The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

Started by Judge, January 05, 2019, 03:59:09 PM

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PRR Modeler

Interesting story Bill. Tahope almost had a airport, or at least a airstrip.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

GPdemayo

Enjoyed the story Bill.....that would have be a cargo carrier operation to see, if they ever got it off the ground.  :)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

ReadingBob

Another fun story!  Wish I could have been there for the festivities on Friday. 
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

postalkarl

Hey Bill:

Look like you are having a great time. Continue to enjoy.

Karl

Jim Donovan

I love the stories to go along with the fantastic modeling advice. Thanks Tom and The Judge.

PS: If you need pilots for the C-47 Greg and I are in. I see us buying the plane to expand the already mighty reach of the A&S. By offering air service we can start a freight business taking high value items brought to Florida by the A&S, then flying them to Cuba Things like the Zenith Radios and Magnavox TV's everyone is buying. Then we bring back the finest Cigars which the A&S can ship in humidity controlled cars for 10 times what we pay for them.

I know the government is a little corrupt but we can manage the business through a shell company. Greg says he has some good friends out of Chicago that have a Casino in Havana. They will make sure things go smooth, introduce us to the right people and might even help finance the start since they are practically family. For a fee but I am sure it is just a token of respect. Don't worry about so called rebels led by some idiot called Fedel or something. Greg's friends say they have everything under control and the guy won't last six months.

I need to make sure Greg is up for this, he wants to be the chief pilot but I told him he doesn't have his multi-engine rating so I need to be the Chef Pilot. Might need your help on getting this worked out.

So what do you think? Air freight could become big in the future and the A&S needs to stay on the cutting edge.
Holland & Odessa Railroad

Judge

Jim - The minutes from the A&S July 21, 1951, Board of Directors Meeting contain the following information:

The Management of the Atlantic & Southern Railroad has determined that competition by the airlines will never amount to anything to worry about.  After all, how much freight can those planes carry?  And the railroads have no worry about serious competition from the trucking industry.   Most of the highways in the United States are two-lane and the trucks have those gasoline engines that cannot compete with diesel engine efficiency.  In Jaw-ja, many of the highway bridges are wooden structures that cannot hold a vehicle with more than 14 wheels.  Citrus products from Tahope County cannot be economically transported over bridges with those weight limitations.   Besides, if the trucking industry does improve its ability to transport goods in sufficient bulk to cause competition with the railroads, Congress will tax the industry to death to pay for the highway improvements needed.  Nothing will seriously interfere with the interstate transportation of goods by railroad for at least the next fifty years.

 

GPdemayo

I'm in.....but there are some conditions.

First - the radial engines on the plane have to be replaced with turbines.....150 mph is a bit too slow for running cigars back up to Tahope, more power is a must if we ever have to outrun those pesky revenuers at "Greg Speed".

Second - call  NJ and Brooklyn and get cousin Guido "Cadillac" Piscatori, uncle Tony "Four Toes" Demeo and his buddy Guiseppe "Triggerman" Bacchiocchi. They have to be on all the flights, along with their hardware....can't ever tell what those commie pinkos will do.

Third - let's not forget that great Cuban rum.....we could buy cheap down there and sell at competitive prices up here and still make greater profits by not paying the darn government taxes like our competitors. The Judge will have to get the police chief to look the other way for these runs, but I'm sure that if we ply him with a few brass steam engines, he'll be on board in a heart beat.

Fourth - you can get the chief pilots spot, but I fly left seat, PIC, till I get the multi engine ticket, then we can switch off on each run.

Sounds like a plan.....lets fly..... 8)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

Judge

Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report July 25, 2020.

The Board of Directors met this morning at 0830 hours.  The main topics were receipt of the new A&S decals for freight and passenger cars and locomotives and the acquisition of a new engine through a lease with the C&O.

The decals are excellent.  We have a complete passenger train composed of Walthers Bud cars lettered for Penn Central.  Don't ask me why.  We've had them so long I can't recall their origin.  I do remember they were acquired back in the day when those cars were going for $20 each.  The plan sometime in the future is to re-letter them for Atlantic & Southern.  The A&S logo will go on tenders of larger steam engines, such as Pacifics and Mikes and the words "Atlantic & Southern" will be painted on the tenders of smaller engines, such as switchers, consolidations, and ten-wheelers.

The most exciting part of the morning was taking possession of a new-in-the-box PFM C15A 0-8-0.  This baby is a beauty, although it has a face only a mother could love.  It has a single air pump located on the left side of the smokebox and the somokebox door looks something like the grill of an Edsel.  (How many remember those?  Anybody own one?)  Anyway, there were 15 of these brutes manufactured by Baldwin in 1929 (just in time for the other depression).  They were numbered 110-124.  They stuck around until they were scrapped in 1952-53.  They had 52" drivers, no stokers, 185 lbs. boiler pressure, Baker valve gear and produced 53,950 lbs. of tractive effort.  Seems like there should have been more than one air pump for such a big engine, but the pump looks larger than usual and, since the C15A's were switchers, it is unlikely the air brake hoses were connected very often on cars in tow.  The pic below was taken at the time of delivery and is the artistic creation of Tom Langford.  This model is a relatively rare find and is expected to be busy at Summit Yard after shopping and road testing.

There will be no story this week.  Weekend house guest arriving shortly.


                                                                               


ACL1504

As the Judge mentioned we acquired a new C&O switcher. We purchased this one from the Jim Miller estate. Below is a photo of the front of the smoke box. The loco is one of 500 released and imported by Lambert in 1977.

This will be in the A&S paint shop sometime in late September or early October.




The passenger cars are Walthers Seaboard Coast Line and the SCL will need to be removed and the new Atlantic and Southern added.

Also, today we had a bad steam loco day. An AB&C mikado developed a rear driver spring malfunction and need to be dead lined. The Southern mikado developed main driver issue and also was dead lined. On our third, we brought up a pair of Southern F7s. Yepper, the lead unit WOW decoder went bad. At this point I gave up and said a few unrepeatable lines.

Also, Curt came by and then Greg showed up just in time to go to lunch. We had a great time and of course we had some serious BSing going on.

All in all, just another normal Saturday on the Atlantic and Southern.
"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

Jim Donovan

Wow what a beautiful engine, and thanks to the Judge and you providing the background. Please make sure to show pictures after you paint it. It is already a headturner, with you painting it, she can only get better.

I'm sorry about the boards reaction to expanding into air freight. A friend of mine has told me about an outfit up in New York region called Mohawk Airlines. They recently changed their name from Robinson since Mohawk provides an image of fierce warrior pride. Great name and logo. They bought a bunch of surplus DC3's. They are looking for investors so I guess I'll go that route. Doubt Greg wants to join since DC3's have been seen being outrun by trains. I myself don't trust those new fangled turbine engines, they might go fast but how reliable can an engine be that uses a fireball to produce energy?

Again, love the engine, it is a beauty.

Jim D
Holland & Odessa Railroad

GPdemayo

Tom.....the new switcher is a beaut.  8)

Jim.....I.m in.....flying anything, no matter how slow.....is one heck of a lot better than not flying anything.  :)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

ReadingBob

Nice looking acquisition for the A&S.  Should look great working the yard.  ;D
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

There's a fine line between Hobby and Mental Illness.

Judge

#717
Saturday Report - August 1, 2020

The Board of Directors met at 0830 hours as usual.  The discussion focused on the structure being finished for use by the boating public on the Tahope River.  There will be no swimming allowed in the area due to large alligators and poisonous runoff from the nearby pest control company.  Hopefully, the structure will be in place this week and the Oklawaha dam will then release enough water to flood the river bed. 

We ran mostly Southern Railroad engines in the morning session.  A brace of E7A's pulled a load of mixed freight from the Midlands up the Ovalix to Summit.  The assent was smooth as glass up the constant one-degree grade.  We fired up the Southern Ms4 2-8-2 and posed it for two glamour shot run-byes.  Then we went to lunch at Del-Dio's. 

