Nostalgia & History > When You Are Scanning Somebody's Slides --> Some Surprises

Roger Puta was a very good photographer. What comes off my scanner usually brings neat surprises.  For example:

1. Look at this power consist.  Can anyone explain it?  The B-units certainly look modified.  March 1981.

2. March 1981.  What was Roger trying to show.  The slide was rather darker than it looks in this edit. I could have left it dark. What you are looking at still has a lot of blue which I could have taken out but was Roger looking for a blue hour shot with a lot of glint.  I could have make it lighter to look more like early evening.

3. and 4. Same train, 2 different locations, maybe 2 different lenses.  AT&SF 5909 in March 1972.

5. Roger loved signals. No kidding!  AT&SF 5978 in October 1985.

Enjoy,
Marty Bernard



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/16 22:17 by MartyBernard.

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The B-units in #1 look like the Radio Control Cars that ATSF built and also loaned out to other RR's. The big ground plane in the center of the roof would be the spotting feature.

MartyBernard Wrote:

> 1. Look at this power consist.  Can anyone
> explain it?  The B-units certainly look
> modified.  March 1981.

Like the other fellow said, those are RCE cars (RCE = radio control equipment).  They were basically gutted, ballasted, former F-unit boosters with just a pallet of radio receiver gear inside and radio antennas on the roof.  They would be coupled and MUed to unmanned mid-train helpers so the helpers could be controlled from the head-end.  The RCE leader gear was installed in certain locomotives, and eventually the receiver gear was as well.  That could have been a repositioning move that Puta shot, but 1981 was getting near the end of RCE car usage in general on the Santa Fe (lots of RCE-equipped C30-7's and snoot-nosed SD40-2's among other types on the property by then), so more likely they were on their way to scrap.  Several RCE cars were retired in 1981, and the last ones went in 1983.

> 5. Roger loved signals. No kidding!  AT&SF 5978
> in October 1985.

Glad to know image 5 in this thread from a few days ago wasn't the only one he got of that train:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,4080814

Photo #1 looks like Valentine, AZ probably train #804.


Allen

Right on!  The B units are retired RCE cars which have been sold for scrap.  The train was 804, the Barstow to Albuquerque manifest, with a Holbrook block justx behind the RCE cars.  Perhaps one of those RCE cars is the one that rolled East from the diesel shop at Barstow, out the main line, and rolled 25 miles East before rolling to a stop ar Hector, California.  I think I told that story on the Nostalgia page some time ago, but then, nostalgia is not what it used to be.

Norm

 

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

Photos 3 and 4, hmmm.

How do you get two shots of the same train, both taken from the perspective of a meet?  Doesn't look like two different lenses to me.  Are the slide numbers consecutive?

Probably pic 3 isn't the 5909.

Those RCE units were used a lot on Raton Pass.  I remember seeing them in use in 1974.

Cool, I had no idea the SF used or even had these in the seventies (unlike say the Southern) How were they deployed on Raton? assume cut in mid-train with another power set? Sounds like a neat prototype to model wiuth more modern power.

Photos 3 and 4 look like they were taken from a waycar.
And photo 2? He was shooting signals of course.
Posted from Android



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/16 18:14 by MP4093.

Atlpete Wrote:

> Cool, I had no idea the SF used or even had these
> in the seventies (unlike say the Southern) How
> were they deployed on Raton? assume cut in
> mid-train with another power set? Sounds like a
> neat prototype to model wiuth more modern power.

SP8595 posted a sequence of shots from 1982 at Trinidad, CO showing a westbound with an RCE car splitting the power and doing a pickup at the same time.  I'm told the daily manifest that ran over Raton and Glorieta Passes was mostly loads westbound and empties eastbound, so even though Glorieta's steeper grade is eastbound, typically only the westbounds had mid-train helpers. 

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2543677

They also used mid-train helpers with RCE cars on the Rustler Springs - Galveston unit sulfur train, and on Texas-bound export grain trains:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2346391
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,868574

Unit coal trains out of York Canyon likewise used RCE westbound:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1324656

Early on, they tried RCE on other grades and trains:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1116210
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1748727
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2736384
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2177609

They used them on the Boise City sub as well. As needed. Old heads at LaJunta claimed the roundhouse foreman was an air brake genius and he helped Harris develop the system.

The Blue Hour shot. Could this be a time exposure with moonlight? Can't quite tell but there could be star trails in the image upper right?

All right, how about it-- could pic 2 be moonlight?
Seems unlikely, but how to prove it's sun?

dbinterlock Wrote:

> The Blue Hour shot. Could this be a time exposure
> with moonlight? Can't quite tell but there could
> be star trails in the image upper right?

Take a look at the streetview: https://goo.gl/maps/siZoKTdVHeu

Puta's shot is a long telephoto while Google's camera is wide angle.  At the focal length Puta was using, the stuff in the upper right is on the east slope of Elden Mountain, not star trails in the sky.