It took an upset like this to visualize and explain “Blind Drivers.” In December 1927 the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy narrow gauge Engine #537 rolled off the rails into the snow in the Black Hills.
The pointer focuses on the middle two driving axles, both of which contain blind drivers, wheels without flanges. In the early days all drive wheels were mounted rigid to the frame. With four axles in a row, the flanges would not negotiate the tightest curves in the rail, causing derailments, not to mention adverse wear and tear. The flanged front and rear axles provide enough stability to keep the locomotive on the rails in normal operation. It’s the weight on the drivers, not the flanges that provide the tractive force to move a train.
Advances in locomotive design included lateral motion devices on the drive wheels. #537 was retrieved, taken to Denver, rebuilt with some modern appliances, returned to duty, and performing better than ever.
Thinking back to my Lionel trainset of the 40s, the middle set of drivers also were blind.
Credits: Pix courtesy of Roger O’Keefe as seen in Railroads of the Black Hills, by Mildred Fielder
My records reveal that I’ve used this picture previously. Clearly it is one of my favorites. This is Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, crossing the Chambers Creek lift-bridge near Steilacoom, Washington. South Puget Sound was my stomping grounds until ’04, and a recreational and railroad paradise.
The train is northbound and follows the Sound for about 15 miles, facing great sunsets with the Olympic Mountains to the west. After tunneling under Tacoma’s Point Defiance Park, it will skirt Commencement Bay for another 5 or 6 miles.
This was a warm Summer evening out on the boat, and I had anchored, patiently awaiting a train, any train. Afterward I overnighted a few miles south near the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge. Nature provides a nicely protected breakwater, with the double track railroad a hundred feet or so up the bank, and endless wildlife throughout. A campfire on the beach with hot chocolate and marshmallows is in order.
As luck would have it, rail traffic that evening was light, actually non-existant. As I read my book and watched the daylight wane I felt certain that I was skunked. But low and behold, I heard whistling for the crossing at the ferry dock about a mile south. Another look at the bridge, with the sun now down to about a half-finger on an outstretched arm, and fading fast. Camera ready, here it comes clattering across the bridge. Click. It was then that I realized the sun was tightly packed between the train and the rail. Is that dumb luck or what.? Could I have planned it that way……? Not likely.
In light of our February program on Hueletts, Gary Ostlund had a timely entry for the PennyRail… (ed)
There were 77 Huletts in use on the Great Lakes. Not just the 4 PRR units at Cleveland. The NYCRR owned 8 at Ashtabula, Joint ownership with the B&O for 2 at Toledo and didn’t own but had total use of the 1 at Buffalo. The picture is NYCRR advertising. – submitted by Gary Ostlund
Bridge & tunnel warning systemBrakeman awaiting a whistle command
Telltales, are another piece of railroad infrastructure no longer seen along the right-of-way. In the days before air-brakes, hand brakes on each car stopped the train. On a whistle command from the engine, brakemen would scamper from the head end and the caboose, going car-to-car winding down the brakes. Imagine running and jumping aboard a moving train in a wind driven rain or snow storm.
It wasn’t unusual for a train to reach its destination with fewer brakemen than the beginning of the trip. With men on top of a moving train, an immediate problem was warning them of tunnels or other overhead obstructions. Telltales like those diagrammed provided a degree of safety and warning, in that the closely spaced knotted ropes would slap them in the face, sometimes taking a hat along with it. A narrow wooden walkway ran the length of the car. In those early days most cars were box cars and flat cars. After the 1869 invention of air-brakes by George Westinghouse, crewmen no longer needed to expose themselves to such danger while underway.
The walkways and ladders accessing them were retained, however, as it provided a platform for brakemen and switchmen to pass signals to the engineer in switching moves. With the advent of steel boxcars and covered hopper cars, the walkway was a non-skid grid, and over time hand-held radios became the norm.
