From October 1979 at Knoxville, TN, L&N 1303 looks like she's got an oil leak. The L&N amassed quite a fleet of C-420s from the Monon, SAL, TC and P&N, but the 1303 is one of 16 built for the L&N. These were seen all over eastern KY and TN working the coalfields.
The last electric locomotive delivered to the Pennsylvania Railroad awaits visitors at the RR Museum of Pennsylvania, Strasburg, PA, on a winter's day.
I saw E-44s only once, a pair at Princeton Jct. in July 1978. The sun was in a bad spot, but I took the shot anyway. At the time there was great pressure for CR to somehow remove freight from the corridor, but despite the PRR's highly engineered cutoffs and bypasses, there was only so much that could be done.
I came across this on my morning news feed. Man walking along railroad tracks that have had the spleepers destroyed by retreating Germans with a “Schwellenpflug” railroad plough in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, early 1945. (Photo by John Phillips). Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
Here's a video of one in action. The Wehrmacht in desparate retreat. In the last few seconds of the video you can see them also using explosives to drop lineside poles on the right of way.
There is a story in my family about 4935. My grandfather worked for the PRR. My uncle, took my grandfather to the museum there, near the end of his life, and they were walking around and such. They got to the GG-1 and my grandfather said to his son(my uncle) "I drove that train". My uncle, thinking his dad was having a 'senior moment' said "yeah dad, they had a lot of these GG-1's", to which my grandfather replied "No Tom, I drove THAT one!". Now, I don't know if it is true. From what I understand, grandpa drove train out of sunnyside yard down to I believe Baltimore and north to the end of the electrified line , I believe in south western Conn. I was told he started out shoveling coal, and I know he retired in the Penn Central days....well, I think, I was just a boy. I do know, he refused to fly. Every winter in retirement him and grandma would take the train to Florida from NY. He was a tough and scary man when I was little....but if you wanted to get a smile out of him...you brought up his PRR days. Sorry to divert from your regularly scheduled programming.
That reminded me of one of my visits to Exporail a few years ago, BP (before pandemic). I was sitting the the cab of CN 9400 (MLW FA-1) when a lady of about my age entered the cab from the engine compartment, with an elderly man in tow. He said "I worked on this one", and he explained that he was a mechanic with CN at the time. I had a shiver up my spine, because right in front of me was a living, breathing link to this museum piece. Best feeling in the world... Now, every time I get into 9400's cab, that tingly feeling comes back. And I remember the man from the shop.
Here is a boxcar that I came across last Saturday morning (1/21/23) in Jackson MS that really grabbed my interest much more than I would have expected and I'm not sure why. It is cool and a totally unexpected catch. The light was not great so I am happy the pic came out as good as it did. Now I have to figure out if it will pass or do I have to do a bunch of research and then model it. Need more coffee to ponder it.
“Working On The Railroad” A welding crewman grinding the rails in preparation for Thermal Welding of a joint at Blaines Crossing in Bertram, IA. January 25, 2023 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That's really neat. I wonder what its purpose is? I found an aerial view of it on the web and it has a unique roof as well, perhaps solar panels?
It has ranged far and wide (Mississippi, Ontario, Wisconsin, Illinois), as rrpicturearchives shows: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/rspicture.aspx?id=1230331 Lot of very good photos, including the other side, lettered in English. There's a "people door" on that side instead of the usual box car door. There is an oblique overhead view that shows some kind of plates or panels mounted on top of the roof ribs as add-ons. There's more than one. It's a different beast from the self-propelled track geometry car CN built from an RDC.
If you look really close at the left under the inspection car, and just right of the trucks-those are actually lasers that are looking for anything in the railheads, like a crack, bad welds, etc. CSX has one too with a big "DO NOT HUMP" on it. They'll roam the whole system looking for imperfections in the rails. There's cameras and all sorts of equipment in it. BNSF uses old passenger cars too, with the same equipment.
An old tunnel motor working for its new master in Rosenberg back in the late 1990s. A blob of snow in the foreground had fallen off of a BNSF train coming down from points north. It had not snowed recently around these parts.
It has snowed recently around these parts! 86 cars worth of a CP transfer leave the old GN yard and head west to the interchange track to return to the CP yard while ice fog guilds everything in white:
