1920's early NYC diesel with cars and a flagman riding a horse to flag the train.

Turns out the elevated St John’s Park terminal didn’t have third rail, when it opened anyway (which was June 1934)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/syscosteve/5477451376/sizes/l/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/syscosteve/5477451214/sizes/o/

One of the ‘Tenth Avenue Cowboys’ proceeds ahead of one of five NYC Shays (No. 1899) built in 1923 and shrouded to help keep the horses from getting riled over the machinery.

NYC Shay by Edmund, on Flickr

One of the DES-3s:

NYC_DES-3_531 by Edmund, on Flickr

Cheers, Ed

As it turned out, I had DVR’d the Ripley episode but didn’t watch until just recently. (TCM does a 1930s “Saturday matinee” recreation every Saturday morning, with a cartoon, short subjects, and a cowboy movie.)

The episode was from 1932. The engine was 1526.

The St. Johns Park terminal and most if not all of the West Side line below 30th street were not electrified. The ramp to the Post Office was, and there are photos of R-motors switching there. The non-electrified portion was the driver behind the need for diesel power. The tri-powers didn’t run off the diesel directly, it just ran to keep the batteries charged (of course they charged off the third rail as well). The two-power units used in Chicago also ran off the batteries with the diesel for charging.

I don’t think they charged off the third rail. They just ran as electrics (not off the battery when on third rail power).

When on third rail the tri-powers did run as electrics, but the batteries could also charge on the side. Pretty much the same arrangement the North Shore used on battery-electric locomotives 455 and 456, and some similar arrangements on Illinois Terminal and Pacific Electric. GE supplied the electricals for at least the NYC and CNS&M units.

The tri-powers went into service before the high line was completed, so they did get a fair amount of street running time. They also worked on some of the street-level tracks serving the lower Manhattan car float bridges.

Ref “Liberty Cabbage”, remember that in WW2, some people called Mikados, MacArthurs (the one time it was appropriate, in my opinion, was for the Army’s narrow gauge 2-8-2’s) USATC S118 Class - Wikipedia

When I was a kid (subscribing to Trains at age 5) you’d still see 2-8-2s referred to in print as MacArthurs. I thought it was because the name was phonetically ‘close enough’ that it would be familiar to railroaders. (I also thought all we really had to do back then was start calling them ‘Mikes’ formally…)

Be interesting to see when the name started to be switched back, perhaps at the time Doug was getting into his problems during the Korean police action…

A large 2-8-2 was a big Mac.

Ducking and running for cover.0