As trains got longer, faster, and had an expanding variety of rolling stock, moving from car to car was no longer practical or necessary, and rooftop walkways and ladders have disappeared. Tank cars, tri-level automobile transporters and piggy-back equipment, not to mention OSHA helped change the game. Rolling stock now must be completely stopped while personnel board or offload.
Submitted by Gary Ostlund
Credits: Schematic – Union Pacific RR, Artwork – artist unknown, book: Age of Steam by Lucius Beebe & Charles Clegg
Cloquet, Minn., 2-8-0 No. 16 on log hauler Duluth & Northeastern – 1962 – Gary & Justine Ostlund
Credits: Photo by the late Wade Stevenson. Stevenson was a long-time employee in the Milwaukee’s roundhouse in Othello, Washington. A prolific photographer, he travelled far and wide capturing rail history throughout the west. He didn’t drive or own a car, rather, traveled by railroad employee pass or public transportation. I met him at a Milwaukee railfan meet in Kent, Washington and we discussed getting together and motor-homing in eastern Washington. He passed away before we had that opportunity.
Avoiding sparks and popping circuit breakers is what this all about. The crane is part of a Milwaukee Road wreck-train, hard at work in north central Montana. The crane came to the rescue from Harlowton, located at the eastern end of their 440-mile electrified operation through the Belt, Rocky and Bitterroot Mountain ranges.
So, what is that “boxy” contraption at the end of the boom..? That wooden assembly extends a bit beyond the end of the crane boom, so if the boom should brush against the Milwaukee’s 3,000-volt overhead catenary, there will be no sparks. The location of this incident was not electrified, but this crane is called to perform throughout the Rocky Mountain Division, electrified or not. “Safety First” meant you must be prepared. Other cranes in the electrified areas had a similar arrangement.
Wrecks occurring on the electrified lines sometimes wiped-out power poles and wiring. When they did it provided some precarious situations. A major derailment near Superior, Montana destroyed an otherwise undamaged full-length Superdome car because a downed hot wire made contact with spilled diesel fuel. Many times, the circuit breakers would automatically cut the power from the sub-stations. Those operators knew immediately of any mishaps and would cut the power if there was potential for forest or range fires.
The Northern Pacific Railway, that had no electrified lines, placed a similar wooden device on their Missoula based wrecker crane. Why would they do that, you ask? Because the NP and Milwaukee lines ran side-by-side, almost like double track, for many miles in Montana. So, if the NP had to call out it’s crane to do any kind of work on its line, it had protection as if those wires were their own.
Credits: story from The Milwaukee Railroader magazine 4th Quarter2020. Photo by Max Makich, age-13 with his Brownie camera
(Note: With all that glass overhead, those full-length Superdome cars had a diesel-powered 16-ton air-conditioning unit.) – Submitted by Gary Ostlund
Back in the heyday of steam, several eastern railroads installed track pans.
Having to stop for water was the nemesis of steam. This picture clearly illustrates the advantage. I would have preferred an image without the centerfold, but I’ve never seen a picture of trains, side-by-side taking water by track pan and water plug.
The passenger train is Baltimore & Ohio’s Diplomat rushing to Washington and St Louis in June 1944. At track speed, on a signal from the engineer, the fireman engages and air-operated scoop that fills the tank in short order from the pan between the rails.
It’s easy to see the wisdom here. The tender has an oversized coal bunker, at the expense of a limited water capacity. The Diplomat and other “scoop” trains can fly past those water plugs, saving time, not to mention the wear and tear, and energy to stop and restart a train. Lesser trains and most freights stop periodically for fuel and water, such is the case of the Reading Railroad freight train in the distance.
Installation of track pans required table-top level right-of-way. The New York Central’s 20th Century Limited on its nightly run from New York City to Chicago scooped water dozens of times, but only stopped for coal once for the entire trip. In the days before air-conditioned travel, it was wise for passengers to make sure the windows were closed at these locations, especially near the front of the train. Spray swirls from the scoop under the tender, and you can see the sky reflecting off the water in the pan at the front of the locomotive.
