Working rail roads and their tracks.

[MossRoad]

Moss, this info would make a great website when you have pins on a map which open up to pics and maps when you click on them. Or a slide show presentation, I would come to that for sure!

 

[caver]

Some old rails might be on Welcome! - Abandoned Rails

 

[the old grind]

I have a question and that is.. Why is there always a diesel-electric locomotive in the consist when a UP steamer is providing the motive power? it'a always that way and I'm curious of anyone has the answer?

... Might be a air shortage from the BIG boy which is used for braking or its dependability shortcomings...

Yes.

The diesel provides dynamic braking.

Yes.

Sometimes it is to power the electric systems of the passenger cars in the train. ... The diesel may also be for the latest traffic control system, etc. that the steam locomotive probably doesn't have.

Bruce

Yes.

Here in the Midwest we treasure our Berkshires (one step below a Northern). Our excursion passengers like our AC in humid weather and our heat in the coldest. (Exception Algoma Central's "Snow Train" which beckons wearing fur or faux.)

Two big UP 'oil tenders' behind 4014 suggest it might be oil fired vs coal, and one or both of them may be for water. Those big 4 cylinder engines are hungry and thirsty beasts. Anyway, that smoke looks dark for coal smoke, another thing than makes me go 'huh'?

 

[5030]

They are oil fired, Number 4 which I think is bunker oil. Not sure about the war bonnet being used for electricity, UP usually has in the consist, one power car with a diesel genset in it. I kind of lean toward modern tackage management with signals and such. The Big Boy has a Westinghouse air compressor up top under one of the domes I believe, but could be wrong. I it has a steam powered dynamo up top, that is what the wispy steam trail back toward the cab is, the dynamo exhaust. Watched a lot of those railfan flicks and I don't believe the DE's are running at all.

If I was 30 years younger, I think I'd buy a Rail Speeder and restore it and join NARCOA. Probably a Fairmont. I like the 4 stoke speeders.

Way back when, I used to haul the cranks for EDMD in McCook, Illinois out of Ohio Crankshaft in Cleveland, Ohio so I got to wander around the plant (before all the OSHA crap) and watch them build EMD locomotives and engines. Learned a lot of stuff in my wandering around the plant about how they work and how they are built and out back they had a graveyard of wrecked engines. Lots of them, all mangled up. Anyone know what the big oval receptacle is above the saddle tanks on the right side of an engine with the metal cover on it?, or how the engines develop enough boost at low rpm and low exhaust flow velocity? Or how they start one? Or what they do with the lubricating oil, how they change it? Anyone? Guessing time now...

 

[5030]

Similar thing happened to newspapers and their routes.

The one I worked for used to have 145,000 customers in 7 counties, 500+ employees. Many remote offices, distribution centers, trucks, etc...

As customers dwindle on a route, it makes no economic business sense to maintain that route, even though there are paying customers on it. A 70 mile route with 10 customers doesn't pay for the paper it's printed on, let alone the carrier's pay.

I imagine that railroad spurs with sparse customers don't pay enough to maintain the tracks.

There are several short-line railroads around us now. Most of them are just a few miles long and most of them are owned by the same company, Pioneer.

Mossy, I thought RJ Corman owned about the short lines around here?

 

[MossRoad]

Mossy, I thought RJ Corman owned about the short lines around here?

Around there, maybe. Around here, Pioneer.

 

[bcp]

UP Big Boy air compressor:



Bruce

 

[BrokenTrack]

Similar thing happened to newspapers and their routes.

The one I worked for used to have 145,000 customers in 7 counties, 500+ employees. Many remote offices, distribution centers, trucks, etc...

As customers dwindle on a route, it makes no economic business sense to maintain that route, even though there are paying customers on it. A 70 mile route with 10 customers doesn't pay for the paper it's printed on, let alone the carrier's pay.

I imagine that railroad spurs with sparse customers don't pay enough to maintain the tracks.

I was not really like that though.

What happened was, they had customers along the rails, but they might only kick out 10 cars in their siding, so the big railroads said, "Unless you have 100 cars, we are not going to service you." The problem was, you do not just add some more track to have 100 cares because now an elevator has to have more track, switches, track to switch on, and something to move 100 cars. In the end it was just cheaper to haul by truck instead of railroad to comply with the 100 car siding demand.

The customers were there, the railroads just had to send out a brakeman, conductor and engineer to gather up the (10) car loads to make a single 100 train consist, and the railroads did not want to be bothered.

It was pretty dumb of the railroads: they convinced themselves they were not making money, when a lot of smaller customers were adding up to a lot of freight.

 

[dodge man]

I am a land surveyor and through my work I have learned about them. One good thing from my point of view is the tracks are usually the center of the ROW and the location of the rails is pretty stable over the years.

Some of the ROW documents often don稚 say more than starting in KC and running to Chicago and the ROW is 100 feet wide, where some pin it down better.

So my abandoned RR story is the MLI, which is the Macomb, Littleton, Industry rail road. It was a small rail line in western Illinois. It has been abandoned for about 90 years and I have done a couple of surveys along it. In one case buildings were built on the ROW and another case the railroad was excluded fron a persons deed. In the one case the deed痴 actually tied the ROW. In an exact manner and it matched the vague remains of it.

It is my understanding the it takes an act of the federal government to abandon a railroad ROW and this MLI railroad still exists on paper but it has been gone for so long it would be tough to use it again without starting over.

 

[oliver1555]

Here is a link to the UP Steam page. It tells about Big Boy 4014 and "Living Legend" (actually a Northern) 844. It has a link to join the Steam Club, which will give you email updates, live tracking, etc. There are also some Facebook pages. 4014 was delivered as a coal fired unit and was converted to number 5 oil during the restoration. There is a fuel tanker truck dedicated to 4014 that travels with the locomotive. It has 4014 on the hood. 844 was the last steam engine delivered to the UP and has never been retired. Challenger 3985 is now retired.
UP: UP Steam