Union Pacific 3985 Challenger class locomotive

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

Diesel Behind A Steam Engine

Most mainline & freight RRs do not like steam powered locos running on their ROW for a whole host of reasons. UP and a few others that happen to have their own in house steam programs get away with it however.

If anyone plans to run a steam locomotive anywhere in the USA one of the first things the host RR will require is backup power from a diesel engine. Again for the reasons stated upthread but also to provide motive power should the steam loco for whatever reason cannot. This way the train will still continue to move and not block tracks.

Anyone who as been on a NYC subway or any other train can attest to what a pain it is to be stuck behind a disabled train. For any RR freight or passenger service it can mean trains backed-up for miles.
 
Other frequent RR freight users-carbuilders-they use the freight trains to carry completed cars from the factory to a regional distrribution site.Then trucks carry the cars to dealers.Again special RR cars-enclosed no less-to keep shipped cars clean.At one grade crossing waited for a train carrying nothing but cars.One commute to work in Wash DC was caught behind a disabled-stalled freight train-nothing you could do but wait and call your workplace on a cell phone.If you didn't have one(cell phones were new at that time)the train conductor had one you could use to call your workplace.I was on admin leave for that time-about 3hrs.So I was still paid for waiting on the train.Others were late for work becuase of that,too.The person who stayed for work to cover for you got OT.
 
Enclosed auto carriers (bilevel auto racks)  are not so much to keep the cars clean but to lessen wilful damage from rock throwers, idiots taking pot shots etc.. Every nick and scratch or worse on delivery the railroad pays for. In most major centers theres usually either a railroad owned or more likely a 3rd party auto-compound where all the vehicles are unloaded, inspected (repaired if necessary)  and parked until required for delivery to a local dealer or further trucking out of town. 
 
Thank you Petek!

Apparently you and I truly know why those car-carriers are enclosed.

I remember back in the 1960s/1970s when I worked for Chevrolet/Oldsmobile/Buick dealers how often the cars would arrive in our staging areas with the windows BB'd out or sheet metal dings and dents from rocks and other projectiles.

Across from my apartment complex are Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Audi dealers. All of their deliveries are on side-curtain-equipped car carriers. It's not to keep the Garden State dust off of them, trust me. It's a sad world we live in these days.
 
Do any of you remember when new cars at the start of the model year were delivered in shrouded transport trailers so that no one could see the new models before the release date? The train cars carrying them were covered also. That was back in the day when we would pull up to a crossing and watch the train go by. We would go down to the dealers to see the new models. I remember sitting in a Chrysler New Yorker and thinking it was very grand then moving over to the Imperial while daddy kept the salesman occupied. They seemed so much more luxurious than the Oldsmobubbles daddy drove. A friend of dad's always drove New Yorkers and one day the full time power steering belt broke and before he could get control of the car it had left the road for some overgrown real estate. Daddy always preferred the assisted power steering of GM cars.
 
Here are Chevy Vega's being delivered in a Vert a Pac (just like toy cars!) (see link).

I see the city of New Orleans book - and I do mean book by, it moves fast - by my station in the morning on it's way in to Union (Chicago's Union Station) on the old IC mainline. Of course it depends on if it's ontime, or whether I am or not.... They sometimes have the old IC coaches on the end too.

 
(I know this is off thread subject):

tomturbomatic : your Post# 639284, Reply# 63..reminded me...I would climb up on the trailer trucks parked on the weekend nights, at the corner Texaco gas station, to see the new cars. One year I slipped under the tarp to view what looked to me, as a very futuristic car. (see photo)

Being from the Detroit area, we saw plenty of rail transport of cars - but nothing as exciting as getting a peek under the tarp of a parked tractor-trailer. Trains weren't accessible like that.

good video of a steam engine prep and run - lot of work!

ovrphil++11-17-2012-11-34-53.jpg
 
As soon as I started viewing the Super Chief video I realized that I need to make a correction to my post above.  My travel on the Santa Fe was aboard the San Francisco Chief.  The Super Chief was an all-sleeper train.  The San Francisco Chief offered what the Santa Fe billed as "High Level Chair Cars" and no dome cars.  The High Level cars did offer the advantage of having all luggage stored on the lower level, which made bags easily accessible compared to other trains, where everything was out of reach in the baggage car.

 

My parents could never afford sleeper accommodations so we always traveled coach.  When I was a kid that was OK, but now that I'm 6' and 200 lbs. there is no way I could travel cross-country in just a recliner.
 
