Johann Marsbar Posted March 20, 2022 Author Share Posted March 20, 2022 (edited) A lot of the remaining photos from the trip have suffered from slide discolouration problems, so this batch will be the last from the Toronto holiday. Luckilly this was my last "slide only" trip to the US/Canada as I soon started to investigate getting a digitial camera. The finance department at work had a Sony "point & click" one that was used for accident claims, so I borrowed it over a weekend and the results were sufficient for me to go out and buy an identical one a few days later! Slides didn't finally get dispensed with until I bought a Fuji Finepix in mid-2006 to replace my SLR's and which I'm still using to this day. A couple of the remaining days I travelled out of Toronto to locations where I could at least see some freight traffic, the first location being Whitby, to the east of the City, which was reachable on the GO Lakeshore line. CN #2521 is seen heading a wesbound Intermodal...... A general view of Whitby station with a Toronto bound service, propelled by F59PH-2 #544 in the platform.... At the time, Whitby operated its own Transit System (later becoming part of the Durham Transit operation) and one of their Orion 06.501 buses is seen outside the station... I also discovered the former CP passenger station building being used for other purposes some distance from the CP tracks in the area.... Not long before I flew out to Canada, I had discovered that preserved CP 4-6-4 #2816 was due to haul a special train from Toronto to Milton in aid of a Canadian childrens charity on the day I flew home. Steam would operate on the outward run (where the loco & support coaches cleared off into the USA somewhere), the return being behind a GO diesel. Stock used was GO Transit double deckers, so the only sensation of being behind steam was the odd cloud of smoke/steam going past! I worked out I could fit a trip in, so booked online, and this is the view from an overhead walkway at Union..... Once the special got to Milton, it sat at the station there for some time and I hung around at a crossing for ages waiting for a promised run-past to take place - this actually happening when the loco cleared off to Fort Erie and onward into the USA. A rapid dash back to the station (which, from memory, at that time was well away from any built up area of note) saw a run back into Toronto behind #564 followed by a trip straight out to Pearson for my flight home! . Edited March 31, 2022 by Johann Marsbar Some missing photos reinstated 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdvle Posted March 20, 2022 Share Posted March 20, 2022 5 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said: At the time, Whitby operated its own Transit System (later becoming part of the Durham Transit operation) and one of their Orion 06.501 buses is seen outside the station... Many/most of the non-TTC transit systems in the area encode the purchase year in the bus number as the first 2 digits, so as in this example the bus is from 98. I rode these buses in Mississauga - they were terrible. The 06.501 were late arriving due to reliability issues OBI had with this design (it being their first low floor design) and at least Mississauga retired them early. 5 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said: Once the special got to Milton, it sat at the station there for some time and I hung around at a crossing for ages waiting for a promised run-past to take place - this actually happening when the loco cleared off to Fort Erie and onward into the USA. A rapid dash back to the station (which, from memory, at that time was well away from any built up area of note) saw a run back into Toronto behind #564 followed by a trip straight out to Pearson for my flight home! It was the 2nd trip to Milton in 2 years for 2816 - it also did the trip in 2003 though with that trip 2816 went in both directions. I went to Milton for the 2003 trip and yes Milton GO station was surrounded by a bit of industrial and empty fields at the time. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted March 31, 2022 Author Share Posted March 31, 2022 As all the photos in this thread were posted during the last 4 months, the images fall under the "lost" category with the recent problems experienced by the site. I might put some back from the postings dating from the week before the demise, as some people may not have seen those, but anything further back won't be put on again. At least the break came at the point I was shifting to digital photography, and there are still another 22 trips to cover.....!! 2 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted March 31, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted March 31, 2022 I'm probably going to do the same. Looking back on my layout thread there only seem to be images until about the end of 2019. Jamie 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted March 31, 2022 Author Share Posted March 31, 2022 8 minutes ago, jamie92208 said: I'm probably going to do the same. Looking back on my layout thread there only seem to be images until about the end of 2019. Jamie I got the impression, from what has been posted elsewhere, that anything older than a year will eventually be salvageable and will be put back on the various threads, so it might be worth leaving it a bit longer - ie a week or two - to see what else reappears. You have posted rather a lot more in the way of photos than me in the last year, so have quite a gap in what you have put on..... 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted March 31, 2022 Author Share Posted March 31, 2022 We now move on to August 2004 and as I only had 4 days holiday left for that year, various options were looked a for trips during the August Bank Holiday week, a decision being made on a fly/drive trip from Boston which would enable visits to be made to the 3 main Trolley museums in New England, as well as a couple of preserved rail lines. We flew out mid-morning LHR-BOS on a BA 747-400 and picked up our hire car, a Pontiac Grand-Am, before driving to Niantic, CT, the location of our first nights accommodation. En route, we called in at Plainfield, CT, hoping to find some Providence & Worcester locos, but the only motive power present was this NYS&W Dash8-40B which the P&W had recently purchased.... The following morning we headed to East Haven to visit the Shore Line (Branford) Trolley Museum, which was established in 1945 and took over the section of the Short Beach trolley line that their museum is situated on during 1947. Connecticut car #1602 was built by Wason in 1911 and was one of 3 cars in use during our visit........(and the first US subject recorded on my new digital camera) In one of the display barns, this 3rd Ave (NYC) car built by Laclede as a cable-car in 1892 and later converted to electric traction was on display.... Whilst ouside was this PCC, devoid of any identification, which we believed to be Brooklyn & Queens Transit #1001, the first production PCC car, at that time undergoing a very comprehensive restoration.... From East Haven we headed up to Thomaston where we took a ride on the Naugatuck RR (Railroad Museum of New England) where this New Haven RS3 was working the passenger train.... The passenger cars being used were former CN Montreal area commuter service vehicles, so might have been ones I travelled on during my Canadian trip in 1991! After an overnight stay in the Branford area, the next morning we headed up to Windsor Locks for a visit to the Connecticut Trolley Museum. They had two cars out in service, this Montreal Tramways CC&F lightweight one dating from 1929..... ...and a former New Orleans Perley Thomas car of 1922, with the destination rather predictably reading "Desire"..... Amongst the other exhibits on-site was this Leyland Railbus, which was finally scrapped by the museum last year..... 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdvle Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 44 minutes ago, Johann Marsbar said: I got the impression, from what has been posted elsewhere, that anything older than a year will eventually be salvageable and will be put back on the various threads, so it might be worth leaving it a bit longer - ie a week or two - to see what else reappears. You have posted rather a lot more in the way of photos than me in the last year, so have quite a gap in what you have put on..... Doesn't seem likely. If one reads the post by Andy Y (linked below), and in particular the quote from the now former host in that post, the images from the last year are gone due to hardware failures. The only reason stuff older than a year can/has been restored is due to a backup that was found (plus all the text was located elsewhere as leaving the now former host was in process). 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 1, 2022 Author Share Posted April 1, 2022 (edited) After our morning visit to the trolley museum we then headed off to Palmer, MA, which, at the time, was recognised as one of the Trains Magazine "Hotspots" for rail activity. Since the B&M Railcam went live on YouTube early last year, it is obvious that traffic levels there have declined in the years since, but it's still fairly busy, with two Shortlines (Mass Central & NECR) adding to the CSX & (limited) Amtrak services. Mass Central are intending to start Tourist passenger runs soon as well. In 2004, the Vermonter was operating via there as the line north of Springfield wasn't sutable for passenger traffic at that time, and our time there coincided with the reversal move of that service at Palmer. A couple of NECR GP38's were seen on the CSX Interchange track..... which were shortly followed by this CSX move west, which may have been the L012 local (B740 up to earlier this month) that still runs today, or its 2004 equivalent.... A burst of Amtrak activity followed with the Vermonter making its reversal move.... and the westbound Lake Shore Limited Boston section passing..... The former station building at Palmer had only recently been taken over by the current Steaming Tender restaurant operation and part of the building was in use as a "Fast Food" style Diner, a far cry from the rather nice looking operation in the whole building that it seems to be today. The other part of the building was in use at that time as an antique shop and they had a number of BR staion running in boards for sale there (Too big to bring home on the plane...) from Oakham, Hooton, Harlesden, St Asaph and Burscough! We assumed they had come from a branch of the defunct "Victoria Station" restaurant chain in the USA. The Steaming Tender had themselves recently obtained this 0-6-0 for display....... which has since lost its ludicrously oversized stack and "tin box" headlight and has been restored rather well, judging by this more recent photo of it I found on Flickr... After Palmer, we headed north to our overnight stopping location of Wachussett, MA, and then, early the following morning, diverted north into New Hampshire so I could tick off a visit to New Ipswich, where the local Police had this in their vehicle fleet.... I don't normally photograph Police vehicles, but Fire Engines are another matter, so a visit was made to the local fire station for a quick look round..... ...before heading east, back into Massachusetts and to Lowell for a visit to the heritage tram operation there. The weather had deteriorated somewhat, so we were surprised to find one of the Gomaco replica crossbench cars out in service...... I think we were the only passengers on it! The main Boot Mills Museum (which has 88 working power looms - a sight to behold when in operation) was closed due to the very high temperatures experienced there over the previous few days, so we couldn't visit there, and that closure would have affected the number of passengers on the tramway. From Lowell we headed off to the Boston area for a few days, staying in my "usual" Braintree Motel 6 location... . Edited April 1, 2022 by Johann Marsbar Corrected train number... 9 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 2, 2022 Author Share Posted April 2, 2022 We spent 3 full days (+ a late afternoon & evening) in the Boston area covering the local transit systems with a 3 day Visitor Pass. This was the first trip that covered a number of Breweries/Brewpubs as part of the itinerary, so visits were made during our stay to Samuel Adams, Harpoon, Cambridge Brewing, John Harvards Brewhouse and Boston Beer Works! The Ashmont-Mattapan "High speed line" segment of the Red Line was by now operating its refurbished PCC cars (which are currently undergoing another refurbishment..) and the first one we saw is seen below at the Mattapan terminus.... This was our first (and not the last of this trip....) run in with the "No photography - get off MBTA property" mindset from the local Supervisor, though she was rather lost for words when we said we were actually going to board the car in question and waved our 3 day tickets at her.... No problems further along at Central Avenue, as no staff were on duty there...... On the Green Line network, someone had decided to start changing the livery used by introducing areas of silver/grey to the scheme, which, personally, I thought, looked awful compared with the original green & white...... Note the traditional Boston public street fire alarm pillar on the platform with the red light globe. The new Breda built cars had entered service in sufficient numbers by this time to restrict the remaining Boeing built cars to Peak Hour M-F service only and they were fairly difficult to get rides on. A pair of Boeing cars are seen at Reservoir car house.... On the Cambridge area trolleybus routes (which closed last month), new Skoda/Neoplan vehicles had been introduced to replace the Flyer built vehicles. One of the new vehicles is seen by Cambridge Common.... There were still some Flyers in use though, and this one is seen at Waverly terminus, where the driver took great exception to our taking a photo of his vehicle and accused us of being "Terrorists"!....... The area around Cambridge/Harvard had one of these running about as well....... 7 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 3, 2022 Author Share Posted April 3, 2022 For our last full day of the trip we had planned visits to two preservation sites in Maine, so an early start was made from Braintree, driving north to our first port of call in Portland, ME for the Maine Narrow Gauge Railway operation, 1.5 mile long 2' gauge line built on the trackbed of a former Grand Trunk standard gauge line that seved Portland from Montreal. By pure chance, whilst entering the City from the Interstate, we discovered a superb diner called "Beckys" on Commercial Street - one highly recommended if you are in the area - and a place I've returned to on my 2 subsequent visits to the Portland area. I've literally been there and got the T-Shirt as well!! The narrow gauge line at that time had an adjoining building used as a museum display, but this has since been redeveloped and the exhibits have been put out on loan to other Maine NG museums such as the WW&F at Alna - a place that will feature in a future report. The Museum was situated in a building that used to be part of the Portland Locomotive Works, and which has now been "re-purposed" into residential/commercial accommodation. A new stock storage shed has supposedly been erected at the northern end of the line for the operating equipment since 2019, but I couldn't confirm this as their website is apparently not available to UK users!! On arrival, this steamroller was on display outside...... There was a considerable quantity of equipment stored outside, a lot of which had come via the former Cranberry line operations at Edaville in Massachusetts..... and this included the "operational" stock, there being no storage buildings other than the Museum itself, though their operating steam loco was also kept in there..... Normal operations are worked by this rather ungainly GE built 23T diesel of 1949........ ....but as it was Labor Day weekend, they were running their former Monson 0-4-4T #4 on most of the trips that day...... I believe that is one of the items that has now gone elsewhere for display. There was a lot of equipment in the Museum building, including theis Model T based inspection car...... and Sandy River & Rangely Lakes railcar #4, dating from 1925....... There were also a few road vehicles in there as well.... After our ride and look round the museum display, it was time to make a rapid departure south to our next port of call at Kennebunkport...... 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 4, 2022 Author Share Posted April 4, 2022 Seashore Trolley Museum at Kennebunkport is, as far as I know, the largest collection of transit equipment in North America (250 vehicles it states on their online stocklist...), the collection being established as far back as 1939. The Illinois Railway Museum must be in second place, but Seashore doesn't have the Steam/Diesel mainline rail equipment that they have. Our visit coincided with their "Members Day" which meant that a number of items were available for viewing/rides that would not normally be seen, and there didn't appear to be any restrictions on gaining access to the various storage barns on-site, though one, which contained the ex LT/Leeds Feltham car, was blocked off by items of rolling stock and rather closely parked road vehicles, so we didn't get in there on this particular trip. The Museum is located on the former right of way of the Atlantic Shore Line Railway, a Maine electric Interuban line which closed in the late 1920's and a decent length of run has been reinstated north of the site since the Seashore operation was founded. Near the museum entrance area, Dallas #434 from 1914 is seen next to Easern Mass #4387 dating from 1918..... whilst the Portsmouth, Dover & York (Maine) US Mail car of 1904 is seen outside the "operational" car barn... As it was a nice day, former Montreal Tramways "Golden Chariot" sightseeing car #2 was in use that day.... A ride on this car was taken along their main line..... In the restoration shop, Blackpool Standard #144 was undergoing work. I'm not sure whether they have got this operational as yet, as wheel profiles of the UK cars in the collection are not compatible with a lot of their trackwork, which is why the Blackpool one is the only car to have run there to any extent in the past. They were certainly still working on it when I went there again in 2013...... Apart from the Blackpool Boat cars at National Capital and MUNI, the only working UK car in North America at the moment is another Blackpool Standard at the Oregon Electric Railway Museum. The Museum also has a selection of Subway cars, such as this one from Philadelphia which originally operated on the bridge line from Philly to Camden, NJ, which has since been extended to Lindenwold, NJ and is today operated by PATCO.... Also from Philadelphia is this 1955 Marmon-Herrington trolleybus which operated there until 1982.... To be continued... 8 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted April 4, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 4, 2022 When I was there in 2012 I talked to their head engineer about the Blackpool car. They would very much like to run it but as you say, wheel profiles are the problem. He had sent a wheelset away to be reprofiled to the best they could get. IIRC a sort of compromise profile. I'm not sure what became of that but the problem is always money. The best solution would be re wheeling with some US profiled wheels but there isn't the spare cash around for that. As I understand it, what money is raised for gets spent on the pet project of whoever raises the money. That's a bit simplistic I know but most of the rebuilt cars are sponsored by interest groups. Similar in a way to the way the LCCT sponsors the rebuild of London origin cars at Crich. They don't appear to have any equivalent of the TSO. Jamir Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 4, 2022 Author Share Posted April 4, 2022 (edited) 53 minutes ago, jamie92208 said: When I was there in 2012 I talked to their head engineer about the Blackpool car. They would very much like to run it but as you say, wheel profiles are the problem. He had sent a wheelset away to be reprofiled to the best they could get. IIRC a sort of compromise profile. I'm not sure what became of that but the problem is always money. The best solution would be re wheeling with some US profiled wheels but there isn't the spare cash around for that. As I understand it, what money is raised for gets spent on the pet project of whoever raises the money. That's a bit simplistic I know but most of the rebuilt cars are sponsored by interest groups. Similar in a way to the way the LCCT sponsors the rebuild of London origin cars at Crich. They don't appear to have any equivalent of the TSO. Jamir When I was there in September 2013 the Blackpool car was still in the workshops, but had progressed to this state... All the other British cars there (LT/Leeds, Glasgow & Liverpool) had not really been touched since arriving there in the 1950's/60's, though some "attempt" had been made to start an exterior restoration of the Feltham. Given the location of the place, they draw heavilly on volunteers from the Greater Boston area and one can assume that they will have their own priorities as regards which cars to restore. The 2013 visit unearthed a large number of pre-war buses in a building which I hadn't seen in 2004 and which I wonder whether they will ever be restored. The same goes for some of the trams as well. Rather out of sequence, this is the Blackpool car in the Oregon museum in June 2017.... They actually had that running by the following month, which surprised me! EDIT: Having had a look through their online fleetlist, it seems the Blackpool restoration was completed in 2014, but they say that drooping overhead wires are the reason It doesn't get used rather than wheel profiles!! . Edited April 4, 2022 by Johann Marsbar Extra info added 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted April 4, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 4, 2022 Thanks for that. It sounds as if the reprofiling was a success. I wonder how San Francisco go on with their ex Blackpool cars. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 4, 2022 Author Share Posted April 4, 2022 1 hour ago, jamie92208 said: Thanks for that. It sounds as if the reprofiling was a success. I wonder how San Francisco go on with their ex Blackpool cars. Jamie As they are used in "regular" service on the MUNI network, my guess is that the wheel profiles on the Boat cars and the other European cars (Brussels/Milan) have been changed to the US rail standards - the same possibly applying to the ex Melbourne cars as well. The Standard car at OERM must have similarly been changed, given that it operated for several years on a rail line south of Portland out to Lake Oswego towing a generator trailer. I think the other Boat car - now at the Capital Trolley Museum in Wheaton, MD - ran in Philadelphia in the past so has likely had the same treatment. The other Boat at the Western Railway Museum in California is out of use, but did run in SF in the past, so that looks like it was converted too. As an enthusiasts group, Seashore are likely to be reluctant to spend money on something that isn't going to see much use! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted April 4, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 4, 2022 58 minutes ago, Johann Marsbar said: As they are used in "regular" service on the MUNI network, my guess is that the wheel profiles on the Boat cars and the other European cars (Brussels/Milan) have been changed to the US rail standards - the same possibly applying to the ex Melbourne cars as well. The Standard car at OERM must have similarly been changed, given that it operated for several years on a rail line south of Portland out to Lake Oswego towing a generator trailer. I think the other Boat car - now at the Capital Trolley Museum in Wheaton, MD - ran in Philadelphia in the past so has likely had the same treatment. The other Boat at the Western Railway Museum in California is out of use, but did run in SF in the past, so that looks like it was converted too. As an enthusiasts group, Seashore are likely to be reluctant to spend money on something that isn't going to see much use! I was passed on a couplevof their newsletters and 75% was all about funds, all for specific cars. Sadly Ian Dougill who had a lot of contacts there and at Branford is no longer with us. Jamie Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 5, 2022 Author Share Posted April 5, 2022 Some more from the STM..... The only other British tram there which was in a photographable position was Liverpool 293 which still carries its "Last Tram" livery from 1957, abeit a bit faded, with peeling paint nowadays..... The Feltham was in a building we couldn't get to and the Glasgow car wasn't really in a good position to get a shot of it. I did manage photos of both of those in 2013, so they will appear on here later on. With it being "Members Day", things such as this forma Oshawa Railway (Canada) Baldwin electric loco from 1920 were making demonstration runs..... and this set of New York subway cars from the 1930's (fitted with trolleypoles) did operate at least one trip...... ..which was an "interesting" experience given some of the floor was missing and there was a lot of arcing from the electrics! The signal tower (Tower C) in the background came from the Boston Elevated Railway and was moved to Seashore in the mid-1970's. They also have the Northampton St station building from that line as well. Some of the more presentable looking buses