[PRCo] Re: PTM Comcast video

[Dwight Long]

Fred

I have some N&W pix, I think, from 1954.  Or maybe they are only VGN.  Took them in Roanoke as we had to parallel and then cross the N&W and cross the VGN on our summer trips to western N.C.   First trip was in 1948.  Trams were still running in Roanoke (barely).  We did not know it, would not have known where to look.  Did not see them.

1958 N&W shots?  I rode behind a J on a round trip between Bluefield and Williamson on the Cavalier in July of that year.  Two weeks later my brother went up to do the same and it was dieselized.  I was demoralized that not much steam was operating because it was the traditional miners' summer vacation--all the freight I saw with steam was a local or two and some engineering trains.  But I have the memories, and some Kodachromes.

The last Brit steam lok built for "normal" service (of course they have built Tornado since then) was Evening Star in 1960.  She was destined for preservation before she left the erecting hall!  Brits have a much keener sense and appreciation of such things than we do here in our "throw away" society.  I vividly recall whilst on my first business trip to England, in 1978, after having stayed in the Royal York Hotel hard by the York railway station, seeing Evening Star in steam right outside the railway museum in York.  I was starting a cross-country trip for my first exposure to the trams in Blackpool.  Evening Star is no longer cleared for operation on the national railway network in the UK.  The blind drivers are a hazard to catch on switch frogs and guard rails which are now permitted to be higher than in steam days because of the lack of blind wheels on present equipment.  So she rests in peace in the York museum--but at least she was saved.

Thanks for the memories!

Dwight
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Schneider 
  To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org 
  Sent: Monday, 30 August, 2010 11:49
  Subject: [PRCo] Re: PTM Comcast video


  Yeah.   Right.   You figured it out.   Thanks Dennis even if the link was wrong.   You brought back my youth to me.

  We took family vacations in the south from 1954 to 1958.   To that, one had to cross the N&W.   I have pictures of trains on that railroad every year but 1954.  In 1958, however, all I have is a borrowed RF&P E8 on a passenger train at Kenova WVa and a brace Geeps on a coal train at Lynchburg.   The steam was almost gone.   I was told if we waited another hour I could see an A but dad wanted to get home.

  But I did see my share of Y6s, As, Js, K2s.   I even photographed a J at night with open multiple flash in the station at Norfolk.   By 1959 steam was virtually dead ... you found it in stuffed and mounted in city parks.   I did see a row of dead engines in the Moscow, Camden and San Augustine yards in east Texas, the Gainesville Midland, a Burlington engine borrowed by the Rock Island in Fort Worth, and the Dallas Union Terminal O-6-0 but the picking were pretty thin.   And then I got Great Britain and I thought I had died and gone to heaven?   Diesels, what's a diesel.   That had taken delivery of their last steam engine just the year before I got there.   

  Thanks Dennis for that glorious mistake.



  On Aug 30, 2010, at 9:25 AM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:

  > This a piece on a steam locomotive on N&W. 
  > 
  > -----Original Message-----
  > From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
  > [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Dennis F
  > Cramer
  > Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 7:42 AM
  > To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
  > Subject: [PRCo] PTM Comcast video
  > 
  > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzxTf3IHYL8
  > This is the promotional video Comcast did for the Pennsylvania Trolley
  > Museum this summer.
  > 
  > 
  >          Dennis F. Cramer
  > http://home.windstream.net/dfc1
  > 
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