S. Berliner, III's Railroad Continuation Page 1 keywords = rail road way model train Z HO scale Ztrack Western Fruit Express WFEX Great Northern GN LIRR Long Island Baltimore Chesepeake Ohio B&O C&O steam diesel boxcab locomotive restoration Pennsylvania Pennsy PRR Kiesel Horseshoe Muleshoe Curve Berlinerwerke Vest Pocket Degnon Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal BEDT Marion River Carry Adirondack Raquette Lake New York Boston Westchester Atlantic Cross Harbor Dock LFM "

Updated: 02 Mar 2011, 20:00 ET [Page created 28 Apr 2005 original AT&T Worldnet Website begun 30 May 1996.]	URL: http://sbiii.com/rr1.html [was at "home.att.net/~Berliner-Ultrasonics/rr1.html"]

S. Berliner, III
Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
"changing materials with high-intensity sound"

[consultation is on a fee basis]

Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher

- The vast bulk of my massive Web presence (over 485 pages) had been hosted by AT&T's WorldNet service since 30 May 1996; they dropped WorldNet effective 31 Mar 2010 and I am scrambling to transfer everything. Everything's saved but all the links have to be changed, mostly by hand. See my sbiii.com Transfer Page for any updates on this tedious process.

S. Berliner, III's

sbiii.com

Railroad Continuation Page 1

NOTE: Page size is limited by HTML to 30kB; thus, I've been forced to add this continuation page and continuation pages to fit the lengthy Horseshoe Curve and Berlinerwerke sagas and relocate the Vest Pocket Railroads You Can Model.

NOTE: In addition, I've also been forced to move Long Island Rail Road and related Long Island railroad information onto separate LIRR continuation pages.

INDEX:

On the preceding page:
Link to ALCo Love Song (moved 16 Dec 99 to it's own separate page)
EMD Paean
Standard Gauge

On this Railroad Continuation Page (1):
TRAIN SHED CYCLOPEDIA (the publication - moved from main RR page on 28 Apr 05).
1941 Loco Prices (moved from main RR page 28 Apr 05).
Superior Diesel Engines (and Ingalls/GM&O #1900)
NYC Pacemaker Wreck - 1952-54.
EMD FL-9 Third Rail Pick-Ups.
L. F. M. Disc Drivers. new (02 Mar 2011)

On Railroad page 2:
RR Miscellany, including:
A and B vs. F (and 1 and 2) Ends.
Southern Railroad.
B&O and C&O.
Bering Strait Tunnel.
New York, Boston & Westchester Railroad
(moved from main RR page 09 Oct 2001)

On Railroad page 3:
(Material moved from Railroad Page 2 on 21 Apr 00)

Oddities.
including a Staten Island Trackless Trolley!
Articulateds (and Duplexiii).
Degrees of Curvature.
RR Questions (Help)

On Railroad Continuation Page (4):
Anhalter Bahnhof - world's largest trainshed.
Trolleys (about nomenclature) {moved from BHRA page on 10 Feb 2005}.

On other pages:

ALCO-GE-IR Boxcabs,
ALCO-GE-IR Survivor Boxcabs continuation page, with roster, and
ALCO-GE-IR Survivor Boxcabs continuation page, with notes,
ALCO-GE-IR CNJ #1000 Survivor Boxcab (the first production unit sold),
ALCO-GE-IR Boxcabs Continuation Page, including LIRR #401,
the world's first production diesel road switcher, and
Ingersoll-Rand Boxcabs, with a 1929 I-R boxcab brochure,
and I-R and GE Instruction Sheets for a 1929 600HP, 100-ton unit.
Other Boxcabs, with a boxcabs bibliography.
S. Berliner, III's Pennsylvania Railroad Page,
with THE SOUTH PENN RR,
and PRR Modeling (Penn Line/Cary/Bowser)
Berlinerwerke Saga (HO-Scale, included with Horseshoe Curve information)
and continuation pages with prototype and HO/N/S scale dimensions,
satellite photo, pictures, description of the Horseshoe Curve.
Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal Railroad
EMD - Electro-Motive Division of GM - models, etc.,
including EMD engines EMD may never have dreamed of,
such as the great DDP45!

