https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qg9_TnwrCXw
Take note of the old time railroaders reverence for steam as it died. I remember old guys just like these. They and their machines are gone forever. I miss all of them.
I have been intimately close to steam, diesel, and electric locomotives in operation. Some diesels and electrics have spirit; they are proud and majestic machines, but they are just machines. Steam locomotives have a heart and a soul, they are alive when a fire burns within them, and they are like attending a funeral wake when they are cold and lifeless, stuffed and mounted in some museum.
If you ever get a chance to get to Steamtown in Scranton, PA roundhouse the is a loco partially cut on one side that allows you to see the heart and soul of a steam loco.
I was fourtunate to stand on the walkway close enough to feel the heat from the front of a loco under fire and watch it back out onto the turntable.
There is a huge backshop behind the roundhouse where they give tours.
Rich
When I was a kid I never saw a diesel until I was almost 12 years old. The train I was on had a diesel until we got to Oklahoma City. I didn't see another one until after the war. Places like Steam town is a good place to see what steam was like. They run steam locomotives but they don't really work steam locomotives.
they don't pull 80-90 car trains or run 80 or 90 MPH.
Thanks for posting that link.
Even mainline steam excursions are just about a thing of the past. A tourist railroad, while having live steam, can't compete with being trackside when big steam passes at mainline speed with a heavy load trailing.
I'll never forget being trackside with a buddy when T&NO 745 pounded and thundered past at about 40, near top speed for a MacArthur like that. That engine was swimming in an enveloping thunderhead surf of steam and smoke that covered us over entirely, a thick fog of glory. My friend was left speechless. He teared up and all he could do was stammer.......... MAN!!!!!! ......
I have to ask. What diesel can do that to you? After you've been in the glory and presence of mainline steam at track speed.
When Diesels go faster they just hum louder.
We live about 200 ft from the old L&N mainline in Mississippi , now CSX. About a dozen or more trains pass every day. The northbounds are always accelerating off the standing slow order on the 2 mile Bay St. Louis bridge and are really hammering. They fail to captivate me though, I don't bother to get up and look. The EMD and GE units all look the same, and there's no interesting road names on the cars any more.
Steam locos are alive. You can hear them breath with every 'chuff'. You can see their "muscles" work as the drive rod strains to get the connecting rod moving the wheels. The firebox 'stomach' provides the energy to convert the life giving fluid provided by the water pump into work. Compared to this, a diesel is just a slightly noisy self propelled box.
Len
I remember well the T&NO steam engines back home when I was a kid. Even seeing them from in the passing car, yes , they were very much alive. One afternoon one of them, in hindsight certainly a mogul, was sitting on a siding whose ties merged with the edge of the gravel road we were passing on. We were very up close and personal with this engine, no more than 7 or 8 feet from it. The injector overflow was pouring out water, you could see the oil fire through the driver spokes, and the whole thing was hissing and leaking steam. I was 5 at the most when I saw this and remember it as clear as yesterday.
I do remember being at the top of Horseshoe curve in PA and seeing a long freight climbing with two large diesels growling and two pushing at the end of the freight. There is a museum at the location. You stand not far from the main line and you can feel the pulse from the exhaust.
It would have been quite a sight years ago under steam.
Check You Tube for videos. I did not put mine there but there must be some there. You can understand what the place is like. Online also.
I was on the open platform of a passenger car in front of #90 sometimes called a Baby Decapod at the museum in
Strasburg but did not do as much work. Pulled backwards. Ran around and pulled back into the station. About four o9r five miles as I recall.. Still it was live coal fired steam.
Coal fired up Mt Washington with a water stop is another story.
Cheers.
Rich