Gary Ostlund Credits: Ralph E. Hallock photo as seen in Classic Trains Magazine, Spring 2006
Western Montana is tough to beat for scenery, and great territory for railfans. Witness this eastbound Milwaukee freight near Tarkio. Even a large train can look rather insignificant against a rugged mountainous backdrop. A “little Joe,” one of twenty built by General Electric for Joseph Stalin’s Russia in 1948 leads three much newer GM built diesels.
The Joe packs 5,500 horsepower, each diesels add 3,000 more. The “motor” (electric engines are motors in RR lingo), was added for the climb through the Bitterroots, the Rockies and the Belt Mountain ranges. The diesels will run through to Chicago.
Little used former US highway 10 is seen below the train. The Clark Fork River begins near Butte and drains into Lake Pend Oreille (Ponderay) in Idaho. The river, continues through N.E. Washington as the Clark Fork or the Pend Oreille River (depending on which map you use), to the Columbia, just inside Canada at a town appropriately named “Boundary.”
Out of the picture and across the river is Interstate 90 and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe rails of the former Northern Pacific. The NP and Milwaukee crews could see each other for many miles passing through Montana. In many places they were side-by-side, somewhat like double-track.
This scene captured by Robert F. Wilt in July 1973, graced the Milwaukee Railroad Historical Association calendar for June 1992. Thirteen months later the electrics dropped their pantographs for the last time. Seven years hence the railroad ceased to exist west of Minnesota. – Gary Ostlund
In their rush to build westward, the railroads built some pretty substantial wooden bridges across chasms and watercourses. Timber was readily available and cheap, and steel was out of the question at that time. After the railroad’s “Last Spikes” were driven, and the bottom line improved, so did their rights-of-ways. The Milwaukee was the late-comer to extend their reach toward the Pacific Northwest, thus their route choices were made after two other major railroads built their lines across the same prairies and mountain ranges.
One could argue that you are viewing the same bridge, years apart. But, from the mid-teens, (the main picture), to the modern era a lot tree growth and foliage would have transpired. Also, the Milwaukee bridge design is pretty standard. There are five steel trestles in about a twelve mile stretch of rail-line leading to the 2-mile tunnel under Snoqualmie Pass. All five are curved in the same manner as these examples. You can see four to this day from your drive over Interstate-90.
Looking closely at the wooden trestle, you’ll see there are steel uprights inside the framework of the bridge. The first and second girders are set in place and the third has been lowered, temporarily secured, while an eastbound passenger train charges past. Earthen fills were used when conditions permitted. Factors included the height, and volume of the water-course being crossed, and availability of nearby fill material. Numerous lesser creeks were filled in the manner shown above, always the first choice when practical.
In their rush to build westward, the railroads built some pretty substantial wooden bridges across chasms and watercourses. Timber was readily available and cheap, and steel was out of the question at that time. After the railroad’s “Last Spikes” were driven, and the bottom line improved, so did their rights-of-ways. The Milwaukee was the late-comer to extend their reach toward the Pacific Northwest, thus their route choices were made after two other major railroads built their lines across the same prairies and mountain ranges.
One could argue that you are viewing the same bridge, years apart. But, from the mid-teens, (the main picture), to the modern era a lot tree growth and foliage would have transpired. Also, the Milwaukee bridge design is pretty standard. There are five steel trestles in about a twelve mile stretch of rail-line leading to the 2-mile tunnel under Snoqualmie Pass. All five are curved in the same manner as these examples. You can see four to this day from your drive over Interstate-90.
Looking closely at the wooden trestle, you’ll see there are steel uprights inside the framework of the bridge. The first and second girders are set in place and the third has been lowered, temporarily secured, while an eastbound passenger train charges past. Earthen fills were used when conditions permitted. Factors included the height, and volume of the water-course being crossed, and availability of nearby fill material. Numerous lesser creeks were filled in the manner shown above, always the first choice when practical.