Railroads You can Model,
Marion River Carry Railroad* (now on its own page).
Vest Pocket Railroads You Can Model:
Degnon Terminal Railroad, plus
Murrer's Sidings,
Kearney Sidings, and
Blissville/Laurel Hill (and Maspeth and Fresh Pond).
Vest Pocket Railroads You Can Model - continued
Atlas Terminal RR

Schnable and other Giant RR Cars.
Schnable Cars Continuation Page.
The Whyte System of Classification (4-4-0, 4-6-2, B-B, etc.).
MODEL RAILROADING
plus Z-Scale (1:220) Model Railroading.
Half-Z Scale - 1:440 Tiny Trains!
Long Island Rail Road
LIRR Continuation Page 3:
Victorian Stations Still Standing on the LIRR
(with dimensions).
Long Island Railroads
including:
Long Island Railroads (old and new flags)
[with a link to the NYCRR (Hell Gate)], and
LIRR FIRSTS.
LIRR Bibliography.

Long Island Rail Road Historical Society Home Page.

Brooklyn Historic Railway Association and the legendary LIRR Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.

PRR Horseshoe and Muleshoe Curves
minor write up here; on separate page with Berlinerwerke Saga
Schnable heavy duty freight cars (with photos!)

RR Miscellany, including:
B&O and C&O.

Railroad Eagles - my/Dave Morrison's page about the Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal eagles.

Z-Scale (1:220) Model Railroading.
Z-Scale Page 3 with
Half-Z Scale - 1:440 Tiny Trains and even 1:900 Tiniest Trains!

HOW TO BOOT A STEAM LOCOMOTIVE or How to hostle without really tiring -
(Firing up a cold oil burner).

Give Credit Where Credit is Due Department

See the preceding page.

I am not a fan of Dreyfuss styling (nor even of most Loewey designs, Sharks excepted) but this Larry Grossman 32" x 24" poster came in on the cover of Historic Railfan's catalog (08 Feb 06), which was badly mangled, showing "a trio of bullet-nosed J3a Hudsons - - - by a coal station in Schenectady, New York", and I just HAD to repair it as as much as I could and show it here:

TRAIN SHED CYCLOPEDIA
(the publication)

and moved here from the main RR page on 28 Apr 05.

On this site, especially in the BOXCABS section, I make extensive reference to, and borrow liberally from, a publication of the mid-1970s put out by by Newton K. Gregg, Publisher, of Novato, California. In particular, volumes No. 15 of January 1974, No. 20 of June 1974, and No. 43 of March 1976, covering "HEAVY TRACTION 1922-1941", "DIESEL ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES 1925-1938", and "DIESEL & OIL ELECTRICS from Westinghouse (1930) and Ingersoll-Rand (1936)" have been fabulous sources. As I state elsewhere, the material extracted from these volumes is not of my origin but is from TRAIN SHED CYCLOPEDIA, for which Gregg did not claim copyright; nevertheless I give full credit and provenance in each instance. However, be advised that Karen Stephans, owner of Stephans Railroad History of Talbott, Tennessee, a dealer in RR books, etc., has purchased all stock and rights to the TRAIN SHED CYCLOPEDIA effective 09 July 2004 (or earlier). Click here for a listing of available old issues and new reprints.

I met Karen at the NMRA National Train Show in Seattle 09-11 Jul 2004 and she had a very large selection of TRAIN SHED CYCLOPEDIAs on display but if anyone has issues not available through Stephans, please consider contacting Karen re reproduction so we can all benefit.

Please note that many of these photos are builder's or owner's photos and rather arty and so I have taken the liberty of cropping many to minimize the memory used; this is a history of technology, not of the art of photography.

RECENT PRICES OF LOCOMOTIVES - 1941

(source - Marks' Mechanical Engineers' Handbook, Fourth Edition, 1941)
{moved from main RR page on 28 Apr 05)

                WEIGHT in lbs.     COST of          COST/LB.

TYPE             (loco only)    Loco & Tender     (loco only)

4-8-4 (passenger)  476,000        $151,000              31.8ó

2-10-4             520,000         133,000              25.6

0-8-0              279,000          73,000              26.2

4-6-6-4            625,000         181,650              29.0

2-8-4              436,500         122,900              27.9

4-8-4 (freight)    468,000         138,000              29.4

4-6-4              409,000         142,000              34.6


Diesel-electric streamliner

   locomotive, two 1,800 hp units

       semi-permanently connected $378,000;

   same, single 1,800 hp unit      190,000;

Diesel-electric switcher, 600 hp,   70,000.

