US odds and ends

[highpeak]

The remnants of what had been a fairly large if somewhat elderly Maine Central passenger fleet could still be found lurking in various places. A lot of coaches looked pretty disreputable after years of serving as camp cars in work trains, but MEC 2001 was still somewhat presentable in the late 70s. Originally built by Pullman-Standard in 1917 as a coach-smoker, car 209 was converted in 1955 to an air brake instruction car. It would spend time at the various terminals for training crews and possibly doing rules exams.

 

 

The car seems to have lost one at least of its doors and its steps, a few windows have been boarded over, it's sprouted various chimneys but otherwise it's externally not too different from its days hauling passengers. A similar car could be created quite easily from the cheaper heavyweight cars on the market.

[AndrewC]

 

After the squished boxcar I couldn't resist. Taken at Alyth yard, Calgary AB. July 2003. My understanding is there was nobody in the cab at the time.

 

 

[F-UnitMad]

 

After the squished boxcar I couldn't resist. My understanding is there was nobody in the cab at the time.

For crashed locos this is pretty dramatic....

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=309259&nseq=171

 

No-one was hurt; the crews jumped clear before the head-on....

[thnksno]

Concerning the wrecks, there's some neat stuff that can be done with a micro-torch and a little pressure... Using a BB-Q lighter, where the butane is combusted rapidly (think windproof type cigarette lighter) a bit of heat is applied and then stretch the plastic. You don't need much heat to start burning the plastic, just enough to make the plastic flexible, a windproof lighter heats fast, that's what you want. Just push the plastic whichever way you want, create bulges or indentations.

 

Just a week or so ago, I did the mother of all wrongs, I dropped a loco about 3ft... It landed on top of a transformer in such a way that there's now a dent in the hood and a slight tweaking of the front left step... Go with it, these things work for a living!

[highpeak]

The traditional approach to providing accomodation for work crews was to modify old passenger equipment. By the late 70s, there wasn't as much of that around as there had been in the 60s, so some roads took a different approach. In 1972 Canadian National delivered half a dozen of these modular structures to Island Pond, VT for use on lines in New England. The portable structure could be removed from the flat car. Note the GTE reporting marks, if you want to learn more about the convolutions of CN's US subsidiaries, check out this page http://cnlines.ca/CNcyclopedia/hist/gt.php

 

[highpeak]

Sand is as important to diesels as it was to steam (well, it certainly was before the days of sophisticated traction control systems) and a busy terminal like Rigby yard was well equipped to keep all the road engines supplied.

 

 

One of the early batch of ACF covered hoppers had been retired from lime/cement service and added to the company service fleet. The early ACF cars can be identified by the step in the sill.