That's the Chrysler with the horizontally stacked speedometer and gauge display that I remember, sort of a tiered cake on its side! Very impressive. Friends of ours had the Plymouth Fury, 58 maybe, with the swivel seats and one night it swung around and broke almost dumping the wife out of the car.
 
MAYTAG AMP ad featuring a railroad family in pod rotation

An ad for the Maytag automatic speaks of the generations of family men working on the railroads so their uniforms got plenty dirty. You have to wonder about the health concerns of all of that exposure to the byproducts of coal & Diesel combustion. In pictures of locomotive crews, you see a kerchief around their necks hanging down on their chests. I guess that was to pull up over their nose when the smoke was coming at them like when going through a tunnel.

Back in the 50s or 60s, while waiting for a haircut in a full barbershop, I read of one of the strangest railroad disasters of WWII where a train pulled by two locomotives stopped in a tunnel in the Italian Alps. One of the engines had begun to lose traction. I don't know if the sand tube was clogged or what, but when they found the train after the fires in the locomotives had burned out, one engine was set for reverse and the other had the brakes locked. Everyone on the train perished with the telltale marking of red just beneath the nostrils indicating carbon monoxide poisoning.

In the 80s, there was a big liquidation sale of a hardware/general merchandise store in Hancock, MD that John and I went to. It was right beside the train yard that was maybe a half dozen tracks wide and they had merchandise outside that had been in the place for decades, even stuff from the attic. There was a box with a doll in it. The cellophane window in the box as well as the doll's dress had been eaten away by the acids in the coal smoke & soot and there was a light layer of soot over the whole thing. In addition to the trains, I am sure the town used coal for heating and other purposes over the decades. It was probably not a healthy environment.
 
Coal Burning ='s Acid

Now you understand why northern states and others get so angry about coal burning electric power plants.

While great strides have been taken on inventing various techniques for cleaning up smoke produced after burning coal, to many the best thing for air and environment is not to burn the stuff at all.

When coal was used as the main heat source for boilers that did everything from heat homes to power locomotives and ships the air around most if not all major urban areas was foul and corrosive. Imagine cities like London, New York, Chicago, etc all dense with housing and manufacturing burning coal for heat and or to produce steam that powered things.

IIRC the only more polluting fuels are the lower grades "bunker fuel" of oil used for heating and or at one time to run ships and locomotives. The stuff is basically sludge/leftovers from processing the ligher grades of oil and though mostly phased out still in use for heating purposes.

Here in NYC there has been a movement afoot to ban the use of heavy heating oils for home heating/hot water. Most small homes have long gone over to lighter grades and or natural gas/propane but many of the larger apartment buildings still burn the stuff.

Landlords/building owners like it because #4 heating oil is cheap. Also most still have their original boilers that at one time burned coal. All that was done was to switch burner heads and some other tweaks in order to use heavy heating oil. A switch to natural gas could be very expensive especially if the current supply to the building is only suited to cooking and or clothes dryer use.
 
Our electric power generator, which used to be Potomac Electric Power Co or PEPCO, but now is something else, combines pulverized limestone with the almost pulverized coal which is shot into boilers with a great deal of air to help the coal not only burn cleaner, but also to help neutralize the acidic byproducts of combustion. Scrubbers in the smoke system are also very valuable for helping to keep the air cleaner, but there really is no such thing as clean coal. London's killer smogs were caused by the combination of coal smoke and fog holding the poisonous brew close to the ground. If any of you remember the book The Water-Babies, it details the lives of orphans & poor children who were sold to chimney sweeps who tied ropes around them and lowered them, usually upside down into often still hot chimneys to scrape away the deposits on the walls. The exposure to the coal tars resulted in cancers forming just about the time they were getting too large to be of use to the sweeps. After enduring a lifetime of burns, they died early painful deaths.
 
Up close walk around of massive rotary snow plow

Pause the video to read the yellow information plaque. Note that it takes 3 or 4 locomoties to push this plow. Its 16 cylinder, 3000 hp engine is just for powering the plow unit.

 
Well that snowplow video

...led to this one of the UP 3985 Challenger, which locomotive began this thread. If it's already been presented in one of the earlier posts, I did not find it in a cursory search.

 
A tour inside and out of a UP BIG BOY, 4-8-8-4

This class of engine was mentioned earlier. This guy give a good tour. Have your cursor on the play arrow so that you can pause the video to read interesting information.

 

Latest posts

Back
Top