Notice the four wheel caboose. The cupola is standard Big Four, wide and high. 12/28/08 Maurice Lewman Collection. Carthage is South of Anderson In on the Big Four/NYC
I wonder if the wreck caused the Bobber to come to rest that far from the track, or if it had been moved out of the way for access? Since the rails look good all the way to the distant cars, I suspect the latter. I always enjoy your looks into history, Roger. Thanks.
Ooo, that one that Point353 posted looks really bad. I wonder when the Central stopped using bobbers? I don't ever remember seeing one in my youth.
Point353, Do you have more Big Four photos? My web site could use them with your permission and acknowledge. http://madisonrails.railfan.net/
On the first photo the houses in the background are still standing. To the right of the wrecker boom you can see can see a tall switch stand. The reason for this was that the engine crew could not see a trainman on the ground with a cut of cars. When coming out of the track with a cut when they realigned the switch they would stop , and shove ahead until the brakeman came into view . This switch was gone by the time I came on the job. Blind moves were a normal thing on the Mich. At Wabash we would pull down letting the brakeman off on the move, pull down and stop where the cut would be ,we hoped and stop. The brakeman would big hole the air when he was ready to pull ahead. At the north end of the yards around a curve and behind the grade of another railroad we would stop , reverse the cut for the brakeman to pull the pin and pull ahead until we were over the switch . Giving the trainman time to through the switch we would start back to set off in the yards. When we were about 3 cars from the brakeman we would see his lantern . We had never saw the brakeman or his light during this move until the 3 cars before cutting off of the power. LEW
I assume back then most cars were about the same length, 36'-40', so the engineer would have a pretty good feel for distance. Otherwise it would "Beguess-n-Begorra", and God help the trainman on the ground.
You are right Hytec. We had an engineer ,nickname Smoke Hoover. When switching the Carthage Paper Mill 5,6 tracks were double spotted meaning you could go through the cars in # 5 to #6 to load . When spotting # 5 the engineer's side was close to a wall. When they lifted the pin and gave Smoke a slack back he had the next spot marked on the wall. Stopping at that mark Smoke would hear the pin lever rattle and look out. That worked good with the40 ft. box cars ,but from about 1950 on 50 ft. box cars were coming into use and Smoke had missed the spot and needed to move another few ft. for the proper spot. We used pole space to figure caboose location when pulling out of sidings or around curves when the cab could not be seen. We used 3 cars to the pole space until all cars started getting longer and then you had to update to about 2 cars. Using spots for distance location was an everyday thing from where the caboose was located , to your location at anytime on dark nights running 70 mph and only can see 100 ft. ahead. LEW
