The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

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

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GPdemayo

Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

PRR Modeler

Great info Bill, and great video also.
Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

Judge

#1127
Kirt and Greg - Thanks for the compliments.  The video was produced by Atlantic & Southern Railroad Amalgamated Video Enterprises.  I have added a couple of photos to this week's report.  Check 'em out.

S&S RR

Great photographs, Judge.  I have an icing platform on my workbench for the S&S RR and I see some opportunities for extra details in your photographs.
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

Judge

John -  just found those photos by asking Dr. Google for them.  There are a lot of other similar photos on line   I think I just entered "icing platforms."  My wife wants to know how they made ice in the summer in 1919.  Good question. 

S&S RR

#1130
Quote from: Judge on October 10, 2021, 03:01:14 PM
John -  just found those photos by asking Dr. Google for them.  There are a lot of other similar photos on line   I think I just entered "icing platforms."  My wife wants to know how they made ice in the summer in 1919.  Good question.


Bill


I can tell you how it was done in Michigan, but not in Florida.  In Michigan the ice was cut from the lakes in the winter with big hand saws and stored in large buildings covered with sawdust.  The insulation was good enough to keep the ice through the summer months. Somewhere I have pictures of the ice cutting operations on the lake by my house, along with the "ice house" that was used to store it. Chainsaws replaced the big hand saws before Mr. Edison electrified the place and ice boxes were replaced by refrigerators. 


I wonder if the ice was shipped in to Florida from the North?
John Siekirk
Superior & Seattle Railroad

Judge

#1131
John - Ice must have been a scarce commodity in Florida in 1919.  My dad was born in 1902 so he would have known what people did (or did without) back in those days.  Like many other things, I never asked him about it. Maybe they just used ventilated boxcars to ship fruit and veggies.  But what about beef and pork?  And I know my dad and my grandparents drank iced tea every day.  This subject requires more research.   

Rollin

For the locals here in central Florida, we have a community theatre in Mt Dora that was known as the Ice House. That is because when the group first organized, they put on shows in an old structure down by Lake Dora next to the railroad tracks. It was indeed an ice house where shipments from up north were warehoused and distributed. They honor their legacy by naming their acting awards 'The Cubies'. Today they are just plaques, but at one time the award was a plastic cube with ice tongs attached.

Judge

There was an ice house next to the ACL mainline on Lake Ivanhoe and Highland Avenue when I was growing up in the 50's.  They iced down reefers one at a time but they mostly provided ice commercially.  We used to get the "shavings" and make snow cones out of them with Coca-cola, Grapette, or a Big Orange draink.

Judge

Saturday Report - October 16, 2021.

This week's Saturday Report reports happenings that took place on Thursday.  The Board of Directors convened at 8:50 a.m. but the agenda was blank so the board members talked about their various health problems.  Happily, the CEO's skin cancer surgery is healing nicely. 

We ran an SAL freight on The Midlands  and discovered the decoder in Pacific #1516 is shot so the engine and a Southern MS4 will be taken back to ALCO this afternoon for overhaul. 

Greg DeMayo joined us for lunch at Del Dio's adn we called it a day.

This week's story is an attempt to give some biographical information about one of the characters that make up the A&S. 