The handbook states that there were 795 electric locomotives in use in the U. S. at the end of 1938, of which 36% were for passenger service and 40% for freight. The handbook further states that there were 250 oil-electric locomotives in use in 1938, of which 225 were switchers. No prices were given for electrics or for rail motorcars. You might compare these to current MP15AC or reworked FL9 costs.

Superior Diesel Engines (and Ingalls/GM&O #1900)

Will Davis, who has a major site about locomotives, especially diesels, was quite lucky to acquire a brochure, Bulletin No. 4707, "Superior LOCOMOTIVE DIESELS / ENGINE MODELS 40 and 65", published ca. 1947 by the Superior Engine Division of National Supply Company in Springfield, Ohio. It is about the Superior Models 40 and 65 diesel engines for application in diesel-electric locomotives and features the odd turret-cab, one-off Ingalls Shipbuilding Company Model 4-S locomotive, which became Gulf, Mobile & Ohio (GM&O) #1900 in mid-1946. Here is the cover of the brochure:

Superior never made it into U. S. production diesel loco engines, although they did power many export locos, especially Whitcombs. They also repowered a number of engines, including these two boxcabs, American Aggregates #638 and Chiriqui Land #6:

American Aggregates #638 is rather odd looking because it was originally built as an interurban freight motor, owned by the Cincinnati & Lake Erie. It was sold to American Aggregates, which converted it from external (trolley wire) power to internal diesel-electric power (American Aggregates made many other such conversions but this is the only one known to have been equipped with a Superior engine.

Chiriqui Land Company #6 was a small General Electric boxcab originally powered by a Winton / EMC 201 series diesel engine; by inclusion in this brochure, one can logically prfesume it was later repowered with a Superior engine.

Will has several pages on the Superior brochure, Superior Diesels for Locomotive Service. There you can find never-before published photos of Ingalls GM&O #1900, showing that it had a clerestory roof behind the cab to accomodate the tall Superior engine and a passenger car vestibule and steps at the rear.

NYC PACEMAKER WRECK - 1952-54 (or -55)

Here are hitherto(like that word?)-unpublished photos of the wreck of the NYC's Pacemaker around Rensselaer, New York (south of Troy and across the Hudson from Albany) ca. 1952-53 or 53-54(or -55? - I originally couldn't find a Web record of the wreck, with the exact date - but see below): rev

(12 Jan 2011)

{1952-54 Photos by and © S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Click on thumbnailed images for larger pictures.]

I was cruising around Poestenkill or thereabouts with some of my buddies from RPI when we heard of the wreck on the radio and spun around and dashed for the river. A huge boulder had popped out of the hillside, landed smack on the northbound track, and was clobbered by the westbound Pacemaker, the lead engine of which vaulted into the river on its right side, drowning the engineer. The trailing unit (NOT a B unit as I originally thought - they were back-to-back A-units) was crushed and the head-end car (baggage, as I recall) had its nose pushed in. rev

(11 Jan 2011)

[The above photos above show looking down on the trailing unit by moonlight and work at night.]

I had climbed a tree and got the big hook rerailing the trailing unit at night, illuminated only by its own {the hook's} lights. The next morning, bright and early, I got the trailing unit and the baggage car before a bull chased me off:

{1952-54 Photos by and © S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Click on thumbnailed images for larger pictures.]

These were taken with an old bellows Voightlander so must be on large format 120 or 127 film.

I was too green and too techie to realize at the time that the newspaper would have paid me for the photos.

I'll have to go dredge up the envelope with the original prints and negatives. Most of my old photos are dated and annotated. Not exactly current railnews, but perhaps of interest to rail historians. It was covered in the local papers the next day. Does anyone have more info. on this wreck?

WOW! I no sooner converted this page than along comes MNR desk engineer Wayne Koch on 11 Jan 2011 with the news that John Scala's Weekend Chief Publishing's 2011 New York Central Calendar has a color photo of the wreck's lead unit, NYC E8 #4044, in the Hudson on the rear cover, titled "E8-in-Hudson" and stating that at "approximately 6:02 pm on April 2, 1955, a 14 car train was proceeding southbound^@ at Schodack Landing, N. Y. when it encountered a rock slide. Traveling at 77 mph the lead unit derailed and separated from the train and came to rest in the Hudson River. The engineer was killed and many others injured. {etc.}". The photo is credited to the Len Kilian collection and John was kind enough to give me permission to post a crop of it here: new (11 Jan 2011) and rev (12 Jan 2011)

(crop of photo of 1955 photo from Len Kilian Collection,
© and courtesy of John Scala, Weekend Chief Publishing - all rights reserved)
[Temporary posting - larger image to follow soon.]

