Steam Engine Cab Interior

ID # 1,121

STEAM ENGINE CAB INTERIOR

This locomotive cab, from an engine on the New Haven line, shows the complicated array of gauges and other fixtures which the engineer must master and handle properly. The earliest locomotives had no cabs, only platforms on which the enginemen stood while they worked. In 1848 Ross Winans designed and built a locomotive named the camel, with one of the earliest cabs, a structure which stood like a primitive roof astride the boiler. He followed this up with over 200 similar engines all known as "camels," for the Baltimore & Ohio. Enclosed wooden cabs appeared around 1859. Modern cabs are built of steel or aluminum plate. Cabs of coalburners have stokers, fireboxes and grate-shakers. The long list of cab equipment includes-among other fixtures-the throttle lever,
brake lever, steam and air gauge, water level controls, whistle cord, bell-ringer, lighting equipment and on passenger engines (except in the Deep South) train-heating equipment.

NEW HAVEN RAILROAD

CLIMAX LOGGING ENGINE

ID # 1,119

CLIMAX LOGGING ENGINE

At least eight types of geared locomotives were built commercially and sold in the United States for industrial use. The types operated mostly on logging rail-roads were the Shay, the Climax and the Heisler, in that order. Each was designed specifically to meet certain needs. None was best for all conditions. This painting by Richard Ward shows Climax engine No. 3 of the Elk River Coal & Lumber Co., fording the shallow Lilly Creek Fork of Elk River near Dundon and Swandale, West Virginia. She is returning from laying new track in the woods. The ERC&L railroad is standard gauge, about 26 miles long, and its track is sometimes covered by water. But as this picture
 shows, fording water-covered tracks is not uncommon for a Climax. This sturdy old engine continued operating until 1960. At the time she was retired, she was the only Climax in the country left in logging service.

COLLECTION OF MICHAEL KOCH

4-6-2 ON A TURNTABLE

ID # 1,110

4-6-2 ON A TURNTABLE

This passenger-hauler, one of the last survivors of a large fleet of Canadian National 4-6-2's built between 1913 and 1929, weighed 260,000 pounds and had unusually large driving wheels: 69 inches in diameter. She is shown here on a turntable at Hamilton, Ontario. The turntable is one of two methods for switching a locomotive's direction. The other device is the wye, usually a "Y" shaped track with a loop at the top. The earliest North American turntable predated the loco-motive. It was built in 1826 to help the horse-drawn Granite Railway carry stone for the erection of Bunker Hill monument at Boston, Massachusetts. At first, steam-locomotive turntables were operated by hand, later by mechanical or electrical power. Since diesels, capable of driving in both directions, have displaced steam locomotives, nearly all turntables have vanished.

DAVID PLOWDEN, RAILROAD MAGAZINE

GRAND TRUNK AND WESTERN NO. 6328

ID # 1,105

GRAND TRUNK AND WESTERN NO. 6328

In this photograph No. 6328, a mighty 1-8-4 on the Grand Trunk Western, is stopping to take water at Pontiac, Michigan, early one evening in 1958. At that time, most of America's railroad mileage was already operated by diesel-electric locomotives, but the G.T.W., the American subsidiary of Canadian National Railways, continued to wheel tonnage with steam engines. The G.T.W. was even pulling smoke-plumed commuter trains daily in and out of Detroit, right past the headquarters of General Motors, builder of most diesel engines. In fact, the "Trunk" seemed to be so firmly committed to steam in those Days that it occas-ionally borrowed coalburners from the Illinois Central and Burlington roads to keep its freight and passenger trains rolling. In 1960 it finally joined the diesel parade.

DON WOOD, TRAINS MAGAZINE

Norfolk & Western Steam Locomotive No. 117

ID # 1,104

NORFOLK & WESTERN NO. 117

In 1919, when the Norfolk & Western railroad found that it needed longer and heavier passenger trains, it ordered ten mighty 4-8-2, or Mountain, type engines to haul them at high speed in the mountain Districts. One 4.8-2 was No. 117 shown here with the Winston Salem local at the Roanoke, Virginia, station. All ten Mountains were equipped with streamlined shrouds as much for appearance as to combat wind resistance. Although Brooks Locomotive Works  built all this lot. Nos. 116-125, the Norfolk & Western had its own locomotive-building shops, as did a few other railroads. These turned out modern coalburning iron horses until 1952. For several years after the American railroad industry as a whole had dieselized, the Norfolk & Western, located in one of the nations richest coal fields, was known as the last big stronghold of steam power in the United States. Eventually even the N. & W. followed the national trend by scrapping its "steamers"' in favor of diesels.

PHOTO BY O. WINSTON LINK

Reading Steam Locomotive No. 2124

ID # 1,089

READING NO. 2124

The Reading's 2124 was built originally by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1925 as a 2-8-0 (Consolidation) type, but in 1947 she was rebuilt at the Reading's own shops as a 4-8-4 (Northern) type. Although all of the company's regular passenger and freight trains are now hauled by, diesel locomotives, the 2124 and four other steam engines of the same type are kept in operating condition. They are often used to wheel "Iron horse Rambles," Saturday or Sunday railfan excursions. With steam power gone completely from main-line service throughout the United States, such nostalgic excursions have become popular on several big American railroads and tourist shortlines.

DON WOOD, TRAINS MAGAZINE

Rock of Ages

ID # 1,088

ROCK OF AGES

This sturdy little engine, an 0-6-0, was typical of the "work-horse" motive power used on small industrial Iines all over the United States and Canada during the Steam Age. Built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1923, No. 27 was first operated by the McKeesport Connecting Railroad, then by the St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain Railroad and  finally, when this picture was taken, by the Rock of Ages Corporation which scrapped her in 1959. The corporation is well named. Its standard-gauge railroad consists of about ten miles of sidings at various granite quarries at Barre, Vermont. Over these tracks the Rock of Ages hauled rough granite to finishing plants and started the finished product to market. The railroad, now fully dieselized, keeps one of its nine oldtime steam engines, No. 6, on permanent display at Barre.

OLIVER JENSEN

Pennsylvania Steam Locomotive No. 5244

ID # 1,087

PENNSYLVANIA NO. 5244

No. 5244, an 0 5-0 switcher, built in 1916 at the Pennsylvania Railroad's famous Juniata shop in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was the last of nearly 130 years of Pennsy steam engines to remain in service, in her old age she was leased to the Union Transportation Co., an 18.87-mile freight line serving the Fort Dix, New Jersey area. A framed enlargement of this photograph, showing her on a Union Transportation trestle, is hung outside the office of the PRR president in Philadelphia, together with her red-and-gold, keystone-shaped number plate, as a  sentimental remembrance of the Steam Age. The Pennsylvania Railroad did more than any other system in the world to develop the steam locomotive. Even after the PRR itself had been completely dieselized, No. 5244 continued to pull trains; but the extreme difficulty of repairing steam locomotives in the Diesel Age made it necessary to scrap her in 1960.

PHOTO BY DAVID PLOWDEN, RAILROAD MAGAZINE

East Broad Top

ID # 1,086

EAST BROAD TOP

No. 15, a 2-8-2 type, was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1914 for a narrow gauge shortline, the East Broad Top Railroad & Coal Co., which dates hack to 1871. The company's narrow-gauge engines could not travel on standard gauge tracks, so Baldwin delivered them over the Pennsyhania Railroad on specially-built flatcars. No. 15 served continuously until the line was abandoned in 1956. She went back into service in 1960 when part of the line was revived as a tourist attraction. East Broad Top is one of the very few active narrow-gauge carriers in America today. Owning eight Baldwin steam engines, it operates steam-powered passenger trains regularly during the summer and early fall out of Rockhill Furnace (Orhisonia), Pennsylvania, where she is pictured here on a tourist run.

PHOTO BY JACK EMERICK

Jersey Central Camelback

ID # 1,085

JERSEY CENTRAL CAMELBACK

This 41-2 (Atlantic) type engine, which Brooks Locomotive Co. built in 1901 for the Central Railroad of New Jersey, was one of several hundred "double-cabbers" that operated mostly in the East over a period of about seventy years, beginning in 1880. The middle cab resembled a camel's hump or Mother Hubbard's hood and was, therefore, called a Camelback or Mother Hubbard. In some Camelbacks the rear cab was so rudimentary that it was almost nonexistent. While this arrangement gave the engineer working on mid-boiler a better view of the track ahead, it lessened cooperation between him and his fireman shoveling coal in the tender behind. It was virtually impossible for the fireman to communicate with the engineer while the train was running, although the engineer could signal by bell or whistle; and in an emergency the fireman could stop the train by setting the air brake. Built for speed, Camelbacks pulled the fastest passenger trains on the Camden-Atlantic City run.

BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD

Illinois Central Railroad Steam Locomotive "Casey Jones"

ID # 1,046

CASEY JONES

By riding this Illinois Central 4-6-0 or Ten-wheeler type to his death at Vaughan, Mississippi, in the dark early morning of April 30, 1900, John Luther Jones, nicknamed "Casey," became a folksong hero and his name was added to our language as a term meaning locomotive engineer or railroad man. An early version of the Casey Jones song has the "brave engineer" making his "trip to the Promised Land" on a "six-eight wheeler," a type which never existed. Casey's fast passenger train rammed the caboose of a freight train moving slowly into a siding. The battered locomotive, originally the 382, was rebuilt and renumbered successively 212, 2012 and 5012. She had other fatal accidents, was branded a hoodoo, and finally went to the scrap pile in 1935. Casey's last home in Jackson, Tennessee, is now a railroad museum. Among the exhibits there is this Ten-wheeler, renumbered to simulate his famous, but doomed engine.

CASEY JONES MUSEUM

The 999

ID # 1,045

THE 999

William Buchanan designed this high-wheeled 4-4-0 type, No. 999, for exhibition at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893; the New York Central built her at its West Albany shops. After some preliminary runs, she was tested May 10, 1893, pulling the westbound Empire State Express on a nearly straight stretch of level track between Batavia and Buffalo, New York. Engineer Charles H. Hogan took the bridle off, covering one of the 36 miles of the run in 31.2 seconds at the rate of 112.5 miles per hour. Never before had mankind traveled so fast. Since then the Pennsylvania Railroad claims to have made 127.1 miles per hour with a 4-4-2 type steam
 engine, No. 7002, in Ohio on June 11, 1905 a claim which some experts dispute. The French National Railroads actually attained 207 miles per hour with an electric locomotive March 29, 1955, for an unequalled world's record. But no diesel locomotive has ever  approached 999's top speed.

NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD

The Great Train Robbery

ID # 1,044

The Great Train Robbery

Among the many oldtime plays that catered to the public's interest in railroads was "The Great Train Robbery" by A. H. Woods. This picture is reproduced from a giant poster measuring 12x20'. This melodrama was so popular that in 1903 Thomas A. Edison made the world's first story-telling movie from it. The movie created a sensation when shown in the nickelodeons of the early 1900's and is now a classic. Much has been written about the Western outlaws who held up trains in the latter half of the 19th century, sometimes dynamiting mail and express cars, often robbing passengers, and galloping off with the loot. The list of desperadoes includes such men as the Renos, the Hole in the Wall gang and lone-wolf bandit Oliver C. Perry. But most notorious was the gang headed by Jesse James whose exploits have been breathlessly studied by generations of children in dime thrillers, comic books, movies and television.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Watering the Locomotive

ID # 1,043

WATERING THE LOCOMOTIVE

Many small railroads, such as this south Carolina logging-line, lacked the wayside storage tanks, pump-houses. standpipes, or track pans necessary to quench the thirst of their iron horses. This 1891-built No. 6 was serviced by letting a hose down into a muddy creek to suck up water. In early days on the Western plains the windmill often supplied power to pump water into a wayside tank. Later, pumps were operated by steam, gasoline and then electricity. At first the tanks were wooden with iron hoops: more modern ones were built of steel. Romance and adventure have gathered about water tanks: train robbers crouched in their shelter, waiting for the Fast Mail. and hoboes loafed underneath them, ready to hop the "rods" or "blinds" when a freight stopped for water. With the installation of track pans on some roads, beginning in 1870, many engines could scoop up water without stopping.

OLIVER JENSEN

Southern Pacific Rotary Snowplow

ID # 1,042

SOUTHERN PACIFIC ROTARY SNOWPLOW

Snow-fighting has always been a serious problem for American railroads, except in the South. Western roads built snowsheds over their tracks in the mountains and locomotives were fitted with wedge-shaped plows. Long ago, trains were sometimes lost for hours, even days, in blizzards. Near Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1872, a passenger train was snowbound for two weeks. Invention of the rotary piow, such as the one in this picture, in the 1880's simplified the problem. But even as late as February 22, 1910, an entire Great Northern passenger train, snowbound for four days outside the old Cascade Tunnel in Washington, was hurled down a slope by an avalanche, with a death toll of 101. Among the devices used today to fight snow are snow fences, fixed electric or gas switch-heaters, portable oilburning pots set between the ties, torches, chemicals, and bulldozer scrapers. Then too, gangs of men stand ready to shovel snow. One good way to keep the line open during a blizzard is to run a train over it every half-hour, day and night.

SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES

Denver & Rio Grande Western Steam Locomotive No. 268

ID # 1,001

DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN NO. 268

Baldwin built this engine and four other 2-8-0 (Consolidation) type engines for the Denver & Rio Grande in 1882. In the same year that railroad, building westward from Pueblo, Colorado, reached the Utah state line and connected with the Denver & Rio Grande Western, a road built wholly within Utah. Since 1920 the two systems have been one, owned by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad Company. This is the only railroad in America that still operates some narrow (3') gauge trackage in addition to its standard (4' 8 1/2") gauge. The 268 is a narrow-gauge engine, Class C-16. She weighs 69,110 pounds, with 36" driving wheels, 15x20" cylinders, and 69,540 pounds of force. Now retired, she stands on permanent exhibition at Gunnison, Colorado, one of the many iron horses that have been preserved and donated to communities as memorials of the Steam Age.

THE DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN RAILROAD COMPANY

The Fontaine

ID # 1,000

THE FONTAINE

This oddiooking engine, the Fontaine, was an experimental type, designed and patented by Eugene Fontaine of Detroit, Michigan. She was built in 1880 by the Grant Locomotive Works, Paterson, New Jersey. Her unique gearing was fashioned to increase speed without burning additional fuel. The main driving wheels were placed so high that they transmitted their motion to lower driving wheels which rested on the rails. Although this peculiar engine actually worked when tried out on the Canada Southern and other railroads, she became a center of controversy and was never officially accepted. In a way, she symbolizes a century and a quarter of efforts, some freakish, others sound and successful, that were made to improve the steam locomotive.

KEAN ARCHIVES

The Greatest Show on Earth

ID # 911

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH

In 1919, a few years after Ringling Bros. took over Barnum & Bailey, the two biggest tent shows in the world began operating as a unit. At one time they boasted 100 brightly painted and unusually long railroad cars. This equipment was divided among four sections of what was technically called one train, each section having a separate locomotive. Contrary to popular belief, the first "big top" to use trains for transportation was not Barnum's, but Spalding & Rogers in 1856. Today, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows, reduced to a 15-car train, is North America's only railroad circus. As in this much earlier setting, slap-happy clowns and acrobats, snarling tigers, white Arabian horses, elephants from India and gorgeous girls in tights and spangles still ride the rails with the "Greatest Show on Earth."

CIRUS WORLD MUSEUM

"Flight of the Fast Mail"

ID # 910

"FLIGHT OF THE FAST MAIL"

This old print shows engine No. 317 of "The New York Central and Lake Shore Railroad Post-Office," about to pick up a mail bag on the fly. This speedy, all-mail exhibition train operated between New York and Chicago in competition with a similar Pennsy run. On the Post Office's first westbound trip, September 14, 1875, the Vanderbilts private car Duchess, for eminent guests, was coupled behind the four white-painted, gold-lettered cars with their bright red mailbags. An Act of Congress July 7, 1838, declared all railroads to be post roads and authorized the U. S. Post Office to make contracts for hauling mail by rail. The first railway post office car, a converted baggage car, ran July 7, 1862, over the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad (now in the Burlington system) in Missouri as a special part of the pony express route.

COVERDALE AND COLPITTS COLLECTION

The Highland Light

ID # 909

VIRGINIA & TRUCKEE

No. 12, the Genoa, and No. 11, the Reno, both eight-wheelers, doublehead a string of Pullmans in this painting by Howard Fogg of the Afternoon Express on the Virginia & Truckee. The V. & T. was the fabulous gold- and silver-mining railroad of Nevada in the late 1870's, during the roaring days of the Comstock Lode. Such trains brought the gaudy new gentry up steep grades from San Francisco to the luxury and excitement of Virginia City. The Genoa, built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1872 and retired but not scrapped in 1912, is a fine example of the 4-4-0 in its prime. The V. & T. ran ancient engines and brightly painted wooden cars with open platforms until 1959. Then the rolling stock went to Hollywood movie studios while the rails joined the sorrowful roster of picturesque but vanished American shortlines.

COLLECTION OF LUCIUS BEEBE AND CHARLES CLEGG