Working rail roads and their tracks.

[Hay Dude]

Great pictures, guys. Love the mining, ore cars and smaller locomotives used in yards in the eastern mines and around steel mills.
Also like the mighty & great western big railroads.
All my kids get bombarded with are whats bad about America in school, they know little about the human sacrifice and industrial might in our countrys past.

 

[Fuddy1952]

There's nothing in Mills, PA, but there are a lot of them within an hour.

The one in Phillipston was supposedly below an overlook. That railyard was small. Closed in 1982ish.

Thanks! Maybe that was the one. My uncle worked for DuPont and worked on developing nylon WWII.
His train layout took up a whole room upstairs in their home. When you opened the door it triggered a switch, a drawbridge went up, then you were standing in the middle. Back then he made everything by hand.

 

[Fuddy1952]

As a kid parents took brother and I to NYC from Lynchburg on the N&W Powatan Arrow. We had a Pullman sleeper car. That was back when everyone wore Sunday best clothes. I remember at one point asking Dad what that picket fence was as I looked out window. He said those are telephone poles!
The food and service was fantastic.

 

[cqaigy2]

Heres an old memory for yas
Just found this beauty along the tracks.

Pretty cool!

I was walking along the tracks going between Ellensburg to Cle Elum WA, up above the Yakima river. Kinda a ways from the road, I got there by boat, and came upon a whole bunch of cross arms, next to the track with insulators, like the one you have there. It went on for miles. A few years later, i was fishing along the same stretch, and the cross arms, still there, so i unscrewed about 6 or more, maybe 8, glass insulators and took them home. Gave all but one or two away.

 

[MossRoad]

As a kid parents took brother and I to NYC from Lynchburg on the N&W Powatan Arrow. We had a Pullman sleeper car. That was back when everyone wore Sunday best clothes. I remember at one point asking Dad what that picket fence was as I looked out window. He said those are telephone poles!
The food and service was fantastic.
View attachment 651446

I have a cousin that lives on Park Avenue near Central Park in NY. Two of my cousins from here recall going to visit her when they were teens. They got on a train here in South Bend, IN and rode all the way to NYC. Then they took a taxi to the apartment. They got out of the taxi and, as my cousin from here tells it, "There we stood in front of this luxury apartment building in our Sunday best, carrying our belongings in paper grocery bags because we didn't own suitcases. How embarrassing. But, the Doorman just greeted us like anyone else and in we went." :laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

When I was young, those glass insulators used to be worth something, mostly because they were still in use and that meant someone probably stole it. :laughing:

Up until about 10 years ago, there were poles with probably a dozen of those insulators on each of the three cross-arms stretching from South Bend to the southwest for 10 miles. There were still wires on them. I doubt they were used. Then, kinda overnight, all the wire started disappearing. That was during the scrapping epidemic. Then one day, the poles and insulators were gone. I think they brought a train in with an excavator on it and just plucked them all out in a matter of days. I regret not pilfering a few from the few poles that were tipped over.

My wife and I frequent junk stores and antique shops (antiques are expensive junk), and there are now quite a few of the glass insulators for sale from anywhere between a buck 5, 10, 15 and up.

 

[Fuddy1952]

Twenty years ago Dad and I rode Amtrak to Union station where we picked up my older brother then continued to Penn station, NYC to visit brother's son.
The Amtrak bathrooms have a sliding door you're supposed to latch. My brother, always a mess, is in there. All at once Dad and I hear a carload of people saying "Ewwwwww!!!", look up, the door had slid open and brother is wiping his behind facing OUT.

 

[MossRoad]

:laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

We saw something similar on a South Shore to Chicago one time. Guy standing there urinating when the door popped open. He had to finish before he could grab the door. :laughing:

 

[MossRoad]

Usually you see people urinating IN the car. :laughing: