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<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic">Fred</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic">THE WHEELS USED TO TALK TO US is a great
book. Highly recommended. (Sorry for the caps--the dreaded ecartis does not like
italics and converts them)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic">Ohio Dennis--note the action of the car
reversing the bow collector!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic">Hey John, I missed the Laketon Road transfer
car also. Worse for me because I could have done it--same with the
Thornburg.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic">But Fred is right--savor what we did do and
don't shed too many tears about what we missed. At least that's what I
keep telling myself when thinking about the Indiana Railroad.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic">Dwight</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Century Gothic"></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=fwschneider@comcast.net href="mailto:fwschneider@comcast.net">Fred
Schneider</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=pittsburgh-railways@mailman.dementix.org
href="mailto:pittsburgh-railways@mailman.dementix.org">Western PA Trolley
discussion</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, November 12, 2013 6:43
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [PRCo] More of London
(2)</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>You're absolutely correct Dwight
February 1960. I
thought it was 1958. I saw either it or or another one of it's
class (9F 2-10-0) at Law Junction, south of Glasgow in August 1960 while
shooting pictures with Jim Aird. <BR><BR>They had a stunningly
long life like our New York Central Niagaras and the Pennsy T-1s.
However, steam was what they understood coming out of the war and they had
abundant supplies of coal. If I understand history correctly, and
feel free to correct me, until sometime after 1964 when Britain began to get
North Sea oil, all of their oil supplies came out of the Middle
East. At least they could fire a steam engine on domestic
fuel.<BR><BR>The country lived on coal back in the 1940s and 1950s and early
1960s. Those pea soup fogs we read about in London were really not
fogs
it was a mix of light winter fog with heavy smoke. The
homes were all heated with coal stoves in every room. If you loved
the filth in Pittsburgh, you would also have loved choking in London,
Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, York and Glasgow. <BR><BR>John
Bromley once sold me a great book on the reminiscences of a London trolley
motorman entitled, "The Wheels Used To Talk To Us." One of the great
tales in it was one of a motorist in a London pea soup who was following a
tram home and followed it right into the depot (carbarn).<BR><BR>The last
British city to have a flood of trams, and it reminded me very much of
Pittsburgh, was Glasgow. It was a very gritty, grimy industrial
city
steel, shipbuilding, locomotives
the buildings were perpetually
covered in a pall of brown and black droppings that came out of industrial
stacks. In the 1940s and 1950s it had around 1.1 million people
and then industry collapsed and the population moved out. Today it's
down around 600,000, about where it was in the 1890s. We don't
need ships when Boeing in Seattle was offering a plane that would carry as
many people across the ocean with 2 percent of the workers as the Queen
Elizabeth did. But I saw it at the beginning of the
decline. North British Locomotive Company still had 2,600
workers in Glasgow in 1960, they were out of business two years
later. Without ships and locomotives, you didn't need steel
mills. But if you loved Pittsburgh or Wheeling or Johnstown, you would
have loved Glasgow, Scotland. I did
. spent two weekends here
with a wonderful Scottish family. The chap I visited worked for North
British Locomotive Company.<BR><BR>Here's what it looked like.
Back then there were two Scotlands
the gritty one and the beautiful
highlands with the lakes and castles and seaside views. Here is
the grimy greasy gopher guts one
.<BR><BR> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERN6xKuk6R8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERN6xKuk6R8</A><BR><BR>And
a professional film about the last day. I think we have to feel
sorry that someone decided women could run trams but not buses so they had to
fire those smart looking gals in a city with high
unemployment.<BR><BR> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2DmTnXlDA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO2DmTnXlDA</A><BR><BR>The
Glaswegian providing the narrative about their underground here is a real
hoot:<BR><BR> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyCeWX_Ujmc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyCeWX_Ujmc</A><BR><BR>This
is the same subway with modernized equipment:<BR><BR>
<A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ieI_0UMT8A">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ieI_0UMT8A</A><BR><BR>Modern
Glasgow isn't as charming as old Glasgow
. but should any of you find
yourself there, it does have a nice "stuffed and mounted" transport
museum. Great collections of locomotives, trams, buses,
automobiles, carriages. Only problem is that the biggest transport
items
.. the ones actually made on the Clydebank
. can only be shown in
pictures. You cannot move an 800 foot long steam ship into the
museum. It's worth a couple of hours.
