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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 17:40:49
From: Herbert Harwood
Subject: FDR travel
FDR made numerous trips to Hyde Park during his presidency -- it was his
principal haven for R&R, as well as for entertaining various dignitaries.
For just the period from September 1943 to March 1945 I counted 17 round
trips, not including some stopovers on longer trips. Most of these were
weekend jaunts -- out of Washington Friday night, back on Monday morning --
plus a few long weekends.
Before WWII routing of the trains was split roughly 50-50 between the B&O and PRR. The PRR routing, of course, followed the NEC and Hell Gate Bridge to New Rochelle, then back to Mott Haven, and on to Hyde Park via NYC's Hudson Division. (This was also the routing of FDR's funeral train on April 14-15, 1945.) The B&O route was B&O to Claremont Jct., in Jersey City, where NYC power from Weehawken met the train and took it north. From Claremont Jct., the train followed the National Docks Ry. and NYC Jersey City branch to Weehawken, then NYC West Shore to Highland, NY, opposite Poughkeepsie. At Highland, autos met the entourage and took them through Poughkeepsie to Hyde Park. (Sometimes, I'm told, Roosevelt's specially equipped personal Ford convertible would be shipped along.)
But when the US entered the war, the Secret Service got nervous about Hell Gate Bridge, and, except for two campaign trips to New York and into New England in 1944, the B&O-West Shore routing was used all of the time. I'm sure that the Pennsy wasn't devastated to lose the business since, besides all the usual precautions, Roosevelt insisted on a 50 mph top speed -- not the greatest kind of movement for the wartime NEC, even if the trains did run mostly at night.
Ah...the Allamuchy trip. There was only one that I have any record of. This left Washington the evening of August 31, 1944, and tied on on the siding at Allamuch early morning of September 1. Roosevelt was picked up about 9 or 10 AM along with two Secret Service agents and disappeared, leaving the entire trainload to wander aimlessly around Metropolitan Allamuchy wondering why they were there. Many were still wondering until their dying day. I can't document the routing out of Washington to Allamuchy, but am 99.9+% sure it was PRR-Trenton-PRR Bel-Del branch to Phillipsburg, then L&HR to Allamuchy. I base this on the fact that I know that there were PRR representatives on the train, and I saw no reference to any B&O people.
Roosevelt returned in mid-afternoon and the train continued north, leaving one Secret Service agent stranded at Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd's. (Both agents were posted outside, and he didn't know FDR had left until Lucy came out later and found him still standing, or sitting, guard.) From Allamuchy the L&HR took the train to Maybrook, then NH to its Highland station, where Roosevelt debarked. (If the Secret Service had qualms about Hell Gate Bridge, they surely wanted no part of the Poughkeepsie Bridge.) The train then continued over the bridge and was switched to the NYC to be taken to the usual servicing point at Selkirk. The return trip on September 5 followed the normal West Shore-B&O route from Highland.
Herb Harwood
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 08:55:56 EDT
From: fcgamst
Subject: Silk on Silk Trains
Re the legendary silk trains, a bit of a contribution:
When I "hired out" in May of '55, the silk trains were long gone from the LA&SL. They had sometimes ran out of East San Pedro on Terminal Island or Long Beach but often ran out of Seattle on the OWR&N - OSL. However, the memory of the work they provided lingered on, in tales of the "rails." LA&SL or OSL would hand the silk trains over to the UP on "the main line."
The raw silk was perishable, we "students" were told. Accordingly, high-speed reefers and sometimes baggage cars were used to run the valuable cargo "from the Orient" to "back East." The silk trains ran on a slower psgr. schedule, sometimes as head-end cars of a psgr. train on its normal run, sometimes as a "special," displaying white (proceed) signals, and sometimes as a following section of a psgr. schedule, for which green (caution) signals were displayed. But all these kinds of trains carried raw silk and not worms.
A silk train was much "hotter" than an all-strawberry block of iced, dripping, dark green, REA, high-speed reefers, run as a psgr. train. For the silk trains, crew changes were on the main track. (Message: "DO NOT DELAY THIS TRAIN CLOSE CONNECTION FOR POWER")
Would today's RRs be capable of reliably handling such a silk "hot shot" from coast to coast? Discussion?
/FRED GAMST/
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 09:19:24 EDT
From: fcgamst
Subject: Re: Coal-burning locos in the future?
Dear All:
At the risk of being somewhat off our RR topics, I submit the following on our threatened ability to consume inexpensive oil. (Maybe not inexpensive when one thinks of the total cost to the US to secure and sustain oil supplies.)
A response to a railroader who sent me the petroleum supply article at [ http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ ]:
On Energy Theory:
Thanks for the piece on oil [ at http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ ], which I read with interest. For 80 semesters, I have been in a "school" of social science called energy theory of society. All societies depend on energy, which limits and channels what they are capable of becoming.
Egalitarian foraging socs depend on limited energy from game and gathered plants, horticulturalists (using hand tools only) grow some crops and can develop chiefdoms, pastoralists herd their animals, plow agriculturalists can cultivate enough energy to form highly complex, hierarchical societies needing writing to keep things under control and have the surplus energy to "build pyramids" and control commoners and slaves. Fossil-fuel energized societies are quite recent, in the millions of years of cultural evolution of humans and their ancestors.
As the piece says, we can't go on happily burning two-dollar gasoline when China and India are consuming, with an ever-growing demand, from the same barely increasing trough of oil, used also as a feedstock or basis for all manner of production, from fertilizer, to plastics, and as lubricants.
Changing the infrastructure of our industrial energy base will be extremely expensive, and might no longer mean tooling around cheaply in our Merry Oldsmobi le. Spindeltop ca. 1900 began a particular era of (ephemeral?) American development and a way of life.
The American way of life will gradually change (diminish in its standard of consumption?) as our access to needed oil dwindles. Gasoline and tire rationing will be part of our new order, just as it was when I was a child in WW II. Life will not change with a bang but with a whimper.
The only unknowns are How soon, how much, and exactly what consequences?
Those question are what the Congress should be handling, not the sustaining of life of one person ruled on by the third branch of govt., the courts. The concern and activity of a legislator should be more than posing for animal crackers.
/FRED/
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Message: 12
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 15:37:52
From: "Smith, Charlie"
Subject: European speed runs
Here is some commentary from Hank Raudenbush regarding European speed runs. Hope that it is enjoyed. Charlie Smith
From: Raudenbush, Hank
Re: Steam Speed
The reports of 90 mph with Class 9 2-10-0's appeared in the
British railfan press at the time. While the timings were unofficial,
train timing has been highly developed in Britain, and can be considered
as quite reliable. I remember the heading of the article: Ninety With
A Nine!, I believe in The Railway Magazine. The article may have been
written by C.J.Allen, who wrote extensively on train timing.
The German locomotive mentioned is the one now numbered 02 0202, a pacific with drivers 2300 mm (90.5 inches) diameter. This engine was originally built as a streamlined tank engine, 4-6-6T, to haul a lightweight train between Berlin and Dresden. This was at a time - early 30's - when diesel streamliners were getting a lot of attention, but the RR felt that the Dresden route needed a diner in the train, hence locomotive haulage (I also suspect that the steam types wanted to show they could match what the diesels were doing). This is much like the original 4-4-2 powered "Hiawatha" beside the early "Zephyrs". There were two such locomotives.
Postwar one of these ended up in East German, one in the west. In order to provide a locomotive for high speed testing, the one in East Germany was rebuilt as a Pacific, using a trailing truck salvaged from a 2-10-2, but keeping the high wheels. The original streamlining was removed but it was given a little shrouding along the running boards. This engine has been used in a number of fan trips, and has been frequently exhibited at DR/DB open houses. Recently it has been overhauled at the Meiningen shop (which now works exclusively on steam, for the DB's steam [program and for various museum groups). A high speed run is planned.
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Message: 18
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 12:26:20
From: blarny2
Subject: PRSL 86" drivers
Ton De Fazio remembers well. The 86" drivered PRSL locomotives were Reading Camelback 4-4-2's of either the P5 or P6 class. At this remove I don't recall which. The other class "merely" had 84" (I think) drivers. I spent my Easter school vacation, from New York, in Collingswood, N.J., and learned as a young kid railfan the true meaning of "Ballast Scorcher" by watching PRSL engineers highwheel through town, whistles screaming, drumbeat exhausts too close together to count, making those Pennsy and Reading Atlantics do what they were meant to do. This was from about 1932 until our last peacetime Easter in 1941.
Regarding the 90.5" (2300mm) drivers on the two German classes, I have a photo of each type, the DB 4-6-4 without the streamlined casing, and the DR 4-6-2. These are not the best quality, having been scanned from pocket book images of about 1"x3", with text. However, they're clear enough to appreciate their good looks. E-mail me directly with a request for either or both. Tech data are on a different page. If you'd like that, too, I'll copy it out and forward also.
Robert J. Powers
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Message: 4
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 08:51:04 -0500
From: De Fazio
Subject: Novelty
Hi, Adrian,
I do not know whether the attachment is appropriate to the R&LHS on-line forum or not. I leave that wholly to your discretion. In fact, it may be already familiar to parts of the readership. I arrived home to find it attached to a message from my wife. It amused me
immediately; perhaps it will amuse you too. Unfortunately, I do not now know its URL. If you wish to know that, I'll seek it.
It is clip-art animation, so I believe there are no copyright issues, but I cannot verify this. It ran well on our Mac, within Netscape 4.7. It runs, but only briefly, in QuickTime. I hope it runs, and well, for you.
Please note that I am not putting it forth as a candidate R&LHS logo!
Regards, Tom (Thomas L. De Fazio)
***From Adrian: Unfortunately, Tom this cannot appear in a digest. I'm approving it, and I think those few subscribers we have who are in "Individual E-mail mode" will see it. I like it, and I'm going to see if I can copy it onto our website.