in the collection.... Boston Blue Line subway cars from the 1920's which remained in passenger service there until 1979..... Connecticut Company crossbench car #838, built by Jones in 1905..... ..and finally 3rd Avenue car #631, one of the batch that ended up in Vienna post WW2 (as per the example at Crich) and was returned to the US in the 1970's.... After 4 hours there - which wasn't really enough time - we headed south, via Federal Jacks Brewpub at Kennebunk - to our overnight motel at Danvers, MA. This was the only trip where I have made an early morning departure from the US to return to the UK - mainly because the fares were particularly "cheap" - so that meant we had to be back at Logan Airport at the ungodly hour of 04.30 the following day ! Transportation home was provided by a BA Boeing 777 to conclude what had been an interesting tour, if somewhat devoid of much main line rail activity. That had used up my work holiday allocation from 2003/4, but, as my holiday year started in late September, I was to return to the US again for another break that October.... 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 6, 2022 Author Share Posted April 6, 2022 In 2004, Amtrak did a "North East" railrover ticket that seems to have been available for 5 days out of a longer time period and without limits on the number of trips you can make - a restriction that has made their current rover offerings of somewhat limited interest to me. It's the last North American trip I did which I haven't got detailed notes for, so I have had to try and work out what I actually did on the whole holiday based on rail ticket stubs and the photos I took! I flew out on the BA direct flight in early October from LHR to BWI which utilised a Boeing 767 and had booked a weeks stay at an older style hotel mid way between the Inner Harbour and Penn Station. At that stage it was a decent hotel, but it appears to have been in a slow state of decline, having passed it numerous times on visits to Baltimore since then. I've stayed in the rather excellent "Home 2 Suites" on the other 2 Baltimore based trips I've made, which is of fairly new construction. The first full day I was there saw a visit to the Baltimore Streetcar Museum, the weather being somewhat better than March 2003. 1904 built car #4533....... 1930 built Peter Witt style car #6119.......... which Bachmann did a model of in HO scale. I had to get one of those having driven the real thing at the Baltimore Museum on a couple of occasions. and 1944 PCC car #7407..... One of the older vehicles in the collection is this 1880 built horse car that was fitted with solid tyred road wheels in the 1930's for use in parades..... Looking back at the rail journeys I made, I wasn't as adventurous as I would be having one today, so the first day I used it was for a round trip to Philadelphia where I had a local transport "Independence Pass" day rover to get around. A run was certainly taken out to 69th Street on the subway/elevated for the former "Red Arrow" Interurban out to Media. One of the cars used on this service is seen at the start of the street running section through Media.... A visit was also made down to the Penns Landing area on the riverfront, where this sailing ship The "Moshulu", built at Port Glasgow in 1904, is on display and being used as a restaurant.... Another vessel on display there is the USS Olympia, built in 1895, along with a WW2 era submarine. The Olympia may look good above the waterline, but it needs considerable sums of money spent on it, as the hull has deteriorated quite badly and they are worried that it will sink unless something is done soon about it - It hasn't been drydocked since 1945...... 7 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium jamie92208 Posted April 6, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 6, 2022 A nice set of photos. It's an area that I've never visited. The picturecof the Peyer Witt style car makes me smile. When I was at Seashore I was shown wgat they called a Large Witt and a Small witt. I cadually asked if thet had a Half Witt but it fell on deaf ears? Seeing the picture of Moshulu is nice. One of my favourite booms is The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, who sailed on her to Australia and back, round the horn in 1938/39. Jamie 1 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Mike_Walker Posted April 6, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 6, 2022 The picture of the Peyer Witt style car makes me smile. When I was at Seashore I was shown what they called a Large Witt and a Small Witt. I casually asked if they had a Half Witt but it fell on deaf ears? Typical, no sense of humour, the Americans. During the middle part of WW2 my mother worked in a coal office in Walton-on-Thames before being called up. They had some Americans stationed nearby and one time she had to contact a Col. Green but he wasn't available; will Sgt White do? Well, it depends, what other colours are available? Again, fell on deaf ears! 