Railroading 80 years ago

[trainman203]

It was an entirely different world .  The railroads were everything to everyday life

https://youtu.be/YDk9EtOR8JI?si=2xRFwrS5ZH0Pevtt

Society's views were different.  Be prepared and understand the times.

The railroad action shots are priceless.  I remember nearly all of this just a few years later. When I was little the railroads were still the biggest deal in the country pretty much.

[trainman203]

Any comments?  Or am I the only one left that has any memories of this kind of railroading?

[bbmiroku]

Unfortunately, Sir Graybeard, most people aren't going to have memories of 80 years ago.  A lot of us aren't going to remember 50 years ago. And some of us are less than 40 years old, and can barely remember what we had for breakfast last week.

[trainman203]

Understood.  But the film is definitely worth watching. 

To Understand the present, you need to study history.  Especially with Railroading, its stature in historical times was much much greater than the basic bit player it is today in American transportation, not much a part of people's Everyday lives like it was before 1955 more or less .

Here's just some of the experiences with the railroads I had that younger people never will have.

1. Pacing a regular in-service steam locomotive at speed.
2. Watching a regular in-service steam locomotive take on water in the hometown.
3. Riding in a heavyweight Pullman on a regular service passenger train.
4. Watching the Limited that didn't stop on our town snag a mail bag from the mail crane.
5. Going to the depot to pick up a Railway Express package.
6.  Watching an over fired oil burning Steam locomotive shoot terrific flames out between the driver spokes.
7.  Hearing distant steam whistles at night steam pass through our town.
8. Hearing a distant steam whistle float in on the wind on a hot summer afternoon.
9.  Seeing depots in every small town.
10. Looking down the main line to the west in the sunset, knowing that you were watching a great artery of commerce in a great country.
11.  Changing trains in at least a half dozen of the great temple-like terminal structures that are lost today.

In the film are multiple shots of steam locomotives in a great hurry on the head end of limiteds and through freights. Even seeing it on low resolution film today Years later, the sight never fails to get me going, It's something that just can't be explained if you weren't there.

if you lived the railroads in the film like I did, today's railroading is only a very pale reflection, and you understand why people don't care for trains the way they used to.

[Len]

I wasn't even born 80 years ago. But as a 6 year old, I can remember eating lunch with my uncle at his Great Northern freight station near the New Haven yard in New London, CT. While we ate we could watch early ALCO switchers working the yard as I-4 Pacifics relegated to fast freight service passed, while ALCO PA's had taken over passenger service. Once or twice a week there would even be a Pennsy passenger train headed to Boston.

Len

[trainman203]

I wasn't born 80 years ago either.  Only 76.

😂😂😂

[jward]

I never saw steam in regular service. It's mostly a curiosity.

I did experience first generation diesels in heavy mountain service, and that's an experience that can never be repeated. Not only are the locomotives gone, in many cases the rail lines are too. My dad made it a point on vacations to look up shortlines in the areas we went to. Most of those are now gone as well, victims of the increasing weight of the cars they hauled, and the trend toward bulk freight. I was also fortunate enough to grow up in B&O and WM territory. Both railroads were friendly, and we had run of dome pretty major terminals just for signing a release form. The signal towers were always fascinating, with a party line phone system where you could listen to the entire division talking to the train dispatcher.


But it wasn't

[trainman203]

Jeffrey, The last steam engines went away when I was almost 9 yr old but not before I got a good solid look at them. I got diverted by model airplanes for about three years and when I returned to trains at 12,  this time becoming a serious model  railroader, I went to the depot on my bike looking for the steam engines and they were gone.  So was the water tank and the water columns along the depot platform where so many times I'd seen the engines taking on water.
So my young railfan days were spent in the world that you got to know a little bit with first generation diesels all over the place. 

Out on the main line T&NO which very shortly became the SP, it was commonplace to see black widow F Units in ABBA consists on through freights, sometimes with high nose Geeps mixed in, no low noses of any kind yet, the bloody nose paint was just appearing. Orange and black SW7's and S2's worked the yard and the 2 locals that went out the Midland branch every morning and returned late in the day.

The Missouri Pacific across town was a branch line hub of sorts, the south terminus of a 50 mile branch from the former NOT&M mainline north , which from our town radiated to two subordinate further branches.  There was a sheet metal engine house, a wye, a 3 track yard, and a mile-long street running industrial spur, perfect to copy for a layout, but we didn't know that yet. Gray and white Geeps and solid black S2's worked there.

The MP crossed the SP twice, the west one with a manned interlocking tower whose story I've told here in the past in great detail.

So I had a good solid look at that first generation world familiar to older railfans today.  But I'm afraid I didn't appreciate it like I should have, because I was crying so hard for the steam engines so very, very recently departed.

[jward]

Jeffrey, The last steam engines went away when I was almost 9 yr old but not before I got a good solid look at them. I got diverted by model airplanes for about three years and when I returned to trains at 12,  this time becoming a serious model  railroader, I went to the depot on my bike looking for the steam engines and they were gone.  So was the water tank and the water columns along the depot platform where so many times I'd seen the engines taking on water.
So my young railfan days were spent in the world that you got to know a little bit with first generation diesels all over the place. 

Out on the main line T&NO which very shortly became the SP, it was commonplace to see black widow F Units in ABBA consists on through freights, sometimes with high nose Geeps mixed in, no low noses of any kind yet, the bloody nose paint was just appearing. Orange and black SW7's and S2's worked the yard and the 2 locals that went out the Midland branch every morning and returned late in the day.

The Missouri Pacific across town was a branch line hub of sorts, the south terminus of a 50 mile branch from the former NOT&M mainline north , which from our town radiated to two subordinate further branches.  There was a sheet metal engine house, a wye, a 3 track yard, and a mile-long street running industrial spur, perfect to copy for a layout, but we didn't know that yet. Gray and white Geeps and solid black S2's worked there.

The MP crossed the SP twice, the west one with a manned interlocking tower whose story I've told here in the past in great detail.

So I had a good solid look at that first generation world familiar to older railfans today.  But I'm afraid I didn't appreciate it like I should have, because I was crying so hard for the steam engines so very, very recently departed.

So many who grew up around steam didn't appreciate the early diesels. This is why we have a bunch of preserved BigBoys, but surviving or preserved diesels from Lima, Fairbanks Morse and Baldwin are few and far between, with many models now extinct. During the period when they were retired, 1957 to about 1972, very few saw their historical value. Even EMD was not immune with their aggressive trade in program claiming many early units. We almost lost the FT, the diesel that more than any other proved diesels could, and did, do everything. We lost the F2, very few F3s exist, several early E unit models and switchers have all been scrapped.

We have lost so much. It always seems to disappear when we aren't paying attention.

[trainman203]

If anyone is interested, here are the Sanborn maps of my home town in 1952, The year I started paying attention to trains.

https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03375_011/

Map 1 is the entire town at that time.  It's actually pretty easy to follow since the SP is the main spine top to bottom and is all still there.
The Missouri Pacific is called either the New Iberia and Northern or the Gulf Coast Lines, its two earlier names before the MP acquired it in 1924.  All of it is gone today, the last train was in 1982.

Map 12 shows the engine house, water tank, and telegraph office.  To the right out of the city limits is the 3 track yard, a major sugar mill customer, and the line 50 miles north to the main.

Following maps 6,8,2 and 3 in succession you can see the street running down Fulton street to the freight house and a couple of bayou side warehouses just past.

Starting on map 12,and going through 11,7,9,10,17,13,11,19 you can see the eastbound branch to Franklin Louisiana than did street running down Pershing street for blocks, passing my high school, before finally recrossing the SP on the east end of town.

On these maps, the top is actually westbound, the right is north.

On map 1, only the major tracks are shown.  The individual maps show all the trackwork that was present at the time of the mapmaking.

Sandborn maps were and still are a product of the insurance industry to show fire risks.  The buildings are actually the main focus and you can see lots of buildings present in the year the map was made that aren't there anymore.  They are made for nearly every major community, they certainly exist for your town, and you can take a similar dive back into your own town in time and see what used to be there railroadwise, which I can tell you will probably be a lot that's gone now.