After lunch we satisfied our curiosity and tested several WOW Sound decoders that have been on the dieplay shelf for two or three years.  They all worked pretty well.  A couple of them have minor problems like marker lights being out, but that may not be a decoder probem.  Some of our WOW Sound decoders are over six years old adn some problems are expected.

Speaking of problems, we had no serious failures today.  No wrecks.  No electrical failures.  No system failures.  Today is one for the books!.  Of course, those modelers who follow this weekly report never have problems like these and enjoy perfect performance from layouts wherever they are located.

A video of the Southern 2-8-2 passing through the outskirts of Sanlando is attached for your viewing pleasure.  A longer video is available on Tom's layout thread.

                                                                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZINZDTRVCsg

This week's story takes place in 1950-51, but it foretells the trials and tribulations of the company employees in the Dilbert comic strip.

                                                                                               PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT EFFICIENCY

Like every large company, the Atlantic & Southern Railroad has a "Personnel Department." (Years in the future it will be called "Human Resources" and will be dreaded by all of the workers.  Besides hiring and firing, one part of the HR office will be called I.T. and another will be charged with investigating on the job conduct of employees.)  But in 1950-51 it was just called the Personnel Department and a lot of the employees assigned there had little to do on most days.

Naturally, one of the personnel Department employees decided it was her job to make work for others so she became an efficiency expert.  Stopwatches were issued to managers, who crept around the roundhouse, the supply shed, the commissary, and the main office building timing various aspects of the duties of others in order to determine what stepes could be taken to reduce the time each job required.

One day, the head of the efficiency team, Lollie Timer, looked upon the various switching goats in the roundhouse service yard and in the yards at Sanlando and Summit and decided there was considerable lost motion there.  It appeared to her that the switch engines spent a lot of time "on the spot," panting and wating for something to do. 

Now Lollie, a recent graduate of Florida State College for Women, knew little or nothing about railroading, but that did not stop her from moving forward with her efficiency project.  She convinced the A&S Financial Officer, Bucks Denaro, to purchase some timing clocks, which she had mounted in boxes attached to the inside roof inside the cab of each switcher.  These devices were attached secretly and none of the crews knew of their existence.  The timers were designed to time the moves the swithchers made and show the amount of time in between moves.

In early August 1950, Engineer Ralph Clark climbed into the cab of 0-8-0 #71 and prepared for his daily switch list.  His fireman, Jim, brought the pressure up to the pop-off point and took his seat on the left-hand side.  As he worked the blower, his eyes wandered up to the roof of the cab and he spied Lollie's box containing the timer.

Jim removed the box and heard it ticking.  He shouted "BOMB!" and threw the box into the tender's water tank.  About that time, the conductor, Cap;n Jack P. Cook, climbed into the cab to see what was causing the commotion.  Upon learning the facts, he sent the head shack to the roundhouse to call the police.

In due time, Officer Poovey of the Tahope Police Department arrived on the scene.  Poovey fished the box out from the tank and, since it was no longer ticking, opened it.  The innards of the box looked like a harmless clocking device so Officer Poovey, Engineer Clark, and Jim walked to the roundhouse and reported the incident to Will Fixer, the Roundhouse Foreman and Director of Maintenance. 

Boy oh Boy!  If Lollie Timer had been there to hear Fixer's opinion about efficiency experts, she would have heard language never uttered in the sorority houses of FSCW and would have crawled into a hole and pulled the hole in after her.  "I'll tell you about efficiency," said Fixer.  "Any fool that has been around a railroad yard for ten minutes can tell you that switch engines have downtime in between assignments.  And nothing can be done about it.  Now we've lost over two hours of time and trians are backing up in Sanlando, all because of a clock in a box."





postalkarl

Hey Tom;

I can see it all now. Here comes another beautiful paint job. Can't wait to see it finished.

Karl

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

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