Steam & Excursion > This Steam Crew Must Know This Fate Will Also Happen To Them!

Reminiscent of an old man running through a graveyard, this steam crew is surrounded by reminders that their fate most certainly does await them as well.

The date is a cold February day in 1956 in Southern Pacific's Roseville, California rail yard.  Line upon line of dead lifeless steam locomotives lines the tacks nearly the length of the yard.  Most if not all of these engines will soon be stricken from the SP roster for all time and will be towed dead to a scrap yard to meet their ultimate fate.

Suddenly the calm is broken by the sharp exhaust and beating air-pumps of SP #4187 as she and her crew blast down the track in a flurry of steam and activity as they prepare for a day of service under steam.  This 1939-built Baldwin AC-8 has been kept in perfect working order over the years by SP's shop forces.  On this bright clear moning she looks like she has another 25 years of service left in her.

Unfortunately, the fate of her sister locomotives that she tries to ignore as she hurries past, will soon catch up with her.  In less than 5 months she too wil be silenced and will meet the scrappers torch, never to be heard from again.

Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/18 03:55 by LoggerHogger.

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Another neat photo and a "Oh I wish I could go back there."  But I guess that there were some crew who felt like "This thing can't get there soon enough".  But then they too would miss it.

Light throttle, with cylinder cocks open...

Wise operating, ‘cause the light engine’s still a ‘cold machine’...in the cylinders,  that’s liquid ‘water’ —- still under pressure....
Yes, it’s hot, but still liquid ....at atmospheric, it turns to water vapor ....exrperienced engineers know that the cylinder walls stay cold for  many miles before everything warms-up..

Steam-closed cylinder cocks  are a marvelous thing...takes ‘memory’ out of the picture.. ( “ooops, I forgot!,,”)

​W.

I don't mean to derail the thread but were all of the steam locomotive crews just re-trained over to diesels?  I'm guessing that was far less to learn than the steam locomotive.

-J

One railroader I interviewed said he was "furloughed on and off, especially when the diesels came". (He only had about three years seniority at the time.) Did this change in motive power affect the crews too or would there have been a recession in the early 50s? Or were there fewer, longer trains as a result of the diesels? Perhaps there were others involved with steam that bumped train crews?

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhileublications.com

There were several years during the change-over, & learning for operating crews, learning could be dragged-out, but they learned.

Maintenance  forces had it more difficult —- having to learn a whole new technology, was not easy.
The old analogy on problems;  
”On steamers it took a couple of minutes to find the problem and hours to fix it;
with Diesels it took hours to find the problem, and minutes to fix it..”

W.

wcamp1472 Wrote:
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> There were several years during the change-over, &
> learning for operating crews, learning could be
> dragged-out, but they learned.
>
> Maintenance  forces had it more difficult —-
> having to learn a whole new technology, was not
> easy.
> The old analogy on problems;  
> ”On steamers it took a couple of minutes to find
> the problem and hours to fix it;
> with Diesels it took hours to find the problem,
> and minutes to fix it..”
>
> W.

To add to this explanation, the shop crafts of Boilermaker,and Blacksmith, where no longer needed, but the Electrician craft had to be drastically increased and retrained when the diesel electric units began arriving in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

My dad was a locomotive fireman for SP out of Tracy before the war.  He said a diesel switcher came through town and he checked out what his job would be on it.  His opinion was all the fireman had to do was operate the windshield wipers on his side of the cab and watch his side of the train.  He wasn't too trilled about that - thought it would be boring.  When he got out of the navy after the war he didn't go back to railroading. 

Time does not stand still..

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA