Working rail roads and their tracks.

[Hay Dude]

Front one appears to be a low nose conversion of a GP7 or 9, or a GP18 or 20. Second is from a later generation.

Bruce

PS: GP18

The gray metal warehouse on the right is called “The Lenape Forge”(Lenni-Lenape Indian tribe)
They specialize in large aluminum manufacturing, forgings and castings. The roll up door is the end of the rail siding the enters on the opposite end of the building.
I would bet those flat cars are headed upstream along the Brandywine to Lukens Steel in Coatesville (now Mital) to pick up the wide steel plates they forge.
That area is in my wheelhouse. I was 1/8th mile away from there today cleaning up tree branches growing into one of my hay fields.
It’s a beautiful place to live.

 

[ArlyA]

Here is a nice film from the 50's of a cab-forward Baldwin engine that ran over the Sierra Nevada mountains. I had no idea they had made this type of engines.

 

[MossRoad]

Aw geeze, another hour I have to dedicate to the cause!

Thanks, I'll watch it tonight after the family goes to bed.

 

[ArlyA]

Oh, this is a great video which I believe was shot in 2010 of the Last Ride for 3985 engine across Kansas and Missouri. The coal trains seen early in the film is the car type called gondolas, I spent most of the time working on.

 

[Hay Dude]

With the coal industry now in ruins, what will happen to the rails and trains that transported it?
I remember being in CO and seeing hundreds of their yellow locomotives in a rail yard looking very much unused.
Wondered if they were the ones used for coal transport and now idled? Probably forever?

 

[MossRoad]

I recall reading something on that subject a few weeks ago while reading about a few of the RR's testing/developing electric engines, and what to do with all the idled diesel electrics. There was discussion about electrification/batteries and the cost savings it would provide over the diesels in cost of maintenance, but that since RR's are very careful to plan out the lifetime of a piece of equipment, it would be decades before the stock of existing diesels would be worn out and up for economical replacement. Very interesting article. Wish I could find it again.

On that note, I saw this yesterday in an antique store...

 

[ArlyA]

When I worked on a BN main line around 1980, the employees back then talked about electrification of some lines and the millions (many) of cost per mile to do that. Where in North America has it been done since 1980?

 

[5030]

Seems kind of 'bizzaro' to me. You close coal fired power plants, people against nuclear, all about wind and solar power which only works when the sun shines and the wind blows and the increase the grid load with electric cars and electrification of railroads... What is the tipping point??

 

[MossRoad]

When I worked on a BN main line around 1980, the employees back then talked about electrification of some lines and the millions (many) of cost per mile to do that. Where in North America has it been done since 1980?

That's probably because oil as a fuel and the maintenance on the diesel locos was cheaper than the centenary system at the time and the maintenance of the electric locos.

For example, when my dad built his house in the late 50s, he had tons of floor-to-ceiling glass (thermopane) and tongue and groove roofing with felt paper and tar. There was very little insulation in that house. I'd guess 55-60 percent of the exterior was glass.

They had two natural gas fired forced air furnaces. I asked him why he did that and he said "When I built the house, natural gas was almost free."

So it all boils down to economics and return on investment.

Once the cost of diesel locos, fuel, maintenance, etc., outpaces the cost of similar in electric, they'll make the switch.

 

[MossRoad]

We have an electric interurban train from here to Chicago; The South Shore passenger line, NICTD (northern Indiana commuter transportation district). Several times a year, they have to bus passengers for various reasons. Downed lines. Dead lines. Extreme cold breaks lines. Extreme heat breaks lines. And, of course, as with diesel lines, vehicle train accidents, derailments, typical railroad stuff.