All of that trackwork on these maps in new Iberia was still there in the early 60s when I was railfanning on my bicycle.  I knew it all like the back of my hand, and I mourn its passing. To ponder these maps in detail is a trip back into my young days with lots of pleasant memories.

[trainman203]

Jeffrey, you also came close to losing the Alco PA units as well.  I saw one almost every day on SP Train five, the westbound mail train that had once been the name train called the Argonaut.  In the early 1960s I did not know that those elegant units were running out their last miles on plug runs like No.5.  I only took a couple of photographs of them, but that really didn't matter since I lost all my photographs in a fire 20 years ago.

Today the GP30's, the SD 40s, and their rebuilds are the existing historic engines, and I have to remind myself when I see one go by on a local every now and then that those things are 50 years old now, like the SP moguls were when I was a kid.

But about the preserved steam engines today.  There was no orchestrated attempt to save a representative sample at all.  In multiple cases, the railroad just pulled the last one off the scrap line that was easy to get to, or chose one that could be easily be gotten into a park, explaining why so many preserved steam engines are medium sized and smaller.  And some railroads didn't save anything at all or only a couple.  The Missouri Pacific and the KCS only have one preserved steam locomotive each. Historicity didn't mean anything, not one New York Central Hudson was saved despite many, many pleas while there were still some around. The MP In 1950 had been in receivership for years and every ounce of scrap metal from a locomotive got them towards profitability. They came out of it the year after the last steam engine was retired and that probably had something to do with it. 

Historians are saying now that, despite there still being a good number of existing steam locomotives inparks, very few are being properly cared for, are deteriorating, and in the relatively foreseeable future most of them will be scrapped instead of saved.

[Ralph S]

I also have to state the same...I wasn't born that far back.  The only Steam trains I've seen/ridin on were at Stone Mountain (Georgia) and at Disneyland (California).  It's great to reminisce about those days.  Good to put it in history for others to see and experience as I did at the Kenefick Park, Nebraska, just this past July (2024).
Excerpt here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlbBvFqys8E and that history is as follows; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg6nnYkq9R0

My stop was to view the DD40X not the Big Boy.  It was great to see these two massive engines together.  I grew up diesel, hopefully that will not offend you.  Just to note, for those steam historians check out this forum topic: "UP's Big Boy is back on the rails!"  Just note that that second U-tube video lets you know that steam engines will not be forgotten.

P.S. not responsible for the content of these u-tube videos

[Terry Toenges]

I've been to Kenefick Park also.

[trainman203]

Not offended at all.  Early diesel can get me going.  But once they started chopping the noses, I lost interest. 

The mid 60s were a wave of wiping out the trappings of the mighty railroad that had built and run the country for so long.  That's when depots And roundhouses started dropping like flies, roof walks and ladders on box cars went away, and peculiar looking (to me) freight cars begin to appear.  The railroad mail contracts went away, the few remaining passenger trains were dropping like flies as well, or reduced to a Locomotive and a single car where the railroad was forced to keep it running. Maintenance of every kind went away, track deteriorated and grew up in weeds, buildings didn't get painted, and freight cars begin to look like hell between the weathering and the rust. Considering what a mighty Empire America's railroad system was at the end of World War II, it didn't take long for it to nearly collapse.  For those like me that went through it, it was a time of unbelievable melancholy to see our railroads Quickly going down the drain.

[jward]

I can relate to that. I grew up surrounded by Penn Central. On some of the local branch lines about the only thing keeping them viable was the Pennsy's tendency to overbuild things. As such, we had 115 lb rail that the ties were rotting out from under, but the rail was heavy enough to still support operation at lowered speeds. That is a far cry from what lines like the ROck Island faced, with 60 to 85 lb rail laid on those same rotted ties. But PC was bad enough. Fortunately, Conrail came along. And though we lost many of those branchlines, the railroad rose like a phoenix from the dead and brought back the glory to some extent. That is why I am a huge COnrail fan. But I look back at old photos of the B&O, the railroad we thought at the time was in great shape, and can't believe how run down everything was. Say what you want about the modern era, but the track is in far better shape now than it was in my lifetime.