In reply to 914Driver :
Huh, that's interesting. Old railroad coaches are pretty dang nice inside. When I road with the Strasburg this fall, I really wondered how, with all of today's research into ergonomics, have we not come up with airplane or train seats mroe comfortable than these?
I want a set of these for home.
I don't have any pictures readily available right now but I grew up in a NY Central family. Dad started in the early 1940s working 7 days a week in the Boston? yard. He became an exec for NYC and eventually Penn Central (he fought against the merger). The family moved a lot but settled when I was 3 (1958) outside of NYC until I was 12. Dad's office was in the NY Central building? near Grand Central. I loved going there and would hang around with the elevator operator while Dad was in the office. We would ride up and down and I was allowed to operate the elevator. At 13, due to the merger, we moved to outside of Philly. I was fortunate to see many rail yards, an operating roundhouse, and traveled on the rails in his staionwagon with retractable steel wheels. I had a lifetime pass that allowed me free access to the entire system so lots of stories there. Good memories but 6 days in a Pullman Sleeper with poison ivy all over my body was not one of them.
How about restaurants?
Grew up in and around Clinton, NJ:
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/new-jersey/nj-clinton-station-diner-train/
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
Clinton Station Diner has fantastic food. Stopped there on the way home for lunch from vacation in October with wife and relatives. Took the back windy road way to get back to Flemington/202 to head home. 
This car is similar to what my dad used. At the time he was in the safety department and when there was a derailment he would use it to get to the accident. He headed up the investigations and saw some really horrendous stuff, lots of calls in the middle of the night. Then he had to talk to the families of the deceased employees. He never talked about it but I was told it took a lot out of him.
I stayed in St Paul, MN a few years ago at this converted maintenance shop, now a Best Western. Rooms were nothing special, but who cares? Still has the tracks running everywhere.
Locomotive 8327 was built by the Lima Locomotive Works of Lima, Ohio in 1927. It was used by the Grand trunk Western for switching work in rail yards in Michigan and Illinois. Purchased by Northwestern Steel and Wire of Sterling, Illinois around 1960. On December 3, 1980 the last fire was dropped in the steam engines at Northwestern Steel and Wire. Bandana Square purchased 8327 from Illinois Railway Museum in 1983, and transported it to Saint Paul. 8327 is a 0-8-0 heavy switcher. Northstar Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society
In reply to llysgennad :
Now that is cool!
About 15 years ago, I designed this restaurant and mixed-use building in Oceanview, DE. It used to be called the Royal Zephyr, but it appears to have changed hands since then. There don't appear to be many good images online. And yes, I designed a screen around those stupid exhaust fans, but the owner decided to save $500 by deleting them.
I'm ashamed to say this is only 3 or so hours drive from me. I've driven by for work but never been in.
Located in Mcadam New Brunswick it's supposedly one of the most unique and well preserved railway stations in Canada. Only a few miles from the boarder with Maine. Obviously no longer in use and the town is fighting hard to keep it up.
NickD said:I also remember as a kid, the O&W Historical Society held an event where everyone got to go walk through an old O&W tunnel. Me and my youngest sister and my parents went and we did it twice, after that they stopped holding it because the tunnel ends were starting to get too decrepit and they were concerned someone would get hurt. I could swear it was in Sidney, NY, but I cannot find a photo results for a Sidney, NY tunnel.
Searching NYO&W tunnel gets this picture, which is kind of how I remember it looking, but this is Fallsburg Tunnel, which is nowhere near Sidney. I also recall everyone meeting before and after for ice cream at a little ice cream shop that was originally a small NYO&W depot.
Asked my father, because he would know. It was the Northfield Tunnel in Merrickvill, NY.
It was built in 1890 to replace a series of switchbacks, was a little over a quarter mile in length and was used through to the O&W's abandonment in '57.
A lone NYO&W switcher rolls through the Middletown, NY yard at Wisner Ave on the March 29th, 1957. This was the last day of NYO&W operation before abandonment
An A-B-A trio of NYO&W EMD F3 diesels wait for assignment at the line's Cadosia yard. Cadosia was the start of the Scranton division, which was arguably the O&W's most profitable division. Taken in October of 1956, the end is rapidly looming.
Two of the NYO&W's home V-class 2-6-0 "Camelback" locomotives at the Summitville yard. NYO&W owned more "Camelback" locomotives than any other US railroads.
An NYO&W 4-6-0 (left) and 2-6-0 (right) sit at Monticello, hauling "camp extras".
As I've mentioned it repeatedly, and its a name that has slipped into obscurity, what was the NYO&W? The New York, Ontario, & Western was, quite plainly, a mistake. Even before it went out of business, it was viewed as a railroad that should never have been built. In 1942, A.V Neusser said "I must confess I cannot understand why some railroads were built...We will take, for example, the New York, Ontario & Western. This road really starts nowhere, goes nowhere, avoids all large industrial centers, and ends nowhere."
In the 1880s, during the post-Civil War "railroad fever", Dewitt C Littlejohn took advantage of the Town Bonding Act to build a railroad that served areas that had no rail service and tap into the agriculture and natural resources of those areas. Construction of the New York & Oswego Midland began, stretching from Lake Ontario to Unionville, NJ. Unfortunately, by bonding itself to tiny town with no rail service, it had a meandering route that squiggled all over NY, while missing major cities. Syracuse, for example, already had 3 railroads, so they didn't need the NY&OM, resulting in it going the other side of Onondaga Lake where there wasn't enough population to raise an umbrella. Also, instead of following the landscape, the NY&OM was constructed at right angles to mountains, resulting in an absurd amount of bridges, tunnels, cuts and long hills. The NY&OM cost way more than anticipated to construct and went bankrupt almost immediately in 1880. It was reorganized as the New York, Ontario & Western.
The NYO&W would build up a reputation for tourist travel, hauling passengers to the Catskill Mountains for summer camps. Agriculture, particularly milk transport was also a large part of revenue. In 1889, it would build the Scranton Division to tap into the coal mines. Again, a bit too late to the party, the NYO&W would end up tying themselves in with the smaller coal mines, as the larger ones already were serviced by larger railroads. The railroad would also end up investing significant amounts into these smaller mines, which were all troubled. The NYO&W would become overly reliant on coal traffic, as it would account for 50% of income (despite only moving 4% of Pennsylvania coal).
In 1904, the NYO&W ended up under the control of the New York, New Haven & Hartford, whose president would repeatedly try to barter the line off to the New York Central for concessions, without success. In the meantime, the O&W was let become worn down and obsolete. Better road construction into upstate NY ate at passenger service and the milk traffic. The company-owned coal mines defaulted on the railroad loans and coal prices began to drop as oil become more common and manufacturing left the northeast. In 1937, the O&W went bankrupt again and wouldn't recover again.
In 1948, the O&W sold off every steam locomotive they had and completely dieselized, to try and give themselves a modern image. They also ripped up most of their double-tracking and installed centralized traffic control, both to increase efficiency and to reduce taxes. Despite billing themselves as "New, Young, Out & Working", the line was still mostly known as "Old & Wobbly", "Old & Weary" or "the Old Woman." It would try to reinvent itself as a bridge, a railroad that transferred traffic from one major carrier, but its slow, meandering route wasn't particularly enticing, although some bit. In 1957, it filed for abandonment, and was granted it, becoming the first major American railroad to be abandoned. A lot of the towns it served fought against abandonment, due to the railroad owing millions in back taxes. And as late as 1976, some towns were still paying on the original 1880s bonds, for a railroad that didn't exist.
So, why is the NYO&W looked back on so fondly by those who know it? Kind of a cult status, largely. It was a hard luck railroad that was always in financial troubles. It was also a very picturesque line, with its series of soaring bridges and cuts and tunnels, and steam locomotives that even in their day were antiques. Their diesel paint scheme was also rather pretty. Most of the photos existing can best be described as "bucolic", with short little mixed trains stopping at tiny remote depots to drop off or pick up a handful of people.
From my trip to the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum.
#5901, an EMD E7A, was the first diesel on PRR property, as the PRR was a big believer in steam power and late to dieselize. When it was supposed to be scrapped, an employee, aware of its significance, hid it in an unused roundhouse. PRR management decided that the #5901 should be set aside, not realizing it was supposedly scrapped. When an employee revealed he had stashed it away, it was fixed up and donated to the museum. #5901 is also the last surviving EMD E7 of a class of 429.
#5741 is one of the Pennsylvania's workhorse G5 4-6-0 Ten Wheelers. Designed for commuter service at a time when the Ten Wheeler had fallen out of favor amongst most large railroads, the G5 was the largest 4-6-0 built. Powerful, fast and tough, they were rough riding engines that were disliked by crew. Two other, which belonged to PRR subsidiary Long Island RR, exist and one of the is being restored to operation
PRR #460 is an E6-class 4-4-2 Atlantic, and is the famous "Lindbergh Engine". After Lindbergh returned to Washington from his transatlantic flight and was greeted by President Coolidge, every newsreel company present began an all-out race to get their footage to New York City first to air it on Broadway theaters. A plane could carry it faster, but a train could have a dark room on board and allow the film to be developed while en route. PRR seized the opportunity and scheduled #460, one of their fast light Atlantics, and cleared every other train out of the way for a breakneck run to NYC, averaging 74mph and hitting top speeds of 115mph. Due to being processed en route, the train footage hit theaters an hour earlier than the airplane-transported footage, a fact which probably did not make Charles Lindbergh particularly happy.
PRR #6755, one of Pennsy's excellent M1-class 4-8-2 dual-service Mountains, sits outside the museum, looking pretty decrepit. They removed the boiler jacket to pull out the asbestos lagging and then let it sit like that. Supposedly this is next on their list of locomotives to cosmetically restore, which is good, because it's the last PRR Mountain left and the second-largest PRR steamer left. It'd be even nicer to see it get restored to operation, but the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania will not allow any of their engines to be repaired to operation because it "destroys the historical fabric." Bunch of BS to me.
This thread has been awesome. I'm not a huge rail fan but more a filthy casual. I like the history of steam engines the most.
Now, off to rep my hometown. Richmond, VA.
Chesterfield, VA just outside of RVA had the second railroad created in the US. The original line runs behind my house. It was a gravity railroad used to transport coal from some of the first mines in the US. Info here:
Historical Overview of the Midlothian Coal Mining Company Tract Chesterfield County, Virginia
RVA has the only Class I triple crossing in the US.
A neighborhood in RVA has a buried train. It's still there!
Thanks to you guys I'm checking out rail excursions too. That sounds like a great spring trip for the family. Please keep those suggestions coming. Close to Virginia would be nice.
Xceler8x said:
A neighborhood in RVA has a buried train. It's still there!
Thanks to you guys I'm checking out rail excursions too. That sounds like a great spring trip for the family. Please keep those suggestions coming. Close to Virginia would be nice.
I've read about that Church Hill Tunnel locomotive before. Pretty terrible ordeal.
Those photos of tunnels triggered a memory that nicely links this topic with race cars. About 5 years ago Racecar Engineering magazine did an article on the Laurel Hill tunnel that was being used by Ganassi Racing to test their Indy car aerodynamics. I just checked, it's online, just google Ganassi railroad tunnel. Check it out, it's an interesting story.
Here is a website that documents the 23 tunnels that were once on the B&O mainline between Grafton, WV and Parkersburg, WV. The line was abandoned in 1985 and is now a rail trail.
Sadly the old B&O station built in 1883 was torn down in 1973. Later, when Amtrak used to stop in town, they put up a trailer for a station on the spot that the original station sat. Today, all that are left are some tracks. The yard to the east is still used, but once you get to the edge of town the tracks now stop and the rail trail starts.
The town still has an active CSX line that runs up and down the Ohio River and there is still the bridge across the Ohio River that once was supposedly the longest bridge in the world (wikipedia) at 7,140 ft.
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