<BR><BR> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYgz8Q9bezo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYgz8Q9bezo</A><BR><BR>I
guess we all have some remorse that the others
the older ones
saw things
we did not get to see. John Swindler has often commented that I
remember things from his neighborhood in Pittsburgh that he never saw because
he was too young. The 78 Laketon shuttle, right
John? Well, we're all in a way too young. We all
missed things. You missed the Laketon Shuttle. I wished I
had ridden the Lake Shore Electric and the Indiana Railroad and Pacific
Electric. Oh yes, I also missed some things in Britain by just a
few years
Leeds, Aberdeen, Edinburgh. <BR><BR>But we have to
revel in what we did see. And for a few of us, the world doesn't
end at the front door. <BR><BR><BR>On Nov 11, 2013, at 11:36 PM,
Dwight Long wrote:<BR><BR>> <BR>> Fred<BR>> <BR>> A minor
correction. The last British steam locomotive built for main line
service (prior to Tornado) was Evening Star, a 2-10-0 and it was built in
1960. It is now at the museum in York.<BR>> <BR>>
Dwight<BR>> ----- Original Message ----- <BR>> From: Fred
Schneider <BR>> To: Western PA Trolley discussion <BR>>
Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 10:40 PM<BR>> Subject: [PRCo] More of
London (2)<BR>> <BR>> <BR>> This is only for those who
care. The others may delete it. <BR>> <BR>> One
knows only who really loves the same thing he or she does and also who
despises the subject. Those who like it might tell
you. Those who violently disagree generally make sure you
know. Those who waver to either side
you sometimes know while the
masses in the middle will never say anything. This is for
those who might care. <BR>> <BR>> There are two guys
on his list whom I know to be Anglophiles. I once told Derrick
that I had done something so crazy as having dashed off to London, England,
with my wife merely to attend the theater on Saturday night. Mr.
Brashear advised me that he had once done the same. The other one
I know would be John Swindler, whose Mum followed his Dad home from England at
the end of World War II. John still has cousins in
Britain. Dwight Long has been there a few times.
And I've been there so many times (18 at last count) that when I looked at a
travel video of one town two weeks ago, I got that same feeling we all get
when we come home from vacation
the "it's great to be home"
feeling. By the way, I get that I'm home feeling in many places
ranging from where I live to Pittsburgh or Los Angeles or some English or
German or Swiss towns. It comes from wandering.
<BR>> <BR>> Beside John and Derrick, some of the rest of you might
enjoy some of these videos and the attached narrative and this is for
you.<BR>> <BR>> My first visit to Great Britain occurred in August
1959 when I had a one day escape from an army troop ship docked at
Southampton.<BR>> Because I knew from an American railfan friend that
London Underground was still running steam locomotives on the Metropolitan
Division northwest of Rickmansworth, I escaped from the tour and went
searching for these 1896 teakettles. Back then the we could ride
behind one of the electric engines in this video from Baker St. out to
Rickmansworth and behind steam beyond. I sniffed soft coal smoke
all afternoon. (To put it into perspective, a few weeks before I had
been to the opening of the Riverside line in Boston.) <BR>>
<BR>> The original Circle Line tube was opened by the Metropolitan as
a steam underground railway. Can you imagine all that dirt
underground? Well, if you look at the stations today, all the air
vents that allowed the smoke to escape have been bricked up. But early
in 2013 they ran some steam excursions with Metropolitan number 1 and one of
those electric engines (the Sarah Siddons) which I rode behind in 1959
the
electric was doing most of the work.<BR>> <BR>> But there were not
options when it opened. In 1868 steam was modern. We would not
have successful electric technology for another 22 years and MU operation for
another 30 years. In fact it was extend under steam multiple times
until 1884 and was not electrified until 1905. (See for
history: <A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_line_(London_Underground">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_line_(London_Underground</A>)<BR>>
<BR>> And here is the first video
.<BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg4GY9aKfRE">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg4GY9aKfRE</A><BR>>
<BR>> Now the punch line
I was standing at Baker Street the
following year (1960) when a Metropolitan guard came up and started to
chat. When it came time for him to leave, he grabbed me by the arm and
pushed me up into the cab of one of those old electric engines like Sarah
Siddons and I had a free ride out to Rickmansworth and back. Then
I spent the rest of the evening with him chatting in a local pub and trying to
make like I enjoyed warm ale. Turns out I think he was
attracted to how I had mounted two cameras side-by-side to take both slides
and negatives. He had been trained as a photographer in New York City but
could not find job when he returned to London so he wound up working for
London Transport. <BR>> <BR>> And another nice flick
of the Tube in London. Unlike New York, Chicago, Boston and
Philadelphia, London has had a zone fare system for as long as I've going over
there and that goes back to the pounds, shillings and pence days.
