So here is one for Wanswheel…Perhaps Dave K.as well.
Quite the dogs breakfast. Sorry looking weirdly put together train, a shadow of its glory days. Note comment about no diner, but “news cart” service.
CV 8094 (S-2 Alco 69653 12/1941) switching Number 76 Ambassador with B&M 4227 F3A and 4266 F7B.
White River Junction, Vermont. 6/07/1965 Ted Houghton
Note: Equipment includes a reclining seat coach NY-Mtl. (looks like second car is a New Haven coach),
Headend car a CN mail & express car and a heavyweight dark green car behind the coach.
Only News Agent, no diner or sleeper equipment.
CV and B&M rotated switch crews at White River Jct, with second and third trick passenger assignments belonging to one or the other depending on union agreements. The picture must have been taken around 4 PM. The 8094 has just retrieved the B&M F units (B unit is necessary because F2A has no boiler) from B&M’s Westboro NH roundhouse across the Connecticut River, using the tracks in the right background. The train would have come in with a CV 4900-series GP9. The CN RPO ran from St. Albans to Springfield. CN had a number of US-usable RPOs, also used on the Portland and Island Pond RPO. It’s likely that the Boston RDC will arrive soon, along with the northbound Ambassador, with passengers swapping trains in various directions. The RDC will head north on the Conn River line (on the right of the platfrom next to 8094). By 4:30 all will be quiet again until after midnight when the Washingtonian arrives and picks up the White River Jct - New York (Penn) sleeper.
Thank you rcdrye, great stage by stage and detailed information.
Have not recieved my new issue of Trains yet but I see there is an article/story about the sad state of passenger trains in the 60’s.
Despite CN’s solo effort at bucking that trend up here that did not seem to translate Stateside, although Chicago, New York and Boston service hung on.
Deggesty- It can be trying at times but it only adds to the anticipation.
…and yes there are still some folks out there that use dogsleds, not just for competitions. Our trading post sells a fairly large cargo sled that the dogs haul. 700 bucks, sells 3 or 4 a year. I would trust that way more than the Border and the, ahem, geniuses that work at our local contractor for the mail. At least they get it into the right box most of the time. Heh, heh…Mush!
Here’s a link to a photo taken in 1960 from a few feet north of where the 1965 picture was taken. B&M RDCs in the background. The RDCs will back to the right onto the Connecticut River bridge before taking the north wye onto the Conn River Line. The track the RDCs are on was removed in the late 1960s. In Wells River one of the RDCs will be uncoupled and run up to Berlin NH, the other will head for Montreal.
CN coaches on Ambassador are probably from the 1956 CCF order. 4228 and sister 4227 (in the other photo) are F3s, not F2s.
Having been the acoustical consultant for Dartmouth’s Hopkins Performing Arts Center, used the White River Junction station almost as often as that at Concord, N. H., using both the RDC Allouette and the Dartmouth College I and II, the B & M 4 & 14 (?) sleepers assigned to Penn-NY - WRJc. on the Montrealler-Washingtonian.
That’s not entirely clear, though it was probably a yard/road crew work rule distinction. The northbound Ambassador had probably left about 10 minutes before either of the shots were made, as it was scheduled to depart at 4.
On the other side of the station building where the Boston track crossed the Conn River, there was a ball signal which remained in use until the crossing was removed. The switch tender there was a three shift position, manned by the B&M.
OGs usually show B&M 6sec6rmt4DBR cars. Two of the Beach series were renamed “Dartmouth College I” and “Dartmouth College II”
Thanks. Remembered the names better than the configuration. After all, it was the College that eventually was funding my enjoyable train rides to and from Hanover via the White River Junction station. Off topic but here is a photo of the Spaulding concert hall/lecture hall before the need to handle loud ampified popular music added large additional exposed loudspeakers, which can be seen on the College’s website. The Austin organ is at the right, at the left is a control booth for recording and broadcasing. The upstage wall is a pair of heavy wood sliding panels, which when parted reveal a perforated motion picture screen, behind which is the motion picture loudspeaker system. The place in the panel array where lights are missing is a grill behind which is the hidden original speech reinforcement amplification system. The hall was opened in 1962, when there still was reasonable train service. I started work on the project in 1959. The architects were Harrison and Abromovitz, and Walter Colvin was project manager and did much of the design work. Warner Bentley was the Hopkins Center’s first Director, and was Dartmouth’s representative for the project.
Anyone able post a picture of either of the cars? Would love to have it to go along with a picture of the hall!
The only B&M 6-6-4 I can find in B&M paint is “Salisbury Beach” from the same series. Both Dartmouth College I and II ended up on CN and later VIA. I did go see “Dunkirk” in Spaulding Auditorium a couple of weeks ago, and have seen many concerts, performances and movies there over the last 40 years. I live and work nearby.
RC, you might wish to do Dartmouth a great favor. There is absolutely no reason for the high-level amplification loudspeakers to be so unsightly! Good coverage from massive loudspeakers with modern equipment can be arranged by 1. rehabilitating the original speech reinforcment system with the latest and best high-frequency drivers and cone “woofer;” and 2. one set of computer-steered-covreage-array large column loudspeakers against both the left and right stage walls at the front of the stage.
When I did the acoustics work, I was an employee of Bolt Beranek and Newman. The successor firm, still in Cambridge, MA., is Acentech, and Larry Philbrick or Tom Horrall there are excellent sound system designers who could do an excellent job in meeting the demands of their audio-visual people and still restore the orginal cleaner appearance. Other firms include the successor to my firm, Marshall/KMK in Chappaqua, NY, and Dan Clayton and Associates, also in Chappaqua.
I assume you have enjoyed plays in the two theatres, and occasional motion pictures.
Under Spaulding Auditorium are a reshearsal room/recording studio with control room. The sound-isolation construction between the two was a pioneering design that has been used many times and is still in use. Spaulding was one of the first two halls of BBN that attempted to combine claritiy with reverberation.
If you know peole at Dartmouth, you might mention the idea. And my cousin David Louis, approximately my age and a classmate at Columbia Grammer Prep., was at Dartmouth when I was an MIT undergraduate.
Please post Salisbury Beach. I can alter the name and repost it as Dartmouth College I.
Quite the history. Civil insurrection, Papineau rebellion Quebecers, Civil War Confederates, the Fenians, not to mention the War of 1812.
So sad, that overwhelmingly, so many folks, particularly the millenium generations, university students at that, haven’t got a clue or even care to.
From my posting earlier in the Passenger Thread:
Only exception along the Canada US border I am aware of is the Haskel Free Library and Opera House in Derby, Vermont and Stanstead, Quebec as the border goes right though the centre of it.
Even that has tightened up since 911.
Here’s a trivia question to pull on your friends…what is the only library in the USA that contains no books? A. The Haskel Library in Derby, Vermont as all the books are located on the Canadian side.
And…What is the only Opera House in the USA without a stage? A.The Haskell Free Opera House as all the seats are in the USA and the stage is in Canada.
Have you ever been to that spot Wanswheel?, or anyone else? Not too far from the disasterous Magentic wreck.
I am told the Opera House has “perfect acoustics” …wonder if Dave K. has ever been there?
The Rock Island name disappeared when 3 towns amalgamated to form the new town of Stanstead in 1999. Too bad, Rock Island was way better. The Rock Island name came from a damn constructed for a mill way way back when and a new elbow built for the river, thus creating a 'rock island". However…we know better.
The border was supposed to be along the 45th parallel but the surveyors, both American and Canadian, got drunk a lot, and the border ended up sort of along the 45th parallel. Thus it remained.
The border goes right down the middle of a residential street, marked by the center line. America on one side of the street Canada on the other side. Can you imagine that? Gotta be some hijinks going on, customs officers must go batty at times.
Invigulating an exam right now…a 3 hour job, used up 1 hour 45 minutes but now I’m out of things to do and just staring off into space.
