Switcher Saturday: 2016-Oct-08

Back to switchers - I stumbled upon this picture early this week which I thought kinda grim but SwitcherSaturday worthy.

October 13, 1932 - A collision occurred between two trains of the Boston & Albany Railroad near Columbus Avenue and Berkeley Street, Back Bay. A freight train pulling several freight cars easterly toward South Station collided with a empty passenger train being pushed to railyards near Exeter Street, Back Bay.
The collision severely injured the engineer, fireman and brakeman on the freight train, as well as the brakeman on the passenger train. The left leg of Freight Engineer Wallace Smith was amputed below the knee in order to free him from the wreckage. District Chief Samuel G. Pope, District 7, kept Engineer Smith’s head outside the window of the locomotive when a doctor from Boston City Hospital performed the amputation.
The Boston Fire Department responded to the scene to assist in the removal of the injured and maintain a watch on the damaged boiler on the freight train.

Pictures: https://www.flickr.com/photos/...516/with/5786891776/

Murnane posted:

Good morning Tom, hope all is well in up your way!  I think they should make all walls pegboards, wouldn't it make life easer for all of us! :-)

What is that bridge you have there?  

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Yes, Pegboards are great! That is my Lionel prewar standard gauge signal bridge. I bought it several years ago from the vendor across from me at the White Plains (NY) Toy & Train show, put it on my table to keep it safe and then had to shoo folks away from it.

Tom 

Good morning! Happy SWSat!
We are off to a good start today. I love this fall weather we are finally having up here in the Northeast. It is finally train time again.

Sorry Rich and Tom I have no dogs. Last weekend though I went to visit my parents south of Fredricksburg VA. I was saddened to see the new Canton Railroad paint scheme. The old one was such a classic.

This week I have one of my more unusual switch engines to share. It is an Austrian engine that is most commonly associated with another scale. Most model railroaders will recognize this one as being the engine that most LGB G scale starter sets are headed by.

The LGB model is based four narrow-gauge locomotives made for the StLB Steiermärkischen Landesbahnen in 1892 by Krauss of Linz. Two of identical units had been built previously (1890)for another Austrian narrow gauge line the SKGLB.

Of the six of these side tank engines built two are preserved, both from the StLB. The unit that all of the LGB engines are based on is the Stainz #2 which was in powering tourist trains until 2000. It is now on display and awaiting restoration. The sister unit the Gobonitzis #3 is preserved at the Railroad Museum of Ljubljana, Slovakia.

My model is tinplate from ETS of Czechoslovakia. They seem to be among the last makers of formed tinplate o scale anywhere. My engine is an "Alice"but they currently are making "Lucy". They make their engines in several drive and power/coupler options because they are trying to meet collector interest in a large worldwide base. The drives are also available separately. They offer a few interesting other switchers including a nice European small electric switch motor and a Baldwin steeple-cab in several US paint schemes.

ETS also offer a very nice WW2 era US military made 0-6-0t side tank engine that was made for the war effort. A few of those stayed stateside  and worked in industrial RRs as well as Ft Euestis.

My particular engine I got at a thrift shop in a wooden set box with cars, track and power pack. Mine had a big sticker on the box from a separate American importer making it an English language set for Christmas village use. Apparently mine is from sometime in the early 1990's. It is all formed tin and it is two rail DC. So I can't run it on my shelf layout. ETS also offers this engine in 3 rail AC.  Oh well I still like it. The cab doors open as does the smoke box on its hinges. The two headlights are very bright and there is a reverse circuit that lights the reverse headlights for reverse. The movement is very nice with the added interest that the painted rods pass thorough the cylinders and slide in and out at the front.

Speaking of the Stainz 2, the Fleishmann Oe (On30) model of it:

Rusty

Nothing from my layout this week.  But I thought I'd share this interesting switcher photo I came across the other day.  

Norfolk Southern - Eco friendly at IsLand Yard Pittsburgh, PA

Rusty Traque posted:

Speaking of the Stainz 2, the Fliesmann Oe (On30) model of it:

Rusty

I missed those  Flieshmann engines and cars. They came out in the short time I was out of the hobby around college. Very nice. Unusual to see model. 

mike.caruso posted:

Nothing from my layout this week.  But I thought I'd share this interesting switcher photo I came across the other day.  

Mike, here's a picture of sister unit #12005 that I took back in 1988 when I was living in Michigan and working for Ford.  This was taken in the yard across from the Rouge Assembly Plant in Dearborn, MI on 10-30-88...

 MTH Railking ALCo RSD4--CNJ #1601 (yes, this is the locomotive that inspired my OGR Forum screen name!)...

@ChessieMD mentioned an iPhone photo app called Prisma a couple weeks ago, I downloaded it this morning and tried it out, pretty cool, thanks man!

There are tons of options and "levers" to switch up your pictures, really neat stuff!

1615 moves 221 to the engine house to await it's turn in the shop.Have a great Saturday guys.

I saw this Cat in Bowie MD at the tower and Station museum last week. Bowie is my historic family seat since the 1600's. My Uncle still lives a bit further down on the Popes Creek Secondary .(Cats rule, Dogs drool!)

It was early morning, October 1950, and the crew of the C1 had her fired up and ready to go.

Unfortunately, the yard master was tired of the big engine damaging his tracks and the occasional derailment on the tight east end switches.  So he dispatched an idle H10 to put together the morning Merchandise Service train to Chicago. 

The H10 would later pull a mixed freight local to several industries to the south while the C1 and its crew continued to wait for an assignment.

FYI:  Both engines are Weaver with TMCC/cruise.

CNJ #1601 posted:

Mike, here's a picture of sister unit #12005 that I took back in 1988 when I was living in Michigan and working for Ford.  This was taken in the yard across from the Rouge Assembly Plant in Dearborn, MI on 10-30-88...

I really like that.  It would be nice to someday find this engine in O gauge!  (I too was living in Detroit when that was taken.  In Birmingham.  My wife was working at Chrysler.)

K-line did a Ford remote control switcher

Hi fellow SWSAT Buds!  Sorry I'm late to the party.  Was away on business this weekend.  Here is a little something from Patsburg!

Greetings to my Switcher Saturday brothers. I apologize for not participating this week but it was New York Comic Con weekend and attending this incredible event has become an annual family tradition. 

Great contributions from everyone this week as always. 

Best,

Bob

Bob 3676,

Wow! Looks fun! I got spoiled when I lived in San Diego. This sort of thing is another side hobby  to me. I used to go to the big comic con in SD. Looks like a lot of fun.  

My Wednesday's are very full after work with my weekly trip to Carlstat NJ to a work session on the NYSME club layout. I have been building an old stock Gloorcraft craftsman kit of a RR tool shed for a month or so. It is my first such kit but it is turning out well. Then I take the bus back to Port Authority and go to Midtown comics to get my weekly little stack of books and take the 1 train home. 

This weekend I took a few days off skipped the city and comic con for the Adirondacks. I have been running some errands and shutting down the place for the fall. My caboose repop (1 to 1 scale model) is getting a bit of work and I now have some rails for next years work sessions. I am relaying some a few rails on the former Grasse River RR ROW. Eventually I hope to get some wheels and jack the caboose up and onto them.  If you can believe it this is the former saw mill service track in the saw mill yard. We are years away from any switching.

It looks very nice in the Fall foliage.

Bob and Andy,

  Great pictures from both of you. Looks like you both had great outings. Andy, that caboose is really a gem.

Tom

Thanks Tom. I really am quite fond of it. 

I found an old picture of our house as the logging office before it was painted. Here are those stairs today. That door next to them head into a tunnel into the basement. All the log cars had track on the top that Barnhart loaders could move themselves on top of the cars all the way down the train to load the logs on them. This is E.F.co #4 (of 4). Only one Barnhart is still around in a museum in PA.

In a way these loaders were like switchers that rode on rails atop the cars moving logs. They were steam powered and had vertical boilers inside that wooden cab. They could move forward and back on the rails atop the cars and pivot the cab and boom. The boom was fixed in place in relation to the cab but the cable could move the loading hook up and down. The Emporium Forestry Co./Grasse River RR Barnhart loaders were made by the Marion Company which is better known for making steam shovels.

The logging flat on the inclined track is heading to where I have spotted the caboose.

CNJ3676 great pics...this is not aimed at you.....so....people gripe because a few of us post pics of our pets, posts get deleted. another member posts pics of legos...and all are fine with this?...tick tock......

CNJ 3676/Bob, just so you know, a few of us posted pictures of our pets along with our switcher pictures, and some folks flagged the pictures and we were subsequently reprimanded and the pics/posts were removed.

I'm not sure why someone would flag the pictures since quite frankly I didn't think too many people other than "the regulars" actually read our Switcher Saturday posts, but I guess the rules are the rules and we broke them, so no more pet-pix with switchers.

Anyway, to Dave's comment - the theory is that since your pictures don't have trains in them, or are not directly about trains, someone is likely going to play "cop" and flag them to be removed.  Too bad, since I like the pictures and I enjoy all the pictures the SWSAT team post, especially since we've grown to "know" each other over the last couple of years.

Who knows, maybe even this post will be removed or modified, here's another "variation" of my switcher picture to keep things legal ;-)

Silver Lake posted:

Bob 3676,

Wow! Looks fun! I got spoiled when I lived in San Diego. This sort of thing is another side hobby  to me. I used to go to the big comic con in SD. Looks like a lot of fun.  

My Wednesday's are very full after work with my weekly trip to Carlstat NJ to a work session on the NYSME club layout. I have been building an old stock Gloorcraft craftsman kit of a RR tool shed for a month or so. It is my first such kit but it is turning out well. Then I take the bus back to Port Authority and go to Midtown comics to get my weekly little stack of books and take the 1 train home. 

This weekend I took a few days off skipped the city and comic con for the Adirondacks. I have been running some errands and shutting down the place for the fall. My caboose repop (1 to 1 scale model) is getting a bit of work and I now have some rails for next years work sessions. I am relaying some a few rails on the former Grasse River RR ROW. Eventually I hope to get some wheels and jack the caboose up and onto them.  If you can believe it this is the former saw mill service track in the saw mill yard. We are years away from any switching.

It looks very nice in the Fall foliage.

 

Hey Andy, do you have  a separate "thread" or "post" for details about this little gem?  If not it'd be cool if you created one with pics from the build until now, etc...  I'd love to build one of these in the backyard and use it for a layout - or even home office!  Really neat and I always forget about it until you post another picture and then I'm WOW'd.

Rich,

I don't mean to highjack SWSat. It is just fun tangentially related stuff. It is technically in a former sawmill yard so in on a technicality. (It is not O scale so I don't want to get in trouble.)

Keystone Models made kits of this caboose in O scale 2 rail and HO. I reverse engineered it. I took the model measurements and worked up. 1/4 inch equals a foot. So it is a kind of exercise in model building. My neighbor has a portable bandsaw on a trailer so he cut the framing wood and beams from logs for me. I was trying to follow some wooden car techniques from John H. White's 19th Century Wooden Railroad Car Building book. I think I got a few things right. 

The active building took about 5 years of one or two weeks of work a year. It has been stuck at this point for about 5 more because I need trucks and metalwork. This year I repainted it and vowed to work faster. 

I still have not made the original O scale craftsman kit and the model company has since gone out of business. I need to get the kit they made for the log buggies for this RR.