Steam & Excursion > Imagine What It Was Like To Watch These Trains Pass You At Speed!

What a thrill it must have been to be standing trackside in the bright Southern California sunshine in the age of steam and watch one of Southern Pacific's Daylight trains bearing down on you at speed.  That thrill was just what one photographer experienced and captured on film  on this day as Train 99 heading from Los Angelas to San Francisco.

SP's Daylight locomotive #4424 has the train will under control and cuts through the warm air in beautiful style thanks to the streamlining applied by Lima at the factory.

What a sight this must have been to see on a daily basis.

Martin



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/20 03:40 by LoggerHogger.

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Great shot!   From time to time I look at all of the Kindig, Ehrenberger, Perry and other's speed shots and I marvel at them.   Just to have stood there and SEEN all of that stuff is mind boggling.   Thank God for the old line photographers.  They left us a priceless legacy.

Somewhere near King City, maybe?

-John

I gotta say I like the looks of the earlier GS class engines with the single headlights and Daylight paint better than the GS4 and later with the double lights. Of course being from Ohio all Lima built engines are good!!!
Greg

First guess: it just passed the curve at 35.862N 120.7697W,
east of Bradley. (But looks like a one-mile board down there,
which I can't explain, since the west end of that curve was
about MP 197.5 in SP days.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/20 09:43 by timz.

Like with most large steam locomotives, the ground would actually shake as it went by and surely there would be a surge of wind also.  I have been there in the past and the same can be said if one is standing on a station platform on Amtrak's Main Line called the Northeast Corridor when a high speed Acela Train goes by.  I have been over at the Halethorpe Train Station, south of Baltimore in Anne Arundel County, in Maryland, which is a MARC Commuter Train Station and trust me, the platform shakes when the Acela goes by.  I'm sure that when the Pennsylvania Railroad operated that line and when they were using steam engines, close platforms would shake.
John in White Marsh, Maryland

The ground definitely shook at the north end of Mojave when 51, the westbound San Joaquin Daylight, headed up the
Hill behind either two MTs or two GSs each morning from a dead stop a few blocks from the depot with tenders freshly filled with our legendary hard water from two spouts.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Weekends and school holidays meant I was very likely to see both Daylights pass through Atascadero, starting in '52.....in the summer thay would be 18-22 cars.

AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

Many years ago, I was in the Columbia River Gorge chasing 4449. I got a great vcr video of Doyle heading to Wishram at speed.
Great times and great video.
 I wonder where it is? 🚂

I will always be profoundly grateful to those who brought #4449 back to life so that I do not have to just imagine! 

But to have them going by repeatedly during the day?  That takes some extrapolation.

Thanks for posting, Martin.

Timothy

From about 1949 to 1955 I was old enough to watch the Daylights and most other SP steam types pass our house in Glendale, CA.   The passenger trains were either stopping or starting at the nearby station so they weren't at speed.  For me,  experiencing a westbound cab-forward at work on the upgrade by our house was the ultimate.  The ground shook,  great noise as it banged over the nearby SP/PE diamond,  and the smoke blotted out the sun for a few moments.   All this happening every day,  once every 40 minutes or so.  I also recall visits to dad's friends who had a ranch in Chatsworth and I'd walk a few blocks to the SP coast line and there,  the eastbound Daylights were low flying objects.

It's funny,  I grew up seeing mostly GS4's/GS5..and that double headlight was what I was used too.  When I finally noticed the single
headlight on a GS3,  it looked odd to me.

Trainman41 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's funny,  I grew up seeing mostly
> GS4's/GS5..and that double headlight was what I
> was used too.  When I finally noticed the single
> headlight on a GS3,  it looked odd to me.

Same with me.  And the single headlight always made them seem smaller to 10-year old me.  Of course, the GS2s had smaller drivers.