Walt is reading over my shoulder, and says to tell you all that you’re making him
laugh too much: makes his jaw hurt MORE!! But he LOVED your posts anyway!![:D]
Fond memories re Dutch doors.
Going west over Alleghany on a beautiful fall afternoon. One of my favorite C&O memories.
On the L&N’s Pan American northbound out of Nashville.
Riding on the Southern Crescent between Atlanta and Birmingham.
Two from Amtrak - Going west up Sherman Hill (yrs. ago), and a trip on the Floridian going from Birmingham to Nashville when it detoured over the old NC&StL.
Train crews all looked “the other way” or rode with me as they wanted to get some air, too. BTW, got some great pictures.
work safe
Just start chanting OOMPA LOOMPA…they’ll come back…
Mark H., weren’t Dutch Doors really designed so one could savor the coal smoke and prove one had been on a train trip by emerging covered with soot?
That, and the bugs in your teeth…[:D]
Ed
I used to wonder what that fine mist was all about, but I tried not to think about it.
Hah. You got that benefit anyway–in those days to get air conditioning you opened the windows! Pullmans got screens (1st class)[:D]
I remember a GTW conductor granting me and my friends “vestibule privileges” on a trip from Battle Creek to Chicago. Yes, and the “mist” on an otherwise clear day.
Guys,
At least some of the mist was from steam heating! Remember that, before there was HEP!
However, even “clean” water mixed with road dust just covered you with grime.
In 1977, I was riding the “Empire Builder” from Seattle (or was it Portland(?)) to Chicago. The train had FOUR SDP40Fs that were going back to EMD for rebuild. We crossed a train in Spokane that had two new F40PHs on it (and a heater car).
Anyway, the relevant bit was that the trailing car was a Budd sleeper-dome-cafe with the vestibule trailing. With all that power, we arrived between 10-15 minutes early everywhere! Having a sleeper ticket, I rode in the cafe dome for much of the way, with two other people, one of whom had a radio tuned to local country music stations. I spent some time in the vestibule watching the mileposts go past every forty seconds (at eighty miles an hour) and getting really dusty. I think there was a chain across the vestibule doorway, and the dutch doors were open. I don’t imagine open observation cars got much use at that speed.
Earlier on the same trip I used the vestibule of the Coast Starlight to photograph the locomotives as we climbed north out of San Luis Obispo.
Peter
From all of the above, it seems like those Dutch Doors have a mutitude of uses.[:)] Thanks for the stories…[;)]…good stuff! [:)]
Dave