The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

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

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Judge

Bob, Curt, Greg, James, Jeff, and Jerry -  Thank y'all for taking the time to comment on this week's Saturday Report.  The A&S management uses the Report in lieu of corporate minutes, so we try to make them accurate.  You never know when the ICC or the State Railroad Commission might poke around.

 

S&S RR

Bill


I'm late to the party this week but great report and that was way to close with that locomotive. I have a couple locomotives in boxes,  "labeled to be fixed",  that didn't get stopped in time during testing runs on my layout.  :-[ 
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

Judge

John - We have dumped several locomotives into the Great Divide.  Fortunately, they were diesels (who cares about them?) and no permanent damage was suffered.   I think the idea of installing some sort of fail-safe device is a good idea.  I will take it up with the board tomorrow.

deemery

I remember seeing some clever engineering using cams.  When the bridge was installed, the cams pushed down "normally in place" pins at the end of the track.  When the bridge was up, those pins would pop up at the end of the track to block the train from taking the deep dive down.


dave
Modeling the Northeast in the 1890s - because the little voices told me to

Judge

#679
Thank everyone for commenting on this thread.

Judge

#680
Saturday Report - Independence Day, 2020.  Hot and humid today with temperature in the 90's and thundershowers in the afternoon.

The Board of Directors of the Atlantic & Southern Railroad met promptly at 8:30 a.m.  The motive power department was given a cheer for repairing the Pennsy K4s and the C&O K3 Mikado.  Both engines had to have the "chuff" adjusted so there would be four beats to the revolution of the drivers.  This takes some doing.  It is not hard to time the "chuffs" but patience is needed.  Locomotives have different size drivers and sometimes it takes a few minutes to get it right. 

Speaking of drivers, the roundhouse crew replaced the drivers on the K4s with brand new ones.  (The "new" drivers are actually about 40 years old, but they have never touched a railhead.)  This engine was the property of Richard (Dick) DeWitt, who owned the hobby shop in Orlando.  When he passed, the A&S inherited several Pennsy locomotives, including some spare drivers.  Who would have known?  Anyway, this particular engine must have run several thousand actual miles on Dick's store layout and it was time to switch out drivers as long as the boiler was lifted off the frame for installation of a new motor.  The motor that was mounted in the engine was the original motor and it was shot, to say the least.

We ran the K4s and the K-3 to test them and made a video that is posted on Tom's K-3 thread.  Next week we will produce at least two more videos of Pennsy passenger trains on the A&S.  It is hard to believe the Pennsy would meander south to a Central Florida Swamp, but the blame goes to Dick DeWitt, who was an avid Pennsy fan.  Anyway, its our railroad.  Your reporter has explained the unusual relationship the A&S has with the Pennsy in prior reports and, for those interested, they are still part of this thread.

Lunch was at Smokey Bones because Del Dio's was closed for the 4th.  We were the only customers in the place - a Covid moment.

After lunch we made two more videos (see below) and called it a day.

The idea for this week's story comes from one of the 1938 Railroad Magazines.  Coal is something Floridians have forgotten about since he passing of steam engines.  Few, if any, Floridians used coal for heat in the "winter."  So, your reporter was facinated twith the problems that come with lignite.


                                                                                  THE LIGNITE EXPERIMENT - INDEPENDENCE DAY 1950.

In Central Florida each summer, between late June and early October, it rains nearly every afternoon.  Many of these cloudbursts are accompanied with thunder and lightning.  Orlando has been designated as the country's lightning capital.

The City of Jacksonville is famous for its fireworks displays on Independence Day every year so the president of the A&S Railroad scheduled a special train for a trip from Tahope to Jacksonville on July 4, 1050, so his family and friends could watch the show.

Ethan Douglas drew the right-side job for the trip and a new fireman named Wayne Shoemaker was assigned  to handle the firing duties.  The motive power for the trip was a ACL 1401, a mountain type of USRA design.

The Pennsy delivered daily to the A&S at the coaling tower near the Tahopy roundhouse.  The coal salesman convinced Assistant Roundhouse Forman Tater Cartwright to accept several hoppers of lignite coal, which was considerably less expensive than the regular bituminous shipment.

Twenty hoppers of lignite were delivered on the morning the president's special train was scheduled to make the trip from Tahope to Jacksonville.  A hostler moved 1401 to the coaling tower and filled the tender's coal space with lignite. 

Engineer Douglas ran 1401 light the short distance from the coaling tower to the ready track and Steve Carpenter coupled switcher Number 71 to the eight-car passenger consist and shoved it into 1401. 

The Special left Tahope on time at 1:00 p.m. and steamed towards Sanlando.  Wayne began firing the engine as they pulled out of the ready track and over the Tahope River Bridge.  He had never seen lignite before and wondered at the smallness of the coal.  He managed to keep the fire hot enough to steam fro the first few miles, but then a Florida couldburst came and the lignite in the coal bunker turned into so much mud.  The engine began to lose steam pressure and Ethan Douglas hollered for more steam as the train crossed the St. Johns River Bridge.  The pressure continued to drop as Wayne shoveled fine grain mud into the firebox. 

The engineer brought 1401 to a halt at the station in Deland.  By that time steam pressure was so low the engine could make no headway.  Douglas put his hand to the water glass and it was cold to the touch.  He shouted, "Dadgummit, what the heck happened to this fire?"  Or he said something like that.

About that time Conductor Melvin Hatter climbed into the cab and surveyed the situation.  "Better call for another engine," he said.  But all the available engines had been fueled with the recently delivered lignite.  The SAL came to the rescue and provided a GP-7 to haul the Special to Jacksonville and back.

The president returned to Tahope the next day.  He went to the roundhouse and had a set-to with Tater Cartwright.  He said, "Tater, you bonehead, don't you ever order another load of lignite for the A&S!"  And Tater became known as "Bonehead Cartwright" from that day until this.  Except his girlfriend, Peaches, still calls him "Sweetie Pie."  And nineteen hoppers of lignite were shipped back to Pennsylvania.


                                                                                         https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcAgX8DcjME

                                                                                          Independence Day Special leaves for Jacksonville


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

                                                                                                Independence Day Special Returns to Tahope

PRR Modeler

Great story Bill. You know you can't trust a Yankee salesman. Great videos.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

jerryrbeach

Bill,


If those hoppers were caught in the same rainstorm weren't nineteen hoppers full of mud shipped back to the Pennsy? Just wondering...


Great videos, and the story sets them up perfectly. 



Jerry

ReadingBob

Great story Bill.  Even though I'm from coal country (my grandfather and my better half's grandfather were both coal miners) I had to look up lignite coal.  We come from the anthracite regions of PA.  Bituminous coal comes from Slim's neck of the woods.  Speaking of which, it looks to me like the tenders on the A&S are loaded with anthracite coal.  You better get Will E. Fixer to swap them out with bituminous coal loads if that's what the A&S burns.   ;) 
Bob Butts
robertbutts1@att.net

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

GPdemayo

Great story Bill.....I can understand Tater trying to save a buck, but penny pinching can sometimes bite ya in the butt.  ;D
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

Judge

#685
Jerry -The nineteen other hopper loads were indeed reduced to mud.  I understand there is some sort of use for that stuff.  Can they make coke out of it? 

Bob - I have always assumed the A&S used bituminous coal because that is what all good Southern Railroads used.  But I could be wrong.  All I know is the pop valves on the engines running on the A&S pop regularly. 

Greg & Curt - Thanks for reading and responding. 


Blazeman

Your Honor:  Lignite does not come from PA.  A lot from Texas and the Dakotas-Montana.

Larry from PA.

BandOGuy

It's also easy to determine the type of coal being used in Pennsylvania as the anthracite burners had wider fireboxes (check Reading, CNJ and Jersey Central loco photos for examples). And that is not a mis-type. There was a Central Railroad of New Jersey and a Jersey Central Railroad. Even in those days, the government of New Jersey overtaxed its citizens and corporations. CNJ tried to escape this by shifting assets to Pennsylvania, but the dodge failed.
Working on my second million. I gave up on the first.

Judge

Larry - Thank you for pointing out that lignite does not come from Pennsylvania.  The A&S gets its coal exclusively from the Keystone State and we are appreciative of it. We order bituminous coal and that is what is in our coal hoppers, no matter what Butts says.


tom.boyd.125

Tom,
After reviewing the latest... Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report...did not see any mention of these new checks...
Tommy
Tom Boyd in NE Minnesota
tommytrains22@yahoo.com

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