The B&O railroad museum & roundhouse in Baltimore is excellent. A visit to the famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, PA is also great.

The Horseshoe Curve is cool and not far away are the Gallitzen tunnels and the Allegheny Portage Railroad that carried canal boats over Allegheny Mountain on inclined planes by means of stationary steam engines, now a NPS National Historic Site park. It was there that John Roebling invented wire rope.

http://www.nps.gov/alpo/index.htm
 
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riddle me this: at auction about 9 months ago I got an oil caboose lantern, with the PC logo and penn central stamped in it. Why did they need these?

oil caboose lantern ……. are you talking of a 'marker light' ? if so, remember this, PC was born in 1968 (NYC & PRR), kerosene marker lights and switchman's lanterns powered by kerosene were still in use. By the time my career started in '74 (I was the last trick yardmaster, Goodman St Yard, Rochester, NY) all crews had switched over to battery operated lanterns. FWIW, I do remember some of the 'hacks' (cabooses) still having markers fed by kerosene.



also, I just found a glass ashtray with the green PC in the bottom. that I found these at all is amazing, no one loved that railroad and they could not wait to forget it.

if you are truly a historian of railroads you'll know that the PC should NEVER have existed.

I lived across the street from the Pitcairn yard and have pics of me as a little kid on the porch of sd45s....

while a very good locomotive it proved to be a 'step child' compared to the SD-40's, especially the Dash II's
 
I was a "guest conductor" for one leg of this bad boy's journey into history ...

Chessie_Steam_Special_CUT_June_1978_03.jpg


Still got my uniform and ticket punch! Still spittin' clinker too! <G>

More memorable moments ...

- One of the last coast to coast trans Canada ... Line's been broken up, so you can't do that anymore.

- Last run of the Michigan Northern. They put the word out and got a bunch of loaner passenger cars from around the Midwest, some of them quite nice. That's now a bicycle trail. One of these days, gonna have to drop butt on the mountain bike and see how far I get. 100 miles, but it's set up to do it in stages.

- Done most of the Amtrak routes at one time or another. Still plan to get a rail pass now that I'm retired and see how many miles I can roll before it gets old, or I get much older. My favorite is the California Zephyr between Chicago and San Francisco. I even had the company pay for a few of those heading west for conferences. Fly out, and leave SF on the Zephyr Thursday afternoon, and back home Sunday night - I let the budgeteers figure the cost of round trip air fare, and then pay the difference on that and a private bedroom. All sorts of stuff you'll see along the way from a unique perspective. One interesting moment on that run was splitting a herd of moose ... and watching them hose down the bits and pieces off the front of the lead engine in Omaha ... I passed on the stew that night in the dining car ... <G>

- I also played hobo many a time, hitching freights just outside the local yards. Easy to do back in the day, and if you got caught, they'd usually just let you go, especially if you did it often enough you knew the crew by name. <G>

Not sure if this counts or not ... rode passenger a few times during ferry crossings over the Lakes ...

train-on-ferry.jpg


They never actually tipped the boat over loading the big iron ... <G>
 
sKi, enjoyed your 'tales' ! I too have traveled pretty much every passenger train in North America. The only two I have yet to travel are the "Skeena' from Jasper to Prince Rupert and the train from Winnepeg to Churchill on Hudson Bay.

VIA #1 (Toronto to Vancouver) is by far THE best transcontinental ride in North America, while not the same as the glory days on the CP, the fifties era Budd built equipment (think domes here) is still the best way to cross the continent !
 
I guess the moral of the story is, if you want your own tales to tell, best get going on it ... sad thing to watch, seeing the one mighty railroads that powered the industrial revolution going down in a whimper ...

Fun facts? Passenger ridership on Amtrak has increased 55% in the last decade. Now the push is on to get rid of the Federal subsidy, the long distance routes, or both. Plan B is to transfer the subsidies to the states that have service. Either way, the bell tolls ...

PS ... on time performance sucks on the Pere Marquette between Chicago and Grand Rapids, but it's still a big improvement, to me anyway, over running the gauntlet on I94 fighting six lanes of semis running 20 above the limit. Hook up with the Loop, and you can go pretty much anywhere for a day on the town.
 