In their rush to build westward, the railroads built some pretty substantial wooden bridges across chasms and watercourses. Timber was readily available and cheap, and steel was out of the question at that time. After the railroad’s “Last Spikes” were driven, and the bottom line improved, so did their rights-of-ways. The Milwaukee was the late-comer to extend their reach toward the Pacific Northwest, thus their route choices were made after two other major railroads built their lines across the same prairies and mountain ranges.
One could argue that you are viewing the same bridge, years apart. But, from the mid-teens, (the main picture), to the modern era a lot tree growth and foliage would have transpired. Also, the Milwaukee bridge design is pretty standard. There are five steel trestles in about a twelve mile stretch of rail-line leading to the 2-mile tunnel under Snoqualmie Pass. All five are curved in the same manner as these examples. You can see four to this day from your drive over Interstate-90.
Looking closely at the wooden trestle, you’ll see there are steel uprights inside the framework of the bridge. The first and second girders are set in place and the third has been lowered, temporarily secured, while an eastbound passenger train charges past. Earthen fills were used when conditions permitted. Factors included the height, and volume of the water-course being crossed, and availability of nearby fill material. Numerous lesser creeks were filled in the manner shown above, always the first choice when practical.
Today railroads spend millions of dollars on ribbon rail, expensive locomotives, cutting edge communications among other business needs. But there’s still a place for a roll of handy-dandy duct tape. Many uses, as you can see one example in the picture above. In this case, if air pressure is not maintained in the “trainline” as it’s called, the brakes take hold. Less than 50 cents worth of tape will help keep the hose connections from parting. Air hoses for the braking system, like those above are found just below the coupler connecting every car in a train.
Many experienced operating train crewman (or woman), pack around a roll, finding a wide variety of uses: 1) weather-stripping around damaged or ill-fitting cab doors on locomotives. A skilled crewman will apply it in a manner that would allow the door to be opened and closed without tearing or pulled loose. 2) It works nicely holding paper towel in fashioning a sun visor. 3) An ample amount will even seal a broken trainline to seal a crack. 4) It makes a great shade on a cab light. 5) Duct tape will cover holes in the cab walls to block the cold air from coming in.
George Westinghouse received a patent in 1869 for the Air Brake system, a live-saving invention. His air-brake system, adorns every rail car to this day. Little did he know he would get help from an everyday item from the hardware store. Gary O. Ostlund
The time is 12:30 PM on October 13, 1949. We’re inside Mission Tower, half a mile out of Los Angeles Union Station, watching Southern Pacific train 4, the Golden State (left) and Santa Fe 20, the Chief, departing simultaneously for Chicago. It looks like a race, but it’s not really much of a contest: The Chief, running on Santa Fe all the way for 2,224 miles, will beat the Golden State (2,268 miles on the SP and Rock Island) to the Windy City by about 7-3/4 hours.
The Chief will cross Cajon Pass to Barstow and shoot east across northern Arizona to Albuquerque, NM, then northeast over two mountain passes, and cut through the southeast corner of Colorado. After a stop in Dodge City and a few others, it will aim for Kansas City. Cutting through the SE corner of Iowa, crossing the Mississippi River, it will visit some cities in Illinois before arriving at Dearborn Station, one of seven railroad stations in Chicago.
The Golden State exits California near Yuma, does a bee-line for El Paso, then NE through New Mexico to Tucumcari. There the Rock Island takes over touching a bit of Oklahoma, slicing through Kansas to Topeka and on to Kansas City. Then the GS treks through a corner of Iowa, zips through the Quad Cities. On through the corn fields of Illinois, it completes its trek at LaSalle Street Station, only a few blocks from Dearborn and the Santa Fe.
There were other passenger trains that competed head-to-head, mainly the New York Centrals 20th Century Limited and Pennsy’s Broadway Limited. They raced out-of-Chicago, on parallel tracks, for many miles in their quest to get their patrons to New York City, fast. That daily race was a little more even-handed. The New York Central route to the Big Apple was 960.9 miles, with mostly water level terrain. The Broadway’s routing was only 908.2 miles, but included scaling the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania. Wikipedia states that both of these luxury trains completed their task in about 16 hours. The green hat crowd and the red hatters probably will never agree on that.
