I’m going to keep this to one, updated thread. With luck, I’ll figure out how to highlight the start of a new day’s info, to make it more user friendly.
My hope is to get other posters involved. If you have anything to add, please do. Ideally, we’d find people who have lived some of this history, and would enlighten the rest of us. Or, better yet-encourage someone to start a new thread on a subject…
Thanks
1962: Reading RDC1 9152 delivered, last of 398 (!) RDC’s built by Budd
anybody else?
I couldn’t find this thread yesterday (the 20th) so here is an entry for that date:
December 20 1900, Great Northern Railway opens first Cascade Tunnel, replacing
the original switchback route over Stevens Pass.
…I wonder about Stevens Pass…Was it that good of a find if the only way over was originally by switch backs…Do we know if a better way was actually found later but instead they stayed in place and used several tunnels to bring down the elevation to a much more friendly grade to get over…{thru}, the mountain…?
Rick: I didn’t post one yesterday, because I couldn’t find anything. Thanks for sharing. GN opened the tunnel, on top of a mountain on the first day winter? I’ll bet there were a LOT of happy railroaders that day.[:)][:)]
GN seemed to do this with at least some consistency. The second, or current
Cascade Tunnel was officially opened to traffic on January 12, 1929. As for
Stevens Pass being a good find or not, contradictory studies abound. There is
one school of thought that GN made their mistake on Stevens by having the
old (Wellington) line located on the south face of Windy Mountain, thereby
exposing the railroad to the problems of large masses of snow being softened
by the sunlight and sliding down onto the tracks necessitating 7 miles of snow-
sheds in a 9 mile length of track. A railroad built on the north face of a mountain,
in contrast, deals with snow that stays frozen somewhat better due to it being in
shade-cooler temps. The Milwaukee did build on the north faces thru the
Cascades, and didn’t seem to suffer the slide problems that the GN did.
The slide issues, coupled with the maintenance costs of 7 miles of deteriorating
wooden snowsheds (and 5 short tunnels) are what persuaded the GN to
invest in the current tunnel. Mistake or not, the GN stuck with their decision,
and did their best to improve the line.
Rick: Did the building of the current tunnel eliminate all of the snow sheds? Are there still snow sheds on other parts of the line?
The New Cascade Tunnel eliminated all snowsheds on Stevens Pass.
It also eliminated 6 short tunnels and the 9 worst miles on the entire
railroad for both operational difficulty and safety. There were (and still
are) snowsheds located on the ex-GN line over Marias Pass in through
the Montana Rockies. One of the snowsheds on the GN’s old line is
still standing as well-the 3900-foot long all concrete shed built in
1910 after the avalanche disaster at Wellington. This shed was built
right across the path of the slide. By the way, aside frrom the theory
expounded in my previous post, the avalanche danger along this
line was mostly the result of indiscriminate logging of the slopes
near the railroad-both by timber companies and the railroad itself,
gatheing timber to build the 8 miles of wooden snowsheds there.
Photos taken of the Wellington area in 1909-the year before the slide-
shows very severely denuded mountainsides, ripe for avalanches.
Forest fires exacerbated the problem.
…[4:-)]…[dinner]…
Today, December, 22nd , in railroad history
1982: Something a lot of people on this forum probably would say was not a good thing: Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific merged into Union Pacific
1948: B 7 O pays first dividend since 1931
1953: Roanoke Shops , around for 60 years, delivers its 447th, and last engine. N & W S-1s 0-8-0 244
Anybody else?
Lotus or someone else smarter than me: Can you tell me how to make text in color. Note the word “purple” in the above post. That’s 1 hour’s worth of me trying to figure it out on my own. (Duh!) I could make Homer Simpson look quite bright .
Thanks E-mail me, if you wish
Murphy, quote this post to see how it’s done
FAR OUT ! Can it only be done during quoteing or editing?
No, you can do it all at once.
There is only one green, however.
The colors are here-
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/faq.asp
Who’d of thunk that there was a place with the answers, right here on the forum![:I] Thanks
Murphy,
I’ve been reading your “On This Day in History” posts off and on for awhile and have neglected to mention how much I enjoy them. I haven’t contributed anything yet, in spite being very fond of RR history, but I will…eventually.
These threads/posts really elevate the general discussion above the normal noise.
Thanks, again for a great idea.
I’ll second that.[:D]
Richard and Chad: Thanks for the kind words. Chad and nanaimo73: thanks for the help on color. I’ll have to practice.[:)]
Everyone: See if you can find things to add to the posts please. The more the merrier! December seems to be a slowwwww month for railroad history. (But just wait until the 31st-lots of stuff seems to happen at the end of calender years)
Anyone else?
…[C=:-)]…[dinner]…
Today, December 23, in railroad history
1944: Washington Union Station closes its doors for several hours on account of overcapacity crush of sales and passengers!
1960: Firstmodern run-through set up as CB&Q and UP pool GP 9’s, then GP-20’s, on Chicago-Green River, Wyoming
Back to talking about the good or bad decision to use Stevens Pass…I’m sure the 1929 tunnel eliminated many, many problems of the first surveyed route over the Mtn. summit. What are the grades leading to the 1929 tunnel and is the curvature issue severe…?
…Washington Union Station closing it’s doors on a business day…Hard to imagine, but the war time traffic was terrific at most places. I was not in that facility {until 1949}, during that time but did spend some time in NYC’s Penn Station in 1942 and it was a crush of people going in all directions…Just jam packed…! Service men and women going and coming and families associated with some of them…What a mass of humanity in such a cathedral like structure…!
I think if most of us tried to picture passenger trains in our minds, we’d come up with a picture like your description above[:)]