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OBSERVATIONS OF A YOUNG BOY
I grew up watching trains. For one memorable period in my preteens, in the early 1950s, I had one of the best train watching seats in the country. It was Harmon, New York, where the New York Central changed its motive power on all through passenger trains to or from points north of Croton-on-Hudson. Electric locomotives headed trains into and out of New York's Grand Central Terminal to the south, while steam or diesel locomotives powered trains to the north.
My father commuted to New York from Harmon, where my mother and I often met him in the evening upon his return. I had little difficulty in persuading my habitually early mother to drive us to the station well in advance of his arrival so I could watch the changeovers. Perched on an embankment alongside the tracks, twenty or so feet above the station platforms, I saw a range of the Central's finest steam, diesel, and electric locomotives. For steam there were the omnipresent 4-6-2 Pacifics; the speedy, handsome, classic 4-6-4 Hudsons; the powerful 4-8-2 Mohawks; the occasional Berkshires with their unforgettable 2-8-4 wheel arrangement; and the state-of-the-art 4-8-4 Niagaras. If my father was delayed and took a later train, I saw the big name trains - the Commodore Vanderbilt and the Twentieth Century Limited. These were often spirited to Chicago by A-B lashups of magnificent EMD E7 diesels dressed in the Central's handsome lightning color scheme, a stately combination of grays and white. The E7s' power, speed, and long line afforded them a legendary status in the minds of us boys. We held them in the same esteem as we did that other New York legend, the Yankee Clipper himself, Joe DiMaggio. Looking at the E7s, we saw the future, though with a touch of remorse for the doomed steamers.
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The following photos are on George Elwood's Erie Lackawanna and other Fallen Flag and Shortline Railroad Photos website: The electrics were usually T-class motors, the line's workhorses for nearly four decades until supplanted by the larger P-class motors, which were rebuilt and transferred in 1955 from Cleveland Union Terminal after that branch of the Central was de-electrified. Occasionally a solitary, diminutive S-class motor would arrive with an outbound train in tow and, with little fanfare, return to New York heading an inbound train. Normally, S-motors could be seen lurking on sidings in and around Grand Central Terminal or in nearby Mott Haven yard. They were the nation's first-ever mainline, high-speed electric locomotives, created at a time when the foundling electric railroad industry was still seeking standards. The first group of S-motors was built in 1906 as part of the Central's pioneering Grand Central Terminal electrification. They gained instant fame when, in 1905, the series' prototype outperformed the Central's newest Pacific-type steam locomotive in trial runs at the General Electric test facilities in Schenectady. After their introduction into regular service in 1906, the S-motors became popular models for toy train manufacturers and thereby introduced a generation of children to the wonders of electric railroading.
----------------------- The sequence of changing outbound locomotives at Harmon was a ritual I quickly learned. Before a given train arrived from Grand Central, the locomotive preparing for the train's real trip - the one from Harmon to Poughkeepsie, Albany, Buffalo, Canada, Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, or elsewhere - would slowly back over the elevated track leading from the roundhouse or diesel/electric shops on the west (inbound) side to the east (outbound) side. This track, which was just north of the station, crossed over a maze of mainline and secondary tracks below. The elevated track led the locomotive down alongside and, finally, through a ladder of double-slip switches onto the mainline track where its train was to arrive. The locomotive, usually steam, would then pull ahead of the arrival point and wait. Upon arrival, the electric would be uncoupled, run ahead, and switched out of the way. The waiting locomotive would then back up and be coupled to the train. Moments later, amid great clouds of steam and smoke accompanied by resounding blasts of steam escaping the cylinders with each piston stroke, the massive steamer would gradually lurch forward with its heavy train. In one unforgettable moment, I stood alongside a 4-8-4 Niagara when those 79-inch diameter drivers started. I was astonished to see the wheels skid as that giant piece of machinery, straining under its load, took several strokes to finally gain a foothold. In that moment I felt the magnitude of the forces at work. The diesels, though less spectacular, created an impressive commotion of their own when their 4000-horsepower's worth of internal combustion engines roared into action. What could have passed unseen amid this awesome display of power, but didn't, was the unassuming ease with which the electric locomotives delivered their trains to the waiting steam and diesels. Quietly, effortlessly, unceremoniously they arrived and were uncoupled and jockeyed to an inbound track for the return trip to Grand Central. A cartoon equivalent of this incongruous sequence is the bent, gray-haired cleaning woman singlehandedly picking up and moving the champion weightlifter's barbells to dust under them. How these undersized boxes on wheels could outperform their more celebrated steam or diesel counterparts was a mystery. As much a mystery was the electrics' curious shapes that revealed little of their underlying nature and concealed the transformation of electrical energy to mechanical motion. These were true "black boxes." S-motor number 6000, the Central's 1904 prototype also known as Old Maude, could have been the original "black box," though it wasn't. That title would be more fitting for the tiny four-wheel electric locomotives built in 1890 for the City & South London's deep-tube subway. External appearances left little clue as to how the S-motor worked. With its center cab and biaxial symmetry, there was even doubt as to which way it might move next. There were no side rods connecting its drive wheels to suggest that it could move of its own accord. When it did move, there was little sound from inner activity. There was no steam for propulsion nor smoke nor exhaust from combustion. There were no overhead wires from which to gain electrical energy. The stunted pantographs appeared more like antennae. Only a close observation would reveal the frame-mounted contact shoes which pressed the underside of the energized third rail. Appropriately, the locomotive was painted black; all black save for the gold letters and numbers. The greater mysteries of the electric locomotive are in its performance - tractive effort, acceleration, speed - and the unseen properties of magnetism and electricity. The principles of steam were known at the start of the nineteenth century. "By the end of the century the basic elements of the steam locomotive and their functions were quite well understood, and very few unsound designs have been built since that time,"[1] wrote Alfred Bruce in his 1952 compendium The Steam Locomotive in America: Its Development in the Twentieth Century. It was not hard to understand or demonstrate the processes of combustion, vaporization, pressure, and conversion to mechanical motion. Even the internal combustion engine at the heart of the diesel-electrics is readily understandable.
----------------------- But grasping the fundamentals of electricity, magnetic induction, and the like still takes a leap of faith for many. The results of the processes are observable. The processes themselves often are not. In his 1890 poem, "The Broomstick Train; or, The Return of the Witches," Oliver Wendell Holmes observed:
----------------------- If the processes are difficult to "see" today, they were less understood at the start of twentieth the century. When the Central's electrification and accompanying S-motor prototype were designed, virtually every major component of the system and locomotive was a subject for debate. At issue were the type of distribution current and its voltage, the distribution system itself, the locomotive motor(s), and the form of drive. There