Efficacy of flanged wheel on steel rail

November 1961, January 2017.

“November 1961,” I said. “That has to be the oldest Trains Magazine I ever saw.”
A friend bought a house AS IS from a recently deceased neighbor, and came upon some train stuff left over by her neighbor’s husband.
The husband died maybe 40 years ago, and the stuff hadn’t been tossed.
Knowing I’m a railfan my friend gave it to me.
I’ve subscribed to Trains since college. My first issue is March, 1964, before I finished college — 1966.
I don’t think I subscribed until after college.
That issue featured Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG-1 electric locomotive.
Anyone who reads this blog knows I think the GG-1 is the BEST locomotive ever made.
“In November of 1961 I would have just started 12th grade in high-school,” I said. I graduated in 1962.
I paged through the magazine. The Editor was venerable David P. Morgan, “DPM.”

DPM.

Morgan was quiet and reserved. He kept to himself. He was hard to get to know. He let his writing, which was extraordinary, speak for him.
“DPM” was of course Morgan, but more a figure for the magazine to hang its hat on. More approachable than Morgan himself.
Trains was more-or-less the first magazine of railfaning.
Morgan was still editor when I first subscribed, and he educated me.
He was attracted by the efficacy of flanged wheel on steel rail, and so was I.
Steam locomotion was incredibly attractive, but even after steam was retired, diesels where still flanged wheel on steel rail.
Capacity is enormous. Coal-cars are now up to 120 tons of coal per car, and coal-trains are often well over 100 cars.
NO WAY do you get that capacity with trucking. Not even close!
And often a crew of only one, two, or three is piloting that mile-long train. On Interstates every truck needs a driver. Anything beyond two trailers is unsafe. It crabs.
Compared to a truck, that 120-ton coal-car is HUGE. But it ain’t crabbing, even 100+ cars. They’re constrained to the rail.

Not clogging the Interstates. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

A train of doublestacked freight containers has more than 200 containers, often more than 250.
That’s 200-or-more trucks not clogging highways.
Morgan retired and eventually died. I think he smoked.
Trains had a couple editors over-the-years since. The one who followed Morgan was just about unbearable.
He seemed obsessed with counting louvers.
Railfans are often like that, trumpeting their vast self-declared knowledge compared to other railfans.
An example is how you tell an EMD GP-7 versus a GP-9. Count the louvers in a specific area. A GP-7 has fewer.
I never cared about that stuff. What I want is drama. Huge trains climbing hills at full fuel-usage — diesels don’t have throttles.
Steam-engines had throttles, and wide-open was “throttle-to-the-roof.”
Usually in a steam-engine cab, the long throttle-lever hung off the cab-roof — or seemed to hang off the roof.
Wide-open was that lever pulled all-the-way back so it angled up and hit the roof.
In diesel locomotives, full fuel-delivery is “Run Eight.” The small accelerator lever has eight positions. “Run Eight” is full fuel-delivery, the equivalent of “throttle-to-the-roof.”
That 1961 Trains had all the old stuff I loved reading: “Editorial Comment,” “News Photos” —a fedoraed photographer with flash Graflex, “Photo Section” with its 35mm Leica, “Railway Post Office” (Letters-to-the-Editor), “Second Section,” and “Running Extra” (X-1027, the number in Trains address at that time — 1027 North Seventh Street, Milwaukee.)
Sections like that became part of my bus-union newsletter.
Of particular interest to me was a photo of steam-locomotives delivered in 1940 to Norfolk-Southern Railway.
At that time Norfolk-Southern was a tiny regional. Now Norfolk Southern is the 1982 merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway. It’s gigantic and serves the eastern half of the nation, including the east-coast megalopolis.
(The other eastern mega-merger is CSX Transportation, which began in the ‘60s with Chesapeake & Ohio.)
The original Norfolk-Southern is part of NS, as is mighty Pennsy, the “Standard Railroad of the World,” and once largest railroad on the planet.
In 1961 CSX and Norfolk Southern didn’t exist, and Pennsy seemed forever.
In 1961 Morgan’s “Editorial Comment” discussed the commuter problem, that east-coast railroads were being waylaid by expensive commuter districts.
The Interstate Commerce Commission suggested subsidy. Others suggested turning the mess over to government. Which is what eventually happened, and the Interstate Commerce Commission was absolved in January, 1996.
Changes-changes-changes!
But we still have efficacy of flanged wheel on steel rail.
The current Trains editorship is pretty good. It relates news of interest to railfans. It also editorializes and publishes long dissertations and blatherings.
But I ain’t sure they have what drew in Morgan, and still draws me. The efficacy of flanged wheel on steel rail.

• RE: “bus-union newsletter....” — For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke in 1993 ended it; I recovered fairly well. Toward the end I generated a voluntary newsletter for our bus-union (mechanics and drivers). —I did it with Word© on my computer. It caused weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among Transit management.
• “Mighty Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad.