Railroads have long played a major role in the automobile industry, from the era of primitive converted wagons to today’s high-performance cars. Auto manufacturing is a key market segment for railroads, so train schedules have often been geared to production deadlines and needs. There will be at least one follow-up to this series.
The evolution of change in handling finished automobiles is seen here.
Twenty seven loads of “Big Inch” pipe from Kaiser Steel enroute to Wyoming.
So why the boxcars, fore and aft. Those empty cars are for crew protection in the event of a mishap along the way. Those heavy pipes would be like missiles in any kind of sudden stop. The buffer cars provide at least some level of personal protection.
This scene is just north of Sacramento very late in the steam era, September 1956. This Southern Pacific train will deliver the cargo to the Western Pacific at Marysville for onward shipment.
The use of buffer cars continues to this day. 100 plus car trains of crude oil, likewise lengthy trains of ethanol have buffer cars behind the power, you no longer see a caboose and the friendly wave from the crew. Buffer cars today are partially filled with sand to reduce the impact in the event of an accident.
The jury is still out as to the wisdom, efficiency, even the safety of shipping crude via rail or pipeline. My take is in favor of the rails, as the infrastructure allows flexibility in sources and destinations, on an existing transportation plant. No need to tear up the countryside and abuse the environment with underground pipe. Ethanol cannot be shipped via pipeline, so we’ll always that on the rails of barges.
Credits: photos by Richard E. Lohse as seen in Classic Trains – Spring 2018 Gary O. Ostlund
As of July 8, employees have begun light locomotive repairs and inspections.
Citing a rebounding rail industry and an increase in work orders, NRE reopened its 450,000 square foot Paducah, Kentucky plant on July 8, 2019. Employees have begun making light repairs and inspections of locomotives, as well as provide other service offerings.
“We are very excited to be able to reopen the Paducah plant,” said Steven Beal, President of NRE. “The Paducah plant and its employees have a nearly 100 year history of providing quality locomotive products and services. Our goal since we shuttered it two years ago has always been to bring it back online and to get our employees back to work,” he added.
NRE is actively seeking applicants to fill available positions at the plant as the plant increases its operations. If interested, please visit www.nre.com/careers.
When full-strength, NRE Paducah provides the following services:
• New Locomotive Builds
• Remanufactured Locomotives
• Locomotive Service
• Field Service
• New Parts and Components
• Remanufactured Parts and Components
• Salvage
“The reopening of the Paducah facility is merely the beginning,” said Beal. “Paducah will be a key component of the future of our company and we look forward to growing together.”
For more information, please contact Brandon Schwartz at 618.899.5591 or b.schwartz@nre.com. – Submitted by Chris Dees
Mishaps will always be a part of railroading. These scenes show the old and newer methods of cleaning up a wreck scene. In years past the railroads owned and positioned “big hooks” and associated equipment out on the line. Such equipment was always in the ready-mode, warmed up and on the go in a moment’s notice.
In today’s “contract-out” way of doing business, private firms like Hulcher Services are called to the task. They and other firms have highway transportable lifting equipment on the scene dispatched from numerous locations around the country. Upon completion of the Interstate highway system truck-transported clean-up equipment allowed the rail lines to reopen sooner.
Note the special tread on the pair of crawler tractor side-mounted lifting machines. I didn’t use the word “Caterpillar” because their origin could be of a different manufacturer.
On July 27, 2019, Rick Bivins hooked up with Matt Gentry at his home in Champaign IL for a day of railfanning. The following pics are from that trip. First stop was the old CB&Q line from Chicago to Galesburg via the quad cities.
Most railroad roundhouses were round, thus the name, duh!. However, here in Avery, Idaho we have a unique design dictated by geography. The narrow valley, with the robust St Joe River immediately behind, made for this unusual building. Avery was where helper engines were added to assist trains over St Paul Pass, crossing the Bitterroot Mountains into Western Montana. A two-mile tunnel was dug under the summit. The history of that event is recorded in the book: Doctors, Dogs and Dynamite. A good read.
Avery became a key terminal for the Milwaukee Road with crew and engine changes. 440 miles of electrified operations from central Montana ended here. Westward trains switched to steam, and more recently diesel locomotives. The line from Othello in Central Washington to Tacoma and Seattle was also electrified. Monday morning QBs say the 216 mile gap was one of the downfalls for the Milwaukee. Either way, for 71 years the Milwaukee Road provided “spirited” competition to the NP, GN and UP.
The Milwaukee was the last kid on the block, in its westward venture, necessitating two important facets. First, the railroad had fewer choices in selecting routes, particularly through mountainous areas; and second, they rose to that challenge by constructing the most direct, and subsequently the fastest route from Chicago to Tacoma. In their heyday, the Milwaukee Road ran freight trains from the windy city to the coast in 55 hours. Amtrak could only wish.
Credits: Photo by Bruce Black as seen in Frederick W. Hyde’s book: The Milwaukee Road – Gary Ostlund
These photos of NC&StL 576 are taken from Nashville Steam’s Facebook page. See Nashville Steam on Facebook for credits. 576 sits beneath the shed at the Tennessee Central Museum (Nashville).
In late June, the super heaters were removed from 576. Each unit has 4 sets of curved parallel pipes that send steam back into the tubes re-using the heat from the boiler to convert the saturated steam into dry steam. The longer pipes in the front are for the super heaters along the bottom. The units in the middle and the top are tucked behind the front row. (taken from Nashville Steam Facebook page)
After reaching their goals, and becoming profitable, the western railroads soon made major improvements to their infrastructure. On the western slopes of Snoqualmie Pass the Milwaukee Road crossed six water courses. The forests provided ample supplies of heavy timber and wooden trestles such as we see here were the result.
Wooden trestles required a lot of maintenance, and were subject to forest fires. Some were filled like Humpback Creek. The planking shields the structure from damage when dumping fill. A hefty culvert allows passage of the creek to this day. The other five wooden trestles were replaced by steel structures, assembled within the confines of the wooden trestles. Traffic was only minimally disrupted. Somewhere in my “stuff” I have a picture of that work in progress that I will share, someday.
Many years later the westbound Olympian Hiawatha is seen at the same location, about to enter a snow shed, also made out of 12 x 12 timbers. The locomotive, (a motor in railroad lingo) is one of 5 Bi-polars built by General Electric. They were unique in that the axles were the armature, no gears. Other than the clickety-clack of jointed-rail, they were extremely quiet. While traversing the warehouse district of Seattle, with many street crossings, the engineers were required to keep the bell clanging in addition to using the whistle.
Credits: Wooden trestle: Unk; westbound Olympian: Milwaukee Road photo
We had a total of ten entries for the May 2019 chapter photo contest and all of them were really tough to judge, but I finally narrowed it down to 4 winners.
Blair Terry took first place with a nice pan shot of UP 4014 and 844! Our second place winner was his grandpa, Bill Farrell with Big Boy 4014 underway at Medicine Bow, Wy.
Third place winner was Bill Grady with a overhead view of CSX Q532 at Johnsonville, TN and Honorable mention went to Cooper Smith for his dramatic photograph of a Paducah and Louisville Coal train pulling hard as it passes through Princeton, Ky.
Our next contest will run from July 15-31st and the deadline for entries will be August 7th, 2019. Send your entries to me (no more than 2 per paid chapter member) at webmaster@westkentuckynrhs.org or jim@jimpearsonphotography.com by midnight on August 7th!
Earlier this month, May 10th, marked the 150th Anniversary of the Gold Spike ceremony at Promontory, Utah. I thought it appropriate to rerun this picture story from a few years ago.
The “Thank God it’s Friday” graphic is one of several intro’s for my slide shows to groups. It’s good for a laugh, however, the 1869 meeting of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific in Utah was somewhat similar. Rather than joining in such a slip-shod manner, they simply passed one another, and kept on going. Seems the two railroads were being reimbursed by the Government for work performed, by the mile. The joining of the rails at Promontory, about three miles around the bend in the picture, was the result of a negotiated settlement.
In the picture, you can easily see the railroad right-of-way on a fill. That is the work of the Central Pacific, charging eastward into the picture. But look closely to the left half of the picture. You can see two earthen bridgeheads with a gap in between. The distant one is easy to see, the other is in the foreground, lower left of the pix. The Union Pacific, working westward, filled the gap with a trestle, long since lost to the elements, salvage, or fire….. not sure.
If you go to Google Earth, you can see both landmarks by tracing the twin right’s-of-ways of both railroads eastward from the Gold Spike Monument site. In a little over three rail miles, or 2.8 the way the crow flies you will see clearly the filled curve, the bridgehead a little less obvious. (Hint: use the ruler in the tool bar, to gauge the distance.)
Credits: (Artwork, unk., can anyone out there ID the artist.?) Photo by Drake Hokanson as seen in TRAINS Mag June 2015
By Bill Thomas
In April 2005, Liam (age 5) is helping me set boundary stones.
I was fortunate to have Ron Johnson as a friend and neighbor. He freely loaned me his Kubota front-end loader to move dirt to the railroad area. I was careful to keep dirt away from the base of my big hickory tree. The depressed area around the tree is now covered with Vinca vines.
It’s been my pleasure over our 16 years here in Madisonville to share my backyard with friends, family, neighbors, and many others. – Bill
A selection of photos from our recent trackside gathering at Mortons Gap, Kentucky included photos of the two new CSX painted units. 911 for First Responders and 1776 for the Troops on their first run up the Henderson Subdivision.
Submitted by Gary Ostlund
A few weeks ago, my picture story on the New York Central’s “Water Level Route” included the use of track pans and scooping water, and raised several questions. .
There were 19 track pans between New York City and Chicago, and ten between Buffalo and Chicago on their line through Ontario and Michigan. Other U.S. railroads using track pans were: the Pennsylvania, Jersey Central, Reading, Baltimore & Ohio, the New Haven and the Milwaukee Road. In the UK, the London & Northeastern scooped water as early as 1859. The American RR Journal labeled these devices: “Jerk Water.” The term is still in use today such as in Jerkwater Town, describing a hamlet too small to merit train stops. At one time water scooping was considered for cattle cars. By law, cattle were required to be offloaded for feed and water after 36 hours. The logistics must have doomed that concept. In the days, before air-conditioning, passengers in cars near the front of the train were wary of opening the windows.
The (New York) Central performed extensive testing finding that above 35 MPH speed had little effect on the amount of water delivered to the tender. Efficiency, the percentage of water from the track pan delivered to the tender, fell off very little between 45 and 55 MPH. However above 55 MPH efficiency dropped rapidly as the scoop sprayed water from under the tender. The recommended maximum speed was set at 50 MPH. Conductors (who are in charge of the train) and Engineers clearly paid little heed to wasted water. Schedules and timetables ruled and management looked the other way.
A special thanks to former New York Central motive-power dispatcher Jim Ferrante for technical data.