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 7, 2022 Author Share Posted April 7, 2022 For day 2 of the rail pass I headed north from Baltimore to Philadelphia and then travelled west to Harrisburg with the intention of seeing some freight activity as well as it being somewhere I hadn't visited before. At that time, the former PRR overhead electrification wasn't being used by Amtrak for the PHL-HAR services so diesels were in use, pending upgrades being made to the overhead wires. Amtrak #17 is seen at Harrisburg on the push/pull set that I had travelled on from 30th Street in Philadelphia..... The station itself has been nicely restored and acts as a transport interchange with road services nowadays, thuogh the rail service is a shadow of that which used the place in its heyday. Despite there being rail routes on both sides of the Susquehanna River, quite a bit of freight traffic passes through the station area - mainly off the line that comes in from the Reading direction. I was lucky to find this freight being held on one of the Susquehanna bridges shortly after I arrived..... and it eventually came through the station .... At that time there were a number of new locos on NS which had been delivered in grey primer to speed up delivery times, the leader of this train being one of those. You still had Conrail liveried locos running about with "PRR" number patches on them as well....... When you look at photos like the one above, you realise just how little graffiti there was on freight cars at that time - somewhat of a contrast to today! Harrisburg turned out to be a good location, so, in conjunction with visiting the Enola Yard area, it was to feature on several future trips in one form or another. Day 3 saw another period spent in the Philadelphia area, though I did venture further north at first, to Trenton, NJ, where I took a ride down to Camden, NJ on the recently opened "River Line" diesel light rail service, which uses these Stadler built railcars........ It mainly uses rail alignments for most of the route, though there is some street running in Camden, which is where the above photo was taken, with the road/PATCO bridge to Philadelphia visible in the background. A run out along the Frankford Ave El in Philly saw me searching in vain for the SEPTA trolleybus routes that (should have been) running from there. However, they were closed for rebuilding at the time and awaiting the delivery of new vehicles, so I had to content myself with a photo of a couple of diesel buses.... before returning into the City and then taking a run out to Chestnut Hill East on the former Reading operated surburban service, where the stone built station building looks like this...... ...before returning on the former PRR service from Chestnut Hill West to the City and then travelling out on the Subway/Surface trolley lines.... Last photo of the day was this rather lost looking former Devon General Bristol VR in downtown Philly..... 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 8, 2022 Author Share Posted April 8, 2022 Day 4 of the rail ticket had been planned as a return trip south from Baltimore to Newport News - basically an out and back run to "do the track". It entailed catching an early train out of Baltmore that morning, but on arriving at Penn Station, I discovered that rail services heaing south were subject to severe delays due to a problem of some sort. A quick rethink saw a change of plan, taking a service north to Newark NJ, PATH to Manhattan and then Amtrak back from New York Penn to Philadelphia where I spent the remainder of the day before catching a train back to Baltimore. The photos from that day were all slides which have discoloured, so I won't bother posting any here. The last day of the rail ticket, I headed north through New York to New Rochelle on Amtrak - so I could travel over the Hell Gate bridge route in daylight - thence returning on an electric unit into Grand Central Terminal - another line I hadn't been on before. From GCT, I walked from there the couple of miles south to make a visit to the New York Fire Museum in Greenwich Village - a fascinating collection of mainly very elderly firefighting equipment relics and other ephemera right back to the start of volunteer fire services in Colonial days. It's a hidden gem and well worth visiting. Needless to say they have a very poignant display to the firefighting operations of 9/11 as part of the museum. This Mack truck was the most modern piece of equipment on display.... There are early motor appliances.... Horse drawn steam pumps.... and even an example of a steamp pump repurposed as part of an early motor appliance.... That appeared to be a common early development in the US as I've seen similar "tractor unit" sections wedded to horse drawn punps at other US museums since. Some of the equpment owned by various Hose Reel companies were rather elaborate..... ...and, as can be seen from the first of those photos, they have an extensive collection of wall mounted Insurance "Fire Marks", which, again, went back to Colonial times and included ones from the likes of Norwich Union! From the Museum, it was a question of catching PATH from Christopher Street to Newark Penn for a short photo session..... NJT GP40PH-28 #4217....... ...and NJT ALP44 #4411..... Those ALP44's didn't really have as long a life as they could have had, being replaced over the next 5-10 years by later model Bombardier electrics and dual-mode locos. A lot of them are still nominally owned by NJT and dumped/stored out in the wilds of western New Jersey in a terrible state. From Newark it was back to Baltimore for the two remaining days of the holiday. 8 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johann Marsbar Posted April 9, 2022 Author Share Posted April 9, 2022 Just to round this trip off, there was zero full sized rail activity over the remaining two days (a weekend) I was in Baltimore, other than the Light Rail lines. The trip had been arranged to tie in with one of the (very large) Timonium Train Fairs held at the local Fairgrounds there, something I had become aware of through adverts in some of the US modelling magazines. Luckilly the site is served by the light rail, and this photo shows one of the cars at the Fairgrounds stop carrying the (then new) Maryland Flag scheme.... Whilst there didn't seem to be too many layouts at the show, there were a considerable number of dealers there for both model railway and railwayana so the wallet got quite a pounding for N Gauge model rail items and I think I spent something like 3 hours there in all. It was the also the first time I came across the paintings of Pete Lerro who had a stand there, so after a quick study of my remaining cash stocks, I succumbed to a print of his painting of a GG1 at Philadelphia Broad Street - the first of 6 of his prints I've ended up buying over the years. At this time the Fair was generally cash only as Wi-Fi powered credit card payments were still a bit in the future for most people! The rest of the day was spent arround the Inner Harbour area where this Coastguard vessel, USCG Taney (or rather that was the name it carried until recently...) of 1935 is on display as a museum ship......... It is actually the last surviving vessel that fought in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The Sunday was actually Columbus Day so I became aware of a parade of some sort that was going to start in Washington Square, not far from my Hotel. I was up early and had a wander round some of the areas close to the city centre until things started happening. One thing I soon discovered once I started exploring some of the eastern US Cities and Towns is that they certainly don't fall into the "DPM Catalogue" architectural styles seen on model rail layouts and which has prompted me to scratchbuild a number of buildings on my N layouts based on photos I've taken on my trips. You certainly don't see too many streets of terraced/row houses on layouts like this..... This is the former B&O Mount Royal passenger station which retains its overall trainshed to this day. The current CSX freight lines still pass through there and the Howard Street tunnel to get through the City Centre...... ...and another Light Rail train in the vicinity of Mount Royal..... The Columbus Day parade did at least have a selection of historic vehicles (plus some "street rods") taking part in it, the highlight being this solid-tyred Selden built removals lorry, albeit mounted on a trailer...... ....and as it was near to Election Day, these electric carts also took part to remind people to vote! I flew home that evening to LHR from BWI and it would actually be another 5 years before I returned to the USA. I had the "pleasure" of some photography paranoia on this trip and, as I was by now a subscriber to Railpace, and both Trains/Railfan & Railroad were available in my local WH Smiths, news about the growing photography problems over there was well reported and it would get worse (particularly in states like New Jersey) before things changed back to "normal" When it came to thinking of a destination for 2005, it was decided to stick to the Country north of the border where you didn't get hassled for taking photos....... 6 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pH Posted April 9, 2022 Share Posted April 9, 2022 2 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said: When it came to thinking of a destination for 2005, it was decided to stick to the Country north of the border where you didn't get hassled for taking photos....... Though you may get people checking on you. On one occasion, over a couple of hours on public roads and a bridge by the tracks in downtown Kamloops, I was visited by both a CP police officer and an RCMP member. No hassle - just checking what I was doing. The interactions were pleasant once it had been established I wasn’t a potential danger to anyone (including myself) - I even got recommendations for photo locations from the CP officer. 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium newbryford Posted April 9, 2022 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 9, 2022 I was photographing switching operations in Savannah in 2016 when the engineer stopped the train in the middle of the road and came striding towards me with a very annoyed look on his face. Once he heard my English accent, he was completely fine! 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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