Wiz, it was not a trick question, and your first answer is correct, and the others don’t count. The others may have passenger service today, but (whatever the future brings) it is not electric passenger service. Stamford- New Canaan was 550-600V DC, then 11,000 25Hz-AC, now 12,500V 60Hz AC.
Your question
In April 1910, before the formal opening of Penn Station, a two-car director’s special made its way from Manhattan Transfer through to the west yard. There was something highly unusual about this train - what was it? (Hint: it returned under what were most likely even more unusual conditions…)
Extra points if you know the engineer’s name.
It was powereed by D16b 937. Engineer Andy Chambers at the throttle. 937 was the President’s engine, last of four engines of the same number used to pull specials for the railroad’s president when he, or other high company officers, went out on the line. She was built in 1906 and featured a single combined steam/sand dome.
And it must have had to operate backwards to get out? The only other choice would be to go through the East River tunnels and turn around at Sunnyside or somewhere on the LIRR.
Gold star.
I got this out of Westing, of course, and I wish he had provided details of how the trick was done, including whether the consist was turned at Sunnyside, or whether a fuel like coke might have been fired for part of the run. I can’t really quite imagine backing a steam consist up the internal tunnel grade, even with two cars, with the sanders not ‘bearing’ properly…
Perhaps relevant here is the highly interesting note in the same book on how far some PRR trains could go without ‘intervention’ by the fireman. I would think it easily possible that a light fire on a D16 would keep steam up without excessive smoke or gassing long enough to get up the tunnel grade in either direction.
Mr. Westing put out some fine books. The section about the benefits of “bank” firing is most interesting. Perhaps this was the method used to minimize smoke and gas on that tunnel trip. I guess we’ll never know!
I suppose I should now pose a question.
This shortline, heavily dependent on one commodity, once served as a busy bridge carrier between a disconnected segment of a major carrier and the main line of said major carrier. After attempting to acquire this shortline, the big road built it’s own line, connecting it’s main to the isolated segment and removing the bridgeline traffic from the shortline. The shortline continued to operate profitably for several decades, even providing passenger service on a short portion of the major carrier’s formerly isolated segment. They never dieselized, but did have a gas-electric car which ended it’s career being hauled by steam.
No takers? It was outlived by a nearby narrow gauge pike.
Was the narrow gauge ever converted to standard? Did the narrow gauge belong to the line that built a connection to bypass the shortline? Was the shortline ever a part of a much larger system that was mostly abandoned?
Would that be the Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain in Pennsylvania? Main commodity was coal.
Mr. rcdrye you are correct! H&BTM was heavily dependent on coal traffic and the decline in demand for Broad Top coal ultimately led to it’s demise, about three years ahead of it’s narrow gauge neighbor, East Broad Top. They ran passenger service until nearly the end from Huntington to Bedford, utilizing PRR trackage rights on the south end for the short jaunt from Mt. Dallas to Bedford. PRR completed their Bedford division roughly parallel to the HB&TM in 1910, syphoning off thru traffic from Cumberland, MD.
Your question, sir!
This combined city and interurban system had three major interurban lines and acquired a fourth. Two of its own lines were operated at different times on three different voltages. Name the system and at least two of its interurban lines.
The Milwaukee Electric Light and Railway, with the line to Sheboygan, the line to the north, being the purchased line. Two other interurban lines were to Kenosha, competing with the NorthShore, and to East Troy, where a remenant museum and freight operaiton continues. The fourth line was at one time partly 1200V AC and then 1200V DC. Was its destinaiton Watertown? The rest of the system, including the inner portion of this line, was the usual 550-600V DC.
The Milwaukee local city lines outlasted its interurbans, and I rode them in 1952.
Close enough. Both the Watertown line and the “Lakes” lines to Burlington and East Troy were originally electrified at 3300 VAC in 1907/8, quickly converted to 1200 VDC in 1909, and reconverted to 600VDC in 1924 (the “Lakes” lines may have been converted to 600V earlier.) Though cut back in the thirties, the lines lasted into 1951 under Speedrail. Both the M-R-K (Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha) and Milwaukee Northern to Sheboygan were 600V their entire lives.
A large USA city had a cable-car transit operation before San Francisco. When opened, it was unique in one other important way. It was not a funicular, and a primitive type of grip mecanism was used. What, when, who - and why and to what was it converted, and its subsequent history and termination and the political leader that led to its final termination, with the more modenized equipment serving in the city for another approximately eleven years on a different route.
New York’s initial elevated line of about a mile, known variously as the Greenwich Street Elevated, the New York and Yonkers Patent Railway, and the Westside Patented Elevated, operated with a cable for a few years from about 1867 to about 1871 before being converted to steam and extended. With route changes and rebuildings, it became the basis of the Ninth Avenue El.
Correct, and it was the world’s first rapid transit line, preceding the Metropolitan initial steam operated subway line in London. Steam dummy engines, then the 0-4-4T Forneys, then electrification, then IRT ownership, extensive rebuilding with a continuous center track for express service, then a substantial nunmber of system-wide gate cars equipped with closed platforms and mu door control, then closure in June 1940, largely because of Mayor LaGuardia’s distaste for elevated lines and because of the parallel IND 8th-Avenue Subway, with the closed-platform cars continiuing in oiperation on the 3rd Avenue Elevated, whose Manhattan portion lasted another 13 years.
Your question
Fifty-four LIRR wooden cars, made surplus when they were banned rom the East River tunnels, were sold to support traffic growth to a U.S. Army facility after the outbreak of Word War I. Name the buyer and the Army facility.
Possibly the Quincy, MA Naval Yard, with the cars being bought either by the Navy or the NYNH&H for the service.
A little further south. If it’s any help the junction for the line to the Army facility was named for another miltary facility.
Involving Monmouth Junction?