The Atlantic & Southern Saturday Report

[PaulS]

Bill,
Another wonderful story and history lesson for the ACL and the A&S.
Thanks again for your continued efforts in providing this excellent series of short stories to bring Tom and your efforts on the A&S to life.
Much appreciated,
--Paul

[ReadingBob]

"The Tom".  I like it.     Another great story to help bring the layout to life. 

Really sorry I missed the festivities today but the HOA wanted the driveway and sidewalks pressure washed.  Maybe (hopefully) next Saturday.  Now that the pressure washing is behind me I can treat myself to a good long workbench session tomorrow without feeling guilty about not doing anything around the house.     The workbench is currently occupied by a background structure (Bar Mills Seckler's Cold Storage) destined for the Summit on the A&S so it does relate to this thread.   

[GPdemayo]

That story brought back great memories Bill. I was on that train almost every summer, and a few Xmas holidays, from the early 50's till the mid 60's.

The food was terrific, especially breakfast, and I spent most of my time in between cars with the top half of the dutch door open and my head hanging out in the wind.

One of the reasons for my love of "Greg Speed" came from when the PRR GG-1's that were attached to the cars outside D.C.. When we were flying down a long straight section in MD or NJ, I was between cars and the conductor came by. I asked him how fast we were going and he said that the engines were limited, by the PRR rules, to 100 mph, but were capable of a good bit more. I said it looked to me that we were doing well over 110 mph and he just smiled and said "we may be a wee bit behind schedule".

Amazing that trains were going well over 100 mph over 60 years ago and today they are building a line from Miami to Orlando that they claim will be "high speed" as it will be doing 120 mph.....not much progress in all those years.....go figure.

[Zephyrus52246]

Nice history lesson, Bill.  Interesting how the number boards changed from the E3 small nearly unreadable loco number to the large painted one on the E6, finally the large lighted ones on the E7.


Jeff

[Judge]

Jeff - The early FT's and the E3's and E6's had small number boards.  They painted the numbers on the nose of these engines so the numbers could be seen.  Another interesting bit of trivia is that the E6's did not have dynamic brakes because the height of the engine prohibited the installation of the equipment.  All of the E units had boilers for passenger operation.  That was not true with all of the F units, except, of course, with the FP7's.

Speaking of boilers, the NC&StL basically ran from Atlanta to Nashville.  The route was over the Tennessee Cumberland mountains.  As a result, the NC&StL bought no E units and relied upon F3's geared for freight duty to power passenger trains.  The F3A's did not have boilers, so there had to be a B unit in the consist to provide steam for heat and airconditioning.

And here is an interesting pic of a diesel boneyard.  Reminds me of the pics of steam locos awaiting scrap.  Whatever happened to the bells and whistles?

                                                                             

                                                              What is this?  Well over 100 locomotives in a bone yard?  I wonder how much fuel is left in those tanks?

[Judge]

The Saturday Report - March 14, 2020 - Clear day, high in the high 80's.

The Board of Directors met promptly at 0830 hours. 
The stockholders awarded the CEO and the Ticket Agent railroader's caps for service above and beyond the call for keeping the A&S solvent for another year.  (Photo below).

                                                                   



The scratch building project of the South Tahope junkyard was inspected.  It is coming along nicely.  The newly repowered E7 A-B-A Pennsy diesels were tested and calibrated as per WOW Sound standards.  These units made a caboose hop from Summit to the Midlands where they picked up a mixed freight and were put through their paces.  Meanwhile, the Champion was returned to the Bottoms and the City of Miami (the subject of this week's story) was brought up to the Midlands for trial run.
Curt Webb and Greg DeMayo arrived and the crew adjourned for lunch.

After lunch, the City of Miami made a video run-by over the Suwanee River Bridge, but just as it came into sight a Florida thunderstorm passed through. 

This week's story is a description of the Illinois Central's City of Mimi passenger train.

                                                                                                             THE City OF MIAMI

The post-war demand for luxury passenger service from the mid-west (Chicago) to Florida (Miami) resulted in three streamlined passenger trains:  The City of Miami (), the Southwind, and the Dixie Flagler.  The latter two trains ran copies of the Budd equipment found on the ACL's Champion, while the equipment on the "City" was all Pullman Standard.  All three triains were originally all coach.  Only the "City" was dieselized all the way from Chicago to Miami.  The "City" was an Illinois Central train, but it had passenger cars pooled from the ACL and the FEC, all painted in the IC"s famous color scheme.


