Steam & Excursion > From the Nolan Black Collection

Here's three shots taken from my Dad's collection:

1. Doubleheaded "Malleys" on a passenger train? Yep. Here we see # 57, the "Owl" ready to depart Glendale, California in 1952. Sometimes the train would have been heavy enough to require two of these
brutes in order to make the time on the rugged grades between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. Can you imagine what that must of sounded like leaving Mojave?

2. GS-4 class 4449, who needs no introduction, rests with one of her older sister 4-8-4's 4406 in the Los Angeles roundhouse. Undated photo.

3. In a magnificent shot of steam in action, taken by a friend of Dad's named Phil Johnson, we see # 52, the eastbound "San Joaquin Daylight" somewhere in the Oakland area. 1945 photo.

Thanks for looking, and as always, comments welcome.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO

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Number three is a beauty! Wow!
Bob

Thank you for sharing these. Beautiful subjects doing what they were bought for.

Oh, wow.......stunning, all of them!!

I wish I had been in Mojave or up the hill to hear
those cab-forwards pulling the Owl that day, And
in Oakland that long-ago day way back in 1945 to
hear the "San Joaquin Daylight" with the SP 4343
storming out of town. (But I was only 3 back in 1945,
so the 4343 would probably have scared the bejeesus
out of me! Maybe I might have enjoyed the thunderous
roar of those two cab-forwards then, but I dunno --
that, too probably would also have scared me. Didn't
turn into a railfan until more than 20 years after those
magnificent cab-forwards thundered up that grade. Darn!
And, anyways, I was not even living in the States back
then -- I was 8,000 miles away.

Your dad had no way of knowing that one of the locomotives
he photographed would become quite famous.

THANK you VERY much for these incredible photos!

Thank goodness these scenes were recorded. They are super wonderful.
If I had seen the train in Photo 1 when I was a child, I would have freaked out with awe.
Thanks for posting these wonderful photos.
ALLEN

Pic #3 is 34th St, and the train is passing over the Key System underpass.

I don't have to "imagine" it - I remember it!
Also, 51 storming up the hill from the depot with a couple of MTs or GSs on the point making the ground move as it rolled over the Oak Creek Road crossing!
And 52 rolling into Mojave in the afternoon smelling up the town with the odor of composition brake shoes...

No imagination needed...

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Awesome, thanks for sharing!

For a few brief years, SP 57/58 were our method of transportation between SF and LA. One trip stands out in my memory....summer of '49, coming home from a trip which included an eastbound trip on the brand new CZ. It was my Dad's policy to take me up to see the power on every train we could, and 57, that night, had the double headed ACs.

After dinner in the diner, we retired to the Pullman lounge behind the diner for drinks (ginger ale for me, the kid) and cards....we played 500 Rummy most of the time, on a tiny bar table on the left side at the rear of the lounge.....funny how memories like this stick, while others are long gone. As we ran up Soledad Canyon, there were many "right angle" curves where we could get a great view of the power pounding upgrade, I recall seeing both fireboxes on such curves. Don't know how long we lingered in the lounge, but, every few minutes, there was the power moving at right angle to our Pullman. We would be home in the morning behind what I presume was a 4300, and I'd get my customary hot chocolate on the ferry ride across the bay.

AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA