That’s a good looking engine. The only ones better than the NW in the picture are the Great Northern R-1 and R-2, for tractive effort and appearance, but there aren’t any left that I know of. The UP Big Boy is still operational.
My dad was a minor official in the C&O railroad headquartered in Huntington, West Virginia in the 1950s when I was a kid – and the old steamers were still pulling freight and people – but being rapidly replaced by the diesels.
Those were the days, heh!
Those certainly were the days Ronbo.
Sadly…. All the Good Times are Over .
Norman Blake, flatpicker sums it up pretty nicely.
Remus said,
PJ Media, Richard Fernandez – The establishment, unlike the voters, is risk-averse. They are too used to gambling with other people’s money to go for broke. They are more likely to offer the appearance of reform rather than its painful reality and hope smoke and mirrors suffice to halt the blaze. Their goal is no longer to “build a world without nuclear weapons” or establish a “rule based international order” nor even “Hope and Change”. Its goals like those of the refugees become far more basic. All Washington wants to do now is survive.
You really need to see a man standing next to the damn thing to get an understanding of how large it truly is.
My primitive calculations on the models preceding it seem to indicate that the engineers seem to have stuck with a cap of no more than 5 metric tonnes per foot of wheel base. I initially figured the larger engine would be considerably harder on the tracks, but apparently I was wrong.
As I said before, I grew up in Huntington, W.Va., which was founded and named by Collis P. Huntington, a 19th century railroad CEO and pioneer in 1870.
Yes, I remember as boy seeing those large steam engines, as the primary job of the C&O railroad in those days was to get the coal from the mining districts in West Virginia to the factories in the north, and to do this they needed the large locomotive like the one in the picture to deal with the mountains.
That’s a good looking engine. The only ones better than the NW in the picture are the Great Northern R-1 and R-2, for tractive effort and appearance, but there aren’t any left that I know of. The UP Big Boy is still operational.
My dad was a minor official in the C&O railroad headquartered in Huntington, West Virginia in the 1950s when I was a kid – and the old steamers were still pulling freight and people – but being rapidly replaced by the diesels.
Those were the days, heh!
Those certainly were the days Ronbo.
Sadly….
All the Good Times are Over .
Norman Blake, flatpicker sums it up pretty nicely.
Remus said,
PJ Media, Richard Fernandez – The establishment, unlike the voters, is risk-averse. They are too used to gambling with other people’s money to go for broke. They are more likely to offer the appearance of reform rather than its painful reality and hope smoke and mirrors suffice to halt the blaze. Their goal is no longer to “build a world without nuclear weapons” or establish a “rule based international order” nor even “Hope and Change”. Its goals like those of the refugees become far more basic. All Washington wants to do now is survive.
—————————————————
Thank you, Donald Trump:
http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2016/03/now-we-know-identity-of-most-dangerous.html
They are wise to be concerned with survival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W65eOOK9eZU
Excellent video! These days we often forget “Our fathers’ magic carpet made of steel” and the impact railroads had on everyday life the early 1940s.
I’ve always liked this picture.
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/bigboy/4019b.jpg
You really need to see a man standing next to the damn thing to get an understanding of how large it truly is.
My primitive calculations on the models preceding it seem to indicate that the engineers seem to have stuck with a cap of no more than 5 metric tonnes per foot of wheel base. I initially figured the larger engine would be considerably harder on the tracks, but apparently I was wrong.
As I said before, I grew up in Huntington, W.Va., which was founded and named by Collis P. Huntington, a 19th century railroad CEO and pioneer in 1870.
Excellent article here on Huntington:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collis_Potter_Huntington
Yes, I remember as boy seeing those large steam engines, as the primary job of the C&O railroad in those days was to get the coal from the mining districts in West Virginia to the factories in the north, and to do this they needed the large locomotive like the one in the picture to deal with the mountains.