 
                                                                                                             

The "City" began service in 1940 after being christened with water from Biscayne Bay and was a seven-car streamliner powered by a singel E6A.  An FEC engine powered the train from Miami to Jacksonville adn the IC took over from there to Chicago.  The consist included a baggage/dormitory car (Bougainvillea), four coaches (camellia, Jamponica, Hibiscus, and Poinsetta), a diner (Palm Garden) and a taver/observation lounge (Bamboo Grove).  Sleepers were added in 1949 as was an additional diner, an additional lounge car, and additional E units for motive power.

The original train could seat 254 passengers and operated a 30-hour schedule from Chacago to Champaign,IL, to Birmingham, AL, to Albany, GA, to Jacksonville.  A section was taken by the Coast Line from Jacksonville down through Gainesville to Orlando, Tampa, and St.Petersburg.  The train maintained an average speed of 50 MPH. 

The original "City" had one of the most flamboyant color schemes of any streamlined train.  The locomotive featured a large green wave with yellow pinstripes, separated from the orange-yellow body by a red pinstripe. The observation car, Bamboo Grove, had a large green stripe curving over the tail.  Each of the cars had a different color scheme of blue, coral, green, tan, copper, and yellow.  They were decorated with native wood.


                                                                       


By 1950, the IC had gone through at least two more color schemes involving the familiar chocolate, orange and yellow colors.  The final scheme lasted until the train was discontinued by AMTRAK in 1971.  Today, there are no through passenger trains from Chicago to Florida.

                                                                   

The Atlantic & Southern maintains a version of the City of Miami since it had a section that followed ACL tracks from Jacksonville through Orlando to St. Petersburg.  The two latest paint schemes are represented on the "City" as it passes through Tahope County.



                                                                                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja_N019jMGo 
                                                           The shows the "City" coming through Piney Woods in the next to last paint scheme                                               

                                                                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtEJ_EcqteQ&feature=youtu.be
                                                 This shows the "City" crossing the Suwanee River in a thunderstorm wearing the most familiar paint scheme.

[madharry]

I love the videos and especially the thunder and lightning. The lighted cars are brill as well. Well done!
Mike

[GPdemayo]

Great story about a great train Bill. I used to take the City of Miami from Ft. Lauderdale to St. Louis at the beginning and end of the school year at Mizzou.....what fun. All the coeds going and coming from school made for quite an interesting trip. 

[ACL1504]

Another epic Saturday with some of the SBG. We all had a wonderful time with the video.

Great friends, great food, great fun and lots more BSing.

Tom

[GPdemayo]

Another epic Saturday with some of the SBG. We all had a wonderful time with the video.

Great friends, great food, great fun and lots more BSing.

Tom

You betcha.....and the food was first rate....still wondering about the guys running around in funny hats.

[ReadingBob]

Dang.  I missed it.

Another fine story Bill!

[S&S RR]

Love the story and the video's - fine work my friends.

[sdrees]

YOu are quite the videotographer Tom.  Always love your videos

[Judge]

Saturday Report - March 20, 2020 - Temperature in Central Florida - high 80's.  Not a cloud in the sky.

The Board of Directors declined to cancel the Saturday meeting due to the "the virus."   The meeting started on time and much time was taken up locating the passenger cars that the Pennsy K4s (which is in the shop for major overhaul) will eventually use for a train.  The mission was to prepare the cars for passengers and lighting.  Once the cars were located, the process of removing interior walls so the Walthers light bar will fit began and it took until after 10:00 to complete.  However, we now have six fine passenger cars and a reefer ready for service.  Yes, the Atlantic & Southern has Pennsy equipment.  It is a long story but the down and dirty version is the A&S leased a bunch of Pennsy equipment and locomotives to augment A&S power and we are going to run it occasionally to show it off.

We adjourned for a trip to the hobby shop and had lunch at our new hang out, which is a small Italian joint whose owner has decided to stay open in spite of the Governor's orders for all restaurants to close.  The crowd was scant and take-out is booming.  We decided to have our pic-nic inside instead of out in the heat.

