After cutting off from the train they helped to summit, the helper conductor checks the block indicators before crossing over and heading back to Bena helper pocket. Tehachapi CA.
Last week, in the Weekly Proto Fun post, we were talking about the McKeen motor cars. Yesterday, I made it up to IRM with a few guys from the Illini Railroad club. One of our members volunteers there, so we were able to get the 'backshop tour' and visit some places not open to the public. Some of the buildings are not up to fire code, so they are technically closed to the public. Some of the trains in bad condition or those under repair are stored in those barns. In one of them was a McKeen trailer, the only trailer car left preserved as a railcar. Another exists in California, but the body is being used as a storage shed. The California car is (I believe) a passenger carrying car, while this one is a baggage car. In the second photo, you can also see a letterbox door, so it may have had a RPO compartment too. The lettering and paint have long since faded, but this used to be a Union Pacific car. I wish I got some better photos, but the lighting is bad and it's hard to take photos when there are more trains on the track right next to you. Getting wide angle shots or long distance ones is almost impossible in the barns due to their close confines. I'll have to go through my phone to see what else I got photos of. We were able to get in the some of the locomotive cabs and I got a walkthrough of the Nebraska Zephyr's engine room too. Unless you have a museum guide, don't go and do what I did. We were guided and instructed, so it wasn't like we were breaking into to random buildings and locomotive cabs.
This is run as a bi-directional locomotive. The K3LA had all three bells facing forward. To reverse one bell would have meant cutting off and repositioning the mount. The P-5 has a taller mounting and two bells can face reverse. Randy
Wow! That McKeen car built SO long ago and still here. Also, I don't think the CP should ever change their locomotive paint scheme. Doug
Fine looking Black River & Western 2-8-0 No. 60 at Flemington, NJ in June 1980. She was built by Alco in 1937 for Colorado sugar hauler Great Western and is still in service with the BR&W.
ATK 924 heads a westbound train at Princeton Jct, NJ in July 1978. Originally PRR 4931 built in 1943 at Altoona, she was later scrapped.
Northwest NJ had its own steam powered railroad in the Morris County Central, running a former US Army 0-6-0 on a rural portion of the former NYS&W mainline which had been abandoned. The operation was only modestly successful and shut down shortly after this slide was taken. The 4039 survives awaiting rebuilding at the Whippany Railway Museum elsewhere in NJ. [Newfoundland, NJ - November 1980]
I saw a CP EMD just like the one in Buddy's photo above in Austin, MN today. It looked brand new. I was driving, didn't have a camera, didn't have my cell phone with a camera, etc. I have all kinds of excuses for not having a picture of it. Doug
Saw a lot of long trains while we drove back to Texas from Wyoming. We were on a tight schedule to get back to San Antonio to turn in the rent car so no body would indulge me and pull over to get a picture. While I was a back seat passenger I did try to get a few photos. This was an empty oil train somewhere along the old Denver & Fort Worth line in North East New Mexico.
That's actually a nice photo Russell. It well captures a slice of life that we've all experienced, with all eyes suddenly diverted lineside to watch a train pass by. Fast forward a few more decades and even the car's interior will be quaint and of interest.
Ah yes, one of the best sights you will ever see. Driving on the plains and a train shows up! Russel, how did you know they were empties? Doug
The Erie's WC Tower at Waldwick, NJ was still in service in March 1982 when I took this slide. It remained in service until 1986 when it was closed by NJ Transit. Happily, it was renovated by the Waldwick Historical Society and opened as a museum in 2009. It still sits trackside. The bottom picture shows the tower in N Scale on my old layout. Someone produced a really nice wood and metal kit of it. I saved my model and it'll reappear on my new layout after some fixing and repainting.
The Erie's WJ Tower stood at Ridgewood Jct, NJ where the main line and the Bergen County line met. Not sure who located the pole smack dab in front of the tower, but there it is. Gotta say that those wires and heavy cable look good -- ya just don't see such sights anymore. I don't know if WJ still stands. [July 1982]