Credits: First paragraph verbatim in Classic Trains Magazine, Spring 2021
The Missouri River is the longest river in North America. Rising in the Rocky Mountains of western Montana, the Missouri flows east and south for 2,341 miles before entering the Mississippi River north of St. Louis, Missouri. The river drains a sparsely populated, semi-arid watershed of more than 500,000 square miles, which includes parts of ten U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Although nominally considered a tributary of the Mississippi, the Missouri River above the confluence is much longer and carries a comparable volume of water. When combined with the lower Mississippi River, it forms the world’s fourth longest river system.
Matthew Herson climbed this hillside in the Fall of 1967 to capture this scene downriver from Three Forks, Montana, where the Gallatin, Jefferson, and Madison rivers converge whereupon — America’s longest river is born. If you add the length of the Madison River, then nearly the first 400 miles of this system travels northwest and northeast, then east, before trekking mostly south to meet the mighty Mississippi.
The train is the Northern Pacific’s Mainstreeter going downriver, westbound to the coast. Across the river is the track of the Milwaukee Railroad. An anomaly has the NP’s westbound trains going downriver, while the Milwaukee westbounds go upriver. Sounds impossible, but it’s all in the routing of their tracks.
Later when asked “if he saw any rattlesnakes,” the place is full of them. Thanks for the advance notice…. Credits: First paragraph verbatim – Internet. Herson’s photo skills were featured in the latest Mainstreeter, the NP Railway Historical Associations quarterly magazine. Submitted by Gary Ostlund
The engineer has just opened the throttle to get underway. When an operating steam engine sits, unmoved for any period of time condensation builds in the cylinders. Steam and air can compress, water and vapor cannot. So, when the train is to be moved the engineer must open the cylinder cocks at the bottom of the piston chamber and let the movement of the piston drive out the moisture. Obviously, it is not a safe place to observe, note the seagull scrambling to exit the scene.
In the picture, the Great Northern mallet # 2050 is exiting Interbay Yard in Seattle, with a long freight. Snow in Seattle is not rare, rather, just an annoyance to be dealt with. Having snow and cold temps does enhance the drama of steam and smoke, however.
That’s Queen Anne hill in the background, with city center beyond. Soon this freight will cross Bridge #4, over the Lake Washington Ship Canal trekking north along Puget Sound. Its destination could be Stevens Pass and points east, or continue north to Bellingham or Vancouver, B.C.
Our two oldest kids learned how to count watching slow moving boxcars from this same vantage point. We lived in nearby Ballard in ’61 & 62. All diesel by then, darn.
Credits: Hall Will Collection, Museum of History & Science, Seattle
Sadly, these days we rarely see a caboose at the end of a train. Yesterday’s train crew of five or six is now an engineer and conductor, and they ride in comfort up front in their diesel locomotive. But in days past, the caboose was not only an observation platform, it served as the “Home on the Road” for the crew.
Until laws were passed limiting a workday to 16 hours (more recently reduced to 14 and now 12) the train crew relied on the caboose for food and housing. Trains were dispatched with orders stating essentially: “get it there – no matter how long it takes” Train crews cooked and slept aboard.
Trains would also stop where restaurants were close by, and many depots had a beanery. This cartoon by Joe Easley depicts the conductor instructing the hustling brakeman to “make mine Ham on Rye.” As you can imagine, train crews weren’t going to go hungry for long, as they knew where the food was good, pies fresh and coffee hot (and a cute waitress thrown in for good measure.) And more than just occasionally a track-side farmer lost a chicken or two.
In Trains Magazine’s special “Railroads and World War II” a story is told that President Roosevelt and Mexican President Manual Avila Camacho and their entourage were travelling in Mexico to Laredo at night. The train stopped out in the middle of nowhere, and as you can imagine the Secret Service went nuts. The Mexican Trainmaster calmly told them the crew was enjoying their usual late-night snack. “They can’t do that. There’s a couple of presidents on board.” At some point the agents were pointed toward a barely visible light. They ended up walking nearly a half mile to a small shack, where they found the crew enjoying sandwiches washed down with tequila. As presidential secretary Grace Tully later wrote, “Conversation in neither English nor Spanish could prevail upon them to return to the train until they had finished their meal.”
Gary O. Ostlund, gary.ostlund2@gmail.com, Pinehurst – USA
A pair of Little Joes and two EMD diesels with a mile of freight tied to their tail reach to top of Pipestone Pass. The train is about to enter the tunnel under U.S. Highway 10 and the Continental Divide at Donald, Montana. Then it is all downhill, rather steeply to Butte, and river level down the Clarks Fork through Missoula to St. Regis. There the train will once again strain to attain the top of the Bitterroots.
Railroads in assembling long freights normally lash up multiple units to provide the power necessary to make the haul. But the Milwaukee Road was not normal. They lashed up multiple electrics along with multiple diesels, all operated by a single engineer. A special throttle device was used connecting the two differing systems, called the Wylie Controller, named for the inventor.
The Milwaukee Road crossed five major mountain ranges in their route to the coast, the Belts and Tobacco Roots (part of the Rockies) in Montana, the Bitterroots entering Idaho, and the Saddles and Cascades in Washington. Those tough grades were the justification for electrification. Unlike steam and diesel, electrics were impervious to high altitude and extremely cold temperatures. Under such harsh conditions, reciprocating engines loose horsepower.
On relatively level ground the electrics do all the work, while the diesel units were allowed to idle. At the foot of the next grade the diesels were powered up, adding to the mix.
This is one of my all-time favorite pictures, from the lens of noted photographer Steve Patterson. Nicely framed, it graces the wall in my office, I see it as I type this. Long-time readers, saw this picture and story over ten years ago. Gary O. Ostlund
Photography by Gary O. Ostlund – Click picture for larger view
In wandering around the Antonito yard before departure, I was taken by this sampling of dual gauge track. This picture clearly shows three rails leading to a string of boxcars in the distance. The cars are narrow gauge.
In the heyday of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad there were several stretches of dual gauge. Why dual gauge? The D&RGW served all of Colorado from West of the I-25 corridor and on to Salt Lake City. The severity of the mountain grades and curves in the Southwest quarter of the state made narrow gauge construction a necessity.
So, from Denver, Pueblo and Walsenburg west, to many points there was dual gauge track. In the LaVeta Pass area narrow gauge track was laid. Years later standard gauge was built on a nearby alignment. This allowed standard gauge ladings to move directly to distribution centers at the base of the mountains in places such as Antonito, Leadville, Montrose, and Salida. This also let the narrow-gauge cars to haul minerals, coal, limestone and other products directly to markets.
Standard gauge to this day reaches Antonito, however, there is no exchange of traffic. The narrow gauge Cumbres & Toltec Scenic is strictly for the tourists. And what a ride it was. Gary O. Ostlund
Submitted by Gary Ostlund – After Pearl Harbor and the start of World War II, the railroads quickly took measures to protect themselves. Note the hoods over the locomotive headlight and marker lights. Even the small classification lights on the locomotive’s smokebox are hooded.
Not long after the December 7th attack the Japanese gained a foothold far out on the Aleutian Islands. With the threat of further air attacks railroads took these precautions along with shielded fireboxes, and blackened windows on passenger equipment.
On the civilian side, city street lights and windows were darkened. American and Canadian military forces building the ALCAN Highway deliberately built curves in the road to hinder the ability of enemy aircraft strafing convoys. Some of those curves were still visible in 1973.
Credits: NP 2604 at Tacoma – Jim Fredrickson, SP 2470 headlight – Jack Delano, Caboose marker light – Southern Pacific Lines.