                                                                                                          THIS WEEK'S STORY- RAILSPEAK
    Railroaders, like members of other trades and professions, have their own distinct terminology.  An article entitled "Lingo of the Rails" was published in the April, 1940, Railroad Magazine.  The article included a list of over 100 words and phrases in use during the steam era, along with a few examples of how the terms were used.  Some of the terms are familiar to model railroaders, others are not.  But since the readers of these stories are steam fans, or want to be, a few of the terms are listed for reader information and edification.
    There are entirely too many terms listed in the article to include here so the list has been "selectively compressed" to fit the reader's attention span.  All of the terms listed here are in common use by the employees of the Atlantic & Southern Railroad, although a few of them are usually preceded by descriptive adjectives not included.
    Before we embark on the journey through definitions, an example of railroad lingo was used in the 1940's comes to us by way of transcript of a jury trial that took place in the Tahope County Courthourse before Judge Elwin Thomas.  The event that gave rise to the litigation was a crossing accident on Eaton's Curve that involved car vs. train.  The issue was whether the engineer gave proper warning signal at the crossing.
    When asked to relate what happened, the brakeman testified as follows:
    "We wuz ordered for a train of diamonds, mostly high tents Summit to Sanlando.  The hog came through the hole ten minutes late, and the car knocker tied him on.  He tied him in the rubber, and then we tried the wind.  We got a high sign from the tent to get out of town, with the advice to whale them down the hill.  When we got down the hill we only hit the high spots until we got to the Piney Woods Station, where we sawed her off and gave her a drink. 
    Then we went down on sort time and the whistle pig sounded two longs, a short, and a long before we humped a man at Eaton's Curve."
    "Whoa," said the Judge.  "Just what language are you speaking?"  "Railroad," said the brakeman, "Everybody in Tahope speaks it."  "Well, get somebody to translate," said the Judge. 
    Sweaty Betty, the owner of the diner located south of the A&S steam service facility, offered to explain.  "The brakeman said, 'We were ordered to take a train of coal, mostly in big steel gondola cars from Summit to Sanlando.  The engine came through the passing track late and the car inspector coupled the engine to the cars and we tried the air brakes.  We got the go-ahead signal from the caboose and proceeded as rapidly as we could down the Ovalix to the Midlands.  When we got to Piney Woods, We uncoupled the locomotive and filled the tank with water. 
    'Then we made good time and the engineer sounded the crossing signal just before we hit the car on Eaton's Curve.'

    Here are a few of the words and phrases listed in the Lingo of the Rails article:
Ballast Scorcher - Speedy engineer
Bedbug - Pullman Porter
Bee Hive - Yard office
Big hole - emergency position of air brake
Bird cage - brakeman's lantern
Caboose - crummy, brain box, van, wagon, cage, buggy, chariot, crib, hack, hearse, palace parlor car, way car
Car catcher - rear brakeman (hind shack)
Conductor - Captain, skipper, brains, brainless wonder, swellhead
Dinky - Switch engine
Drag - Heavy freight train
Engineer - Big O, Big Ox, eagle eye , whistle pig, throttle jerker
Fireman - Ashcat, bakehead, tallow pot, bell-ringer, blackie, stoker, coal heaver, dust raiser, fireboy
Gate - Switch
Grease the pig - Oil around the engine
Hand bomber - Steam engine without a stoker
Jay rod - clinker hook
Jerk-by - a flying switch
Lightning slinger - telegraph operator
Lizzard scorcher - dinning car chef
Pull the pin - Uncouple a car or leave a job
Scrap pile - An old, worn out locomotive
Seashore - Sand used in the sand dome
Shack - Brakeman
Short time - Crew on overtime but not in violation of the limit of the hour law.
Spot - To place an engine or car in a particular place - a railroader would never uset the word "park" to describe the same thing
Skin your eye - Engineer's warning to the fireman on left side of the engine when approaching a curve.
Tie on - to couple to a car
Tin Lizzard - streamlined train
Whale, whale belly - a steel car
White ribbons - Extra train
Whiskers - A railroader with seniority
Widen her up - increase speed (also, pour on the coal).

[postalkarl]

Hey Judge:

WOW what a beautiful RR room. Layout looks just beautidful.

Karl