Sept. Picture Worth A Thousand Words

This is a photo at the Strasburg RR in Pennsylvania from about a month ago (Aug.'08). Now, it does have a bit of deliberate "lense lice" in the form of Train Time's "CEO and Chief Video Tape Rewinder" at the ready with a video camera. (that will be a great episode too!) But, the main reason for the photo being here is the vast array of details that no longer exist or are on the way out in modern railroading. Finding such detail is like shooting fish in a barrel at Strasburg, but we all know that anyway or we wouldn't visit the place. I would judge that this scene would look normal as late as the 1940's, if you ignore the modern parts.

The tower is the most obvious detail of the past that has changed, and probably changed the most as well. There are only a handful still in operation in the whole country now. Last summer the HAPT expedition to Sand Patch detoured to Hancock tower on the old B&O and caught it in operation a month or so before it closed. Prior to the adoption of electronic signalling and control devices, guys with telegraph sets for communication threw levers to move the switches and change the semaphore signals. It was a gradual process and for decades various electronics enhanced tower operations before they replaced them. Centralized traffic control (CTC) allowed for one tower to do the job of many but quite often there were some junctions that still needed a guy to throw the switches and pull the levers because things were too complex for a machine to handle reliably. Computers, reliable machinery, telecomunications and economics changed all that over time. After all, the guy in the tower was a huge expense.

Another semi-obvious detail is the Pennsylvania RR position signal. The PRR tested and researched signal systems that were visible in any weather or sun conditions, full of redundancies (extra bulbs in this case) and could be seen from the greatest possible distance. All bulbs were a bright yellow that could be seen at great distances in many lighting conditions. These systems were not cheap so the "Standard Railroad of the World" was the only one to adopt this style totally. The B&O used a variation involving no middle bulb and using color so that if one bulb died, the single remaining bulb still showed the correct indication by bulb color. A different concept of redundancy. Position signals are gradually disappearing as they are replaced with modern electronics on both lines. While these systems used relays and other electro-mechanical devices that made them work, they were way ahead of mechanical semaphores and guys throwing levers. However, by today's standard they are maintenance intensive energy hogs.

Now look down by the clean and busy depot. There's a passenger train complete with observation car on the end. Next to the train are people milling around or waiting for someone. Relatively few depots outside of a handful of large cities see this activity today. Once upon a time, any town with tracks might see this multiple times during a typical day. Train time was an exciting time when people came and went on journeys around the globe. It was your portal to anywhere. Now you have to travel to a distant airport to get the same impression. And, look at those street lights! What character compared to the modern mercury vapor or halogen lighting that would blast the scene at night. Less need to light the world to reveal street ruffians or thieves lurking in the shadows back in the day. People probably thought the lights were bright enough too since they had dim bulbs or kereosene lamps at home.

Coal smoke is wafting up from the front of the train too. Most Americans cannot even remember when this was a normal scene from coast to coast. Now that would probably lead to calls to the fire department or the EPA. At one time, the people near this railyard activity probably didn't notice the smell or smoke simply because it was a part of every day life. No reason to take notice. Today, the untrapped vapors emanating from a car built before about 1975 gets people's attention where it was once unnoticed.

Only the parking lot full of newer cars really betrays the "old" scene. There is a recent electrical box and maybe some other "out of time" items, but they are subtle misfits. In the end, it sometimes pays to hang on to those old fashions since it's only a matter of time before they return. A modern rendition of this scene could return to a town near you in the next few decades unless fuel issues go away.

BC