Well, then there’s that old orphan, the Ingalls Shipbuilding 4-S
Gulf Mobile & Ohio Ingalls Shipbuilding Company 4S locomotive #1900 {BUILT 3/46} was the only one built. It is seen here circa 12/66. by Willie Brown, on Flickr
A rebel it certainly was!
Cheers, Ed
There were easily-traceable multiple cycles of ‘boom and bust’, not all of them attributable to ‘Railway Mania’-style overbuilding or ridiculously redundant “competitive” construction of parallel lines (a la South Pennsylvania/West Shore)
Much of the finance appears to have been European, and often the financiers (or bondholders or whatever) didn’t take a practical interest in operating the asset. It was something of a premise in mid-Twentieth Century ‘railroad history’ to attribute great credit and foresight to people like Hill who could take ‘two streaks of rust’ and buiild it into an operating property – but there were also suspiciously wack things like the Jay Cooke failure in 1873 (concerning railroad financial instruments), the various ways ‘Commodore’ Venderbilt developed his property, anything related to the name ‘Erie’, and the astounding crash of the United States economy after 1892 pursuant to Morgan’s wrecking the Reading Combine. The Panic of 1907 killed innumerable interesting developments, the Ramsey-survey high-speed line among them; the Depression eseentially did the same for the revised version of the Ramsey Survey which was to be financed with foreign capital) in 1930-31.
One of GM&O’s predecessors was a projected high-speed (I was told 150mph!) railroad straight north from Mobile to the Ohio River, in the 1850s. It might have been highly interesting to see how this would develop when extended north of the river connection. You can guess what happened after 1861…
Here in the UK. in 1895 was the ‘Light Railways Act’ where under certain rules railways could be built cheaply, thereby reaching places where there was no railway.
Although built cheaply very few survived a length of time.
David
The reality of railroading is ‘cheaply built’ doesn’t last very long. Never has, never will.
No money for maintenance?
Rich
There was a sort of ‘second railway mania’ around narrow-gauge railways (mostly Cape and metre) for lines that would cost less in construction and operation. Both in Britain and the USA that usually worked out as false economy; if the Rio Grande lines hadn’t had scenic appeal, they would have been gone many years ago.
Lightly built with relatively sharp curves and “less civil engineering” in the subgrade was not exactly a formula for low track maintenance … you could find dumb, strong sectionmen while one of the waves of immigration was going on, but as soon as the finances started going west, anything built to that price would be an increasing pain.
The market for high-speed north-south transcontinental got wiped out in the Civil War, and only uncertainly recovered in the carpetbagging era during and after Reconstruction. Much of what did get established was either subsumed or out-competed by the IC; if I remember correctly the GM&O was part of Ike Tigrett’s empire, put together comparatively late but hammered by the Depression and general malaise of the contemporary South.
Well let’s pull out the big guns!
I can feel it in the pit if my stomach.
Rich
There was a study done about 1914 on the DRGW narrow gauge lines. They recognized then the impracticality of narrow gauge. The recommendation was to standard gauge those lines that still had economic viability and abandon the rest. When the Moffat Tunnel bond issue was first floated, there were also bond issues, which failed, for tunnels on Marshall and Cumbres passes. The intent was standard gauging and line changes for those routes.
That parts of the narrow gauge hung on as long as they did was their remoteness. Some areas they served did not get improved all weather roads until the 1950s. As natural resources were used up and then trucks picking up what business remained, the narrow gauge was abandoned. Had there not been a gas boom on the Alamosa to Durango portion, it to probably would’ve been gone by the mid 1950s. The Silverton train may not have survived, it really only being discovered by tourists in the 1950s.
Jeff
The C&TSRR line between Cumbres pass and Antonito is sparsely populated and devoid of paved roads. One factor in D&GRW abandoning the line was the cost of keeping Cumbres pass open in the winter.
One proposal for the standard gauge conversion was a line from South Fork on the Creede branch to a tunnel under Wolf Creek pass continuing on to Pagosa Springs.
Yes, once the narrow gauge started shutting down during the winter in the 1960s, it was the death knell for it. Shippers and receivers found trucks could now handle their needs as good as, in some cases better than, the railroad.
As the late John Norwood put it in one of his books, service went from daily to tri-weekly, to weekly, as needed, then none at all. Just like any other piece of railroad.
In of his books, he describes being apart of the DRGW team looking over other railroads they might be interested in acquiring. One was the GM&O that they inspected. I guess they didn’t let a little thing like no physical connection stop them. Gulf, Mobile and Rio Grande?
Loved the ICG paint scheme. When I think ICG or IC, I think a railroad heavily based on manifest freight that made use of parallel lines quite well.
I have Norwood’s book Rio Grande Narrow Gauge and I was paraphrasing what he wrote in that book. Good book. The narrow gauge had some traffic, but not enough to justify its continuing operation. The first 30 miles of the ‘Chili Line’ would have been useful if standard gauge as the perlite mines are right next to the Chili Line’s ROW - the grades and curves are compatible with standard gauge.
You don’t often see a photo of the GM&O passenger trains at Alton Junction, but here is a great photo of a GM&O train moving in an easterly direction, about to turn north onto PRR tracks over the vertical lift bridge headed to Union Station.
Rich
Source: Industrial History: 21st Street Crossing or Alton Junction
I see the landmark Cuneo Press building and tower in the background. What an amazing structure.
Cheers, Ed
Well, Ed, for better or worse, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks did not share your view because it did not list the Cuneo Press building nor did it make any attempt to save it. Adding insult to injury, it did add the R.R. Donnelley Lakeside Press Building on East Cermak Road to the list. But, then, Donnelley was the largest print press company in Chicago and Cuneo was a distant second.
The Cuneo Press building was easily recognized by railfans, thanks to its location at Alton Junction and its large sign.
Source: Towns and Nature: Chicago, IL: Cuneo Press
But it was always an odd location. The 5-building complex was divided by Grove Street running between the main buildings and the secondary buildings across the street, requiring an elevated walkway between the separate buildings. Making matters worse, the entire complex was built on a sliver of land bordered on one side by the South Branch of the Chicago River, the Chicago & Alton tracks on another side, leaving the only access to the complex on Canal Street.
Rich
Here is a photo of the Cuneo Press building and the tower.
Source: Grove Street | Forgotten Chicago | History, Architecture, and Infrastructure
Lots of interesting photos on this website.
Rich
