Jump to content
 

Colour 1940's America photos


wwrsimon

Recommended Posts

Thanks also, Simon.

Truly wonderful photos and so clear, amazing!

The 'H' class loco referred to in picture 53 is actually the penultimate H1 (Baldwin, 1929), a Chicago & North Western (C&NW) 4-8-4 loco, certainly one of the biggest in the F.E.F. class with a 275Lb boiler, stoker fired, booster equipped giving a total of 84,200Lbs tractive effort and weighing 498,000Lbs - Loco alone! Total weight with tender: 818,000Lbs!

Also, in picture 48 of Proviso yard (C&NW), note the fine dark brown ballast! There doesn't appear to be many visible C&NW cars in that first line of cars, i can make out A.T.S.F, B&O, tank car, probably C&NW, then the next three i can't identify apart from them not being C&NW!

I really like picture 52, too! Just how busy were the railroads in those days? Note the blue flags on the ends of each train!

Terrific stuff!

Cheers,

John E.

Link to post
Share on other sites

That link is worth looking regardless of the rail connections! There's some superb stuff in there!

 

Here's a link to some fascinating colour photos from early 1940s America. Photos 48, 49, 50, 52 and 53 are railway-related, but there are also lots of good reference photos of the period in general.

 

And 54.

Link to post
Share on other sites

52 is interesting. Note the different car ends. Left to right, a 3-3-3 Dreadnaught end, a 4-5 Dreadnaught end, inverted Youngstown end, then Youngstown ends.

 

All the cars are lined up evenly so bridge plates can be placed between the cars to allow workers from either loading dock to access any car in the yard.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • RMweb Gold

Amazing pics by any standards. Pity the captions on the railroad pics simply identify the site as "rip track" which implies tearing things apart. Actually it's RIP - short for Repair In Place, i.e. making good defects in running.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

What a fascinating collection of pictures. The quality is staggering considering the technology of the time. What a pity there's no UK equivalent!

 

steve

 

I recall reading that hese images were shot on 4x5 inch Kodachrome film. A fine grained transparency that big with a decent quality lens will yield incredible amounts of information on the images. It's glorious rich stuff.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...