@ - Houston, we have a problem here; John says this info. was taken from the FRA website on railroad accidents yet I clearly remember that the train was actually running westbound, thus making it northbound at the site, but the lead loco vaulted over the boulder and ended up in the drink facing south. rev

(12 Jan 2011)

Internet postings by one Tony Correll on 17 Apr 2007 and others reveal that the train was Train #1, that the it was traveling at the ruling speed, and that the trailing unit, pictured in my old photos above, was #4067. new (11/12 Jan 2011)

This question of which way the train was heading intrigued me sufficiently that I asked Ken Kinlock of the New York Central Home Page about it; he kindly responded: new (13 Jan 2011)

"Train 2 was the Eastbound Pacemaker due into Harmon at 7:47am.
Train 1 was the Westbound Pacemaker, leaving GCT at 3:40pm and getting to Albany at 5:40pm (stops at Harmon and Poughkeepsie).
That fits your timeframe."

He also sent this link to the 30 Apr 1950 Form 1001 timetable covering those schedules, http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/ptt/images/tt-0450.pdf, a marked excerpt of pages 14 and 15 of which I show here:

Wonder who's right - me or the FRA?

EMD FL-9 Third Rail Pick-Ups - to detail some LIRR models I'm working on, including an FL-9 and some apocryphal ones, I wanted color pix of the mounted third rail pick-up equipment. Most of the extant FL-9s have the gear removed and those few that still have the beams in place have no shoes left. To the rescue came Wayne Koch, rail photo source par excellence, with this old postcard view of Penn Central FL-9 #5033 at Harmon, replete with full pick-up gear:

Wayne would dearly love to know who those guys might be.

To save you eyestrain, here are the rear and front trucks cropped out and enlarged:

Thanks, Wayne!

L. F. M. Disc Drivers

Broadway Limited released its HO modernized AT&SF 2-10-2 ca. Jan 2011 and noted it has an "LFM disc main driver. General Steel Castings's Boxpok ("box-spoke") and Scullin Steel Co.'s welded Scullin driving wheel centers are well known to me and to most steam fanciers but what might LFM be? Well, I couldn't find much so out came my trusty 1941 Locomotive Cyclopedia reprint and there it is, on page 7-591, L. F. M, a service mark of the imaginatively-named Locomotive Finished Materials Co. of Atchison, Kansas. One guess who their primary customer might have been. Where the Boxpok was cast and had small, round openings and longer rounded tapered openings without rims around the holes, the Scullin was welded and had four round holes without rims in a simple dished disc. A very popular variation on the Boxpok was the Baldwin Locomotive Co.'s version, which often had a radial rib or two between the holes. One of many problems with ordinary spoked wheels was that the spokes tended to crack, especially at the hub and even more so where the spoke met the main driver's crank pin boss. One attempt to correct this was the "webbed" spoke design but, beginning in the mid '40s, defective main drivers were often changed out with General Steel Castings's "Boxpok" or L. F. M.'s "Universal" disc wheel centers because of their greater durability. L. F. M.'s cast centers had very large "rounded triangular" openings with slight rims. New steam locomotives usually had any of the three designs, Boxpok (or Baldwin Boxpok), Scullin, or Universal. Here are, top, l.-to-r., plain spoked, web-spoked, and plain and webbed spoked*, and bottom, l.-to-r., Boxpok, Baldwin, Scullin, and L.F.M. Universal drivers: new

(02 Mar 2011)

BoxpokDiscDrivers BaldwinDiscDrivers ScullinDiscDrivers LFMUniversalDiscDrivers

* - At the very least, the Pennsy used some webbed-spoke main drivers on their last K4 Pacifics (shown at top right).

Steam lovers, see my Science and Technology page! Ah, the power of steam!

There is an incredible simulation program by Charlie Dockstadter on steam valve gear available on the Alaska Live Steamers VALVE GEAR ON THE COMPUTER page.

You may wish to visit the Railroad Continuation Page, et seq.

of this series of Railroad pages.