Nostalgia & History > More #142

When I worked as crew on #142, fan trips were primarily from Hawthorne, N.J. to Warwick, N.Y. for fall foliage and apple picking at The Farm.  Other trips were from Utica, N.Y. to Thendara and around the Butler, N.J. area on NYS&W trackage.  The following two scans (from prints) show a spiffed up #142 on a run by and our crew, with me in the middle (Fathers Day weekend, 2001).  Let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've painted a smokebox while under steam with a 2" paint brush and a graphite linseed oil mixture:  The linseed oil fumes were sickening + your knees were often on the hot smokebox.  Painting the driver rims and tender wheel rims white with another small brush was a real treat as well in hot and humid conditions (note the spilled white paint on my pant leg!)  She did look good though!

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Great scans from prints - Your comment made this even better.
Bob

Thanks. Bob.  That was my last trip with #142.  I'll add this:  You couldn't work around a steam locomotive without getting dirty + the only places I hadn't got into werre the tender's tank and the boiler itself.  Lastly as a "go-fer", my primary job was to ride the tender and shovel coal forward so all the fireman had to do was open the [slope sheet] door on the tender and feed the firebox.  As you might imagine, the sound and view were amazing, but Ilooked like a racoon when I removed my safey goggles at the end of the day.  Cinders were everywhere in spite of the coveralls I usually wore.  One last thing:  The Chinese borrowed what was then high tech for the SY class of locomotives.  E.g., she had an appliance that could shift the load from the front to the rear truck when necessary. (We never used it.)  Additionally, you had to be a very poor fireman to get her to smoke.

About photography:  We didn't have a lot of free time when getting #142 ready for the next days fan trips + there was almost no place to store expensive cameras, lenses, etc.  The pics I posted here were made with a Leica (the "cheap one" according to some), which I could stash in my pocket.  Btw, I have two more photos of #142 (from Vermont and doubleheaded with #614 at Black Rock Cut), which I'll post in the next several weeks.