                                                                                       Forty-six Years on the Atlantic & Southern

    "Uncle Henry" O'Leary was born on May 12, 1890, in Chicago.  His father, Patrick O'Leary, was a well-to-do livestock broker who made his fortune buying and selling cattle shipped to the stockyards in Chicago. 
    When Henry was six years old his father took him to the stockyards to watch the cattle being unloaded from the stock cars into the pens awaiting slaughter.  While the livestock initially held Henry's attention, he was fascinated by the smoke and noise from the little consolidations moving the stockcars around the stockyards. 
    Henry started school that September, but he was an indifferent student whose mind wandered to the railroad and the smell of grease and coal smoke.  By the time he was 12 years old, he had managed to work his way into the LaSalle Street yard office for a part-time job of "sweeping up" and running errands around the yard.  Much to his father's disappointment, Henry never developed an interest in brokering cattle so he quit school when he was 15 and began a career as a railroader.
     In the summer of 1904, Henry's family took time off from the hustle and bustle of Chicago and traveled by train to sunny Florida.  In those days, Henry Flagler's vision of development of the east coast of Florida was just coming into shape and there was increased interest in an area called Miami. 
    Henry B. Plant had begun developing the west coast of the state and the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad's tracks meandered down from Jacksonville to Tampa-St. Petersburg.  Henry's father's attention was drawn to a sleepy town in the center of the state named Tahope.  The little village was served by a railroad that was developed during reconstruction after the War of Northern Aggression called the Atlantic & Southern. (See p.14 -Dixie Days). The railroad had been financed by none other than Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.  (See p.1). The main attraction Patrick O'Leary saw with the A&S was its proximity to thousands of acres of orange groves.  Patrick bought 10,000 acres of in Orange County and installed his brother, Sean O'Leary, to manage the groves.
    Henry decided to stay in Florida with his uncle.  One day he caught the local A&S passenger train to Tahope to see what he could see.  The round trip ticket to Tahope and back was $.25 and that left Henry with just enough money for lunch at Betty's. 
Henry wandered into the yardmaster's office at the Sanlando Yard and struck up a conversation with the yardmaster, Clarence Mason.  In no time Henry was offered a job.  He was given the day shift at the roundhouse so he could commute back and forth from his uncle's place.  Salary was a dollar a day, which left Henry with just about enough money to get to and from work and eat lunch. 
     In those days, the yardmaster hired their own brakemen and Henry was soon wielding a brake club on top of the freight cars.  A brakeman's pay was considerably better than that of an entry-level laborer and Henry moved into a rooming house in downtown Tahope. 
     Henry was a natural-born railroader and in no time he was allowed to work as a student fireman.  In those days a student fireman's training was "on the job" and Henry learned what it was like to shovel several tons of coal on a run.
     There was more to a fireman's job than shoveling coal.  Henry learned a great deal about how a steam locomotive runs and how to keep one in good repair from the engineers he fired for.  He also learned about the ins and outs of locomotive repairs by spending time with the skilled workers in the roundhouse.
     Henry was promoted to the righthand seat in 1917, just 12 years after he signed onto the A&S. 
One of the main challenges facing locomotive engineers in the days before dieselization was pounding up the steady 1% grade on the ovalix to move trains from as far as The Bottoms to Summit.  Fortunately, the east and west sides of the ovalix are flattened with straight track, which reduces the strain on the engine and allows more cars to be in each consist.  Henry became a master at moving steam engines up the ovalix.  It was said that railroaders could tell Henry was running up the ovalix by the bark of his engine.
     Sometime during Henry's career, the younger railroaders started calling Henry "Uncle Henry" due to his seniority.  By 1951, Uncle Henry had been on the A&S payroll for forty-six years.  His seniority put him at the top of the board and he had moved from steam to diesels.  His favorite run was the through freight from Tampa to Jacksonville hauling perishable vegetables from Tampa and citrus products from Central Florida.  This train was so long and so heavy that it always required three "F" units to pull it up the ovalix. 
    Uncle Henry may be in his 60's but he is not ready for retirement.  The union contract with the A&S will allow him to continue working until the company doctors say he is no longer capable of running an engine.  Until that time he will spend his off days with his wife of 40 years and his grandchildren.  And he does not regret escaping from the stockyards of Chicago.     

 

deemery

Mal Houck talks about meeting an engineer on the old O&W who worked -for the railroad- for 65 years... 


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

jrmueller

Another interesting story Judge. Keep 'em comin.  Jim
Jim Mueller
Superintendent(Retired)
Westchester and Boston Railroad

GPdemayo

Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

postalkarl

Hey Judge:

Great prototype pics. Thanks. I love icing stations.

Karl

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

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