Night Photography

My Fall 2009 issue of the National Railway Historical Society bulletin, a magazine which arrived the other day, has an interesting proposition, that railroad museums can provide excellant photography.
An example, above, was on their cover.
Good old Pennsylvania Railroad M1b Mountain (4-8-2) steam locomotive #6755.
The only Mountain the railroad didn’t scrap.
It was added to their collection of significant retired steam locomotives, which eventually found its way to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania across from Strasburg tourist railroad near Strasburg, PA.
It’s good to see one of those gorgeous red keystone number-plates again, centered on the smokebox door.
I saw plenty when I was a kid.
You could see them from afar, and they signaled a great-looking Pennsy steam engine was coming.
My contact with steam locomotives was the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (PRSL; “RED-ing,” not “READ-ing”) in south Jersey, a 1933 amalgamation of south Jersey seashore lines to rationalize too much track.
PRSL also used Reading steam engines, but they were ugly compared to Pennsy.
So I always looked for that red keystone.

NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Models were added to make a fair approximation of what you’d see at an engine terminal.
Railroad men contemplating 6755.
Nice, but 6755 is obviously dead.
Its headlight is out, and there are no whisps of steam.
What really throws me off is the lack of boiler-jacketing behind the smokebox.
Boiler rivets glimmer.
It looks like the walkway has been removed too.
I bet the valvegear is gone too.
Union Pacific Big Boy #4012 (4-8-8-4; the biggest steam locomotive ever built), on static display at Steamtown in Scranton (PA), is impressive.
But it’s valve-gear is gone; replaced by tinny bar-stock and stampings, clearly not the real thing.
Not the elegant forgings that comprised steam locomotive valve-gear.
Moving a retired steam locomotive with its valve-gear intact was an invitation to disaster.
It could jam.
Often even the side-rods between drivers were removed, so the wheels could turn freely.
They’d go out of synch.
The crank-pins on one wheelset might be at 12 o’clock, and on the following wheelset it might end up at 5 o’clock.
It’s a nice shot, but all it does is leave me hoping that 6755 can be restored to operation.
The M1b was one of Pennsy’s most successful steam locomotives, although its drivers were too small to be a passenger locomotive. Only 72 inches.
The K4 Pacific (4-6-2) was 80 inches, as was the E6 Atlantic (4-4-2).
80-inch drivers were almost required to be a successful passenger locomotive. A New York Central Hudson (4-6-4) was 79 inches.
72 inches is six feet. 80-inch drivers are taller than a man.
Some locomotives even had 84 inch drivers; that’s seven feet.
84 is 100 mph; although an E6 could do 100 with 80-inch drivers.
And a Norfolk & Western’s J (4-8-4) could do it with 70-inch — although it had roller-bearings in the side-rod pins and the drive-axles.


Another picture taken at Railroad Museum of Pennylvania. (This a GG1 [“Gee-Gee-One”], the greatest railroad locomotive ever made.) (Photo by Tom Hughes.)

• I am a railfan, and have been since I was a child; and I’ve been to both Strasburg and Steamtown.
• As a child I lived in south Jersey until I was almost 14.
• “Tom Hughes” is my brother-from-Delaware’s only son Tom. He recently graduated college as a computer-engineer. Like me he’s a railfan.