Can you imagine looking at the change in your hand and telling if its correct
12 pence to the shillings, 20 shillings to the
pound? They also had half pence. (A
quarter pence was called a farthing so that a haypenny was two
farthings.) They actually had some children's tickets on the tube that
ended in half pence back then. It only took a few weeks
before that came naturally but I was 20 then. It probably wouldn't be
that easy at 73. <BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_olfhN3elog">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_olfhN3elog</A><BR>>
<BR>> In case you are confused by the multiple rails, LT has separate
positive and negative power rails in addition to the two running
rails. I think they have the ability to switch polarity so do not
assume either one is the hot rail. You might have a standard but
if the insulation fails on one, you could easily reverse polarity.
The national railroad network, on the other hand, uses only one power
rail.<BR>> <BR>> My next thought was to remind people of what it
was like in World War II, when the tubes were used as bomb
shelters. I started looking to see what might have been on
line. Here is a great 1941 educational film on keeping the system
running in war time. You say, 1941 and wartime? Yes, they
were at war long before we were
England and Germany were at war since Sept.,
1939. Much of the equipment in this film was still running
when I first got there in 1959. By the way
you see
buses in the heart of the city. London never had trams in the
heart of the city. They came only to the perimeter.
All the northern tram routes were gone by the time this film was made in
1941. <BR>> <BR>>
<A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2ZC9rbxSw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2ZC9rbxSw</A><BR>>
<BR>> Perhaps the best tram film I ever saw from London was this
commercial film made in the last week of service in 1952. It was
once pulled for copyright infringement and now I found it again buried under
the heading "British Transport Films." Before it gets yanked again,
enjoy, if you will, "The Elephant Never Forgets." It's a reference to an
intersection in the south of London
think Elephant and
Castle. I love the older couple riding the top deck, maybe
because I have fond memories of viewing downtown Glasgow from the top deck of
a tram. And John Krish, the man who photographed this, was
fired for taking it
he was told only to photograph the chairman of London
Transport shaking hands with the last tram driver. He was told not to
make a 10 minute film. <BR>> <BR>>
<A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gtJndKE4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc9gtJndKE4</A><BR>>
<BR>> Unfortunately, there is no easy way to find videos that show
people camped in the underground stations to avoid the Blitzkrieg in 1940 or
1941. We didn't have high speed movie films or digital cameras
then. There are still pictures out there. Can you
imagine thousands upon thousands of people who survived because the slept on
the concrete station platforms underground? There are many films
of the bombing of London on YouTube under keywords like Blitzkrieg or Blitz of
London or Battle of London but nothing that really shows how the transit
system was damaged. (Now, a lot of the items out there are
copyrighted
someone puts it on YouTube illegally and it disappears a few
months later when it is discovered
the good stuff might have been there and
is gone.) <BR>> <BR>> How many of us even know today
that the song lyrics, "and Jimmy will go to sleep in his own little room
again" referred to all the English kids who were sent to the country or even
to other nations to get away from the bombs during the war? By the
way, the "Forces Sweetheart," Vera Lynn, is still alive at age 96.<BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwtW2Lx5Vwc">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwtW2Lx5Vwc</A>
<BR>> <BR>> Southwest of "The City" is a place called Clapham
Junction where two railroads, the one that built Victoria Station and the one
whose home was Waterloo Station crossed. It is still one of those places
where you can commonly photograph two or three or four trains all moving at
the same time. This should give you some idea what I meant in the
previous e-mail that the Underground isn't important south of the Thames;
instead its the national network rail that fills the
void. I've been to both places and Clapham actually
makes Jamaica on the Long Island dull by comparison. <BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjgoL0TryA8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjgoL0TryA8</A><BR>>
<BR>> And, as of 2012, there is a second circle line called the
London Overground
sort of like we might have a second Beltway around a
city. The London Overground is made up of national railroad
network lines:<BR>> <BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YqsdXXbwOI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YqsdXXbwOI</A><BR>>
<BR>> This link is specifically for John Swindler, who did sail with
his Mum on the Queen Elizabeth (or maybe it was the Queen Mary) to see
Grandmum. It has a great picture of a boat train leaving the dock
at Southampton with a "Battle of Britain" class Pacific up front and the Queen
sitting at anchor. That particular locomotive was erected in
December 1948 and ran until 1967; RMS Queen Mary made its final crossing the
following year. <BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://cruiselinehistory.com/boat-trains-to-southampton-from-cunard-lines-to-the-rms-titanic-and-the-ss-united-states/">http://cruiselinehistory.com/boat-trains-to-southampton-from-cunard-lines-to-the-rms-titanic-and-the-ss-united-states/</A><BR>>
<BR>> Most of you remember Chicago as a city with almost more
mainline train stations than you could count
Union, Central, LaSalle,
Dearborn, Northwestern, Grand Central. Well, London was the same
kind of place but with even more stations. The railroads were not
unified into British Railways until 1948 and some of them were merged
earlier. But most of the stations remain today.
Paddington was Great Western's station in 1854 and Isambard Kingdom Brunnel's
statue is still prominent there. Euston dates back to 1837 and
served the London and Birmingham Railway originally and eventually the London,
Midland and Scottish. St. Pancras, right next to King's Cross, was
built in 1866 and served trains to the Midlands. Today it also
handles the Eurostar services to Paris and Brussels which circle the city on
new track. King's Cross goes back to 1852 and is home today to the
East Coast mainline to Scotland. Victoria opened in 1860 and
served four companies on the south. Waterloo dates to 1848 for
trains to the southwest. Charing Cross opened in the financial district
in 1864 and allowed trains ending at London Bridge to cross the river into the
City. Liverpool Street in the east handles trains going out
into the Fen country
if you take a boat train to Holland, you use it and it
goes back to 1875. And all these places are still open. And there
are a few minor places like Marylebone. There are five
terminals in about two miles along Euston St / Marylebone Road across the
north side of the city! <BR>> <BR>> And when Mr.
Swindler and I were first there, the southern ones were mostly third rail or
steam and the northern stations were almost all steam. Great
memories. <BR>> <BR>> My arrival in London in 1959 was
a Waterloo Station. Here is a stop motion film of Waterloo Station
in the rush hour 40 years ago. What's happened since then?
The traffic has gotten heavier and the old compartmented stock is
gone. You want that last phrase in American English?
British Railways had a lot of rolling stock with ten seat compartments, each
with doors on both sides. It has all been scrapped due to the
inherent hazards of being mugged or robbed or assaulted (sexually or
otherwise) if you wound up in a compartment with the wrong person.<BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPIaG644jsI">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPIaG644jsI</A><BR>>
<BR>> And a cluster of high definition scenes in King's Cross,
Euston, St. Pancras and Paddington<BR>>
<BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnFuaDntIbw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnFuaDntIbw</A><BR>>
<BR>> And if anyone has the time waste, here is an hour-long film of
steam in Britain, remastered from 8 mm films taken in the early 1960s
the
time I remember. The last steam engines were delivered in 1958, a
year before I first went there. The last fires were dropped about
eight years later (maybe nine) except for more tourist railroads than you will
anywhere else. Yes, it was a different world from here
vacuum
brakes back then. Most trains were so light that very few engines
had stokers. A fitted freight had brakes on all
cars. They had compartmented carriages (not coaches).
The engines didn't need headlights because, except for one grade crossing, the
entire network was fenced and gated. But the steam engines still sounded
like steam engines.<BR>> <BR>> <A
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXw_cQbr6Do">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXw_cQbr6Do</A><BR>>
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