I guess the moral of the story is, if you want your own tales to tell, best get going on it ... sad thing to watch, seeing the one mighty railroads that powered the industrial revolution going down in a whimper …

actually sKi, we are not going down in a whimper, speaking of the freight side of the business. A couple years back while having dinner while out of town I got talking with a gentleman who commented on the rail industry 'dying on the vine'…….. I asked him if he ever heard of Warren Buffet, to which he replied , "well of course". I then informed him that Mr Buffet wrote a check recently for 34.7 billon dollars and bought a Railroad (BNSF)………. nuff said about 'going down in a whimper' !
 
Depends on how you look at it I guess ...

usrail_evolution.png


The Staggars Rail Act helped some, but at the expense of borderline rail miles that weren't turning a good enough profit. Problem being, once the right of way goes away, it ain't never coming back.
 
Depends on how you look at it I guess ...

usrail_evolution.png

rail miles ………. show me $$ and operating ratios

The Staggars Rail Act helped some, but at the expense of borderline rail miles that weren't turning a good enough profit. Problem being, once the right of way goes away, it ain't never coming back.

not entirely , my side of the industry (Short Line) has done very well with these 'borderline rail miles'. We as a group represent almost 27% of ALL rail freight originated or terminated in the country. Remember this, Genesee & Wyoming, the largest holding company of short lines in the world, when one combines all roads that it owns is actually a Class 1 !

Simply put, the industry needed the Staggers Act
 
There is an interesting storm brewing right now....I live in the heart of NE USA fracking country and with the current price per bbl of oil it put a damper on gas and oil sand and fracking operations. Aside from TOFC/DS, which does not pass thru my area except on rare occasions, we have a lot of oil trains, sand trains, waste fluid trains etc.

Already employment is off about 30% with layoffs planned nearly each week coming up - from the well towns to the truckers, pipe makers, tool makers and machinists. I expect carloads to follow.

Besides G&W we have a lot of RJ Corman trackage, complete lines in giant dogbones from strip mines to the power plants with barely an interchange - RJ operates it owns rebuilding shops and has a lot of older geeps whose sole purpose in life is to push/pull hoppers up the hill and back down.

I would love to see some of these old lines come back with resource use - just aint gonna happen. Supposedly, the process that made a right a way a right of way is not that easy to undo. They have torn up about everything in or near the ANF (allegheny nat'l forest) and while it might support hiking trails and part of the ATV loop, it *can* be called back in - but will it? I doubt it.

As for the decline of our passenger travel - blame the germans ;-) Just about every GI on his way home wanted a car. Pre ww2 - in the 30's it was hard on the passenger lines, but once the dust settled by 1948, lines and trains could not be abandoned or discontinued fast enough more and more each year.

If we *really* want them to continue, we have to adopt a fully european model like SNCF (french railway) its 100% socialized and paid for by the govt. This GSE cannot be run with thoughts of being for profit. It will never happen. No 'railroad' has a greater daily passenger per mile count than the NYC MTA, and even THEY need subsidies. I personally would love to travel by train, but they found a way to make it so inconvenient and expensive, flying is cheaper.

I took interest in the PC cuz, well I grew up in the heart. By 1940 half my family worked for the PRR, the other half for westinghouse or the mines. Once the war started, those not with PRR went in the army, those with PRR had a wartime exemption if they desired. Until 2008, I lived nearly all my life along the Pitt-Harrisburg line. when PC was formed I was 4 and wondered what the heck these blue locos were that started showing up around 76-on. So my layouts have always been the late 70's, you wont find a single dash 8 but uboats and gp38s and sd35s and 45s...
 
The "streamliners" site is a first-class timewaster! Thanks for the link! It got me searching for a pic of a streamliner I saw when I was 4 or 5....pretty sure it was Burlington. The loco looked like it was styled after an F-86 or something with a big oval air intake dominating the front...IIRC the cab was possibly turret-style. So far I haven't been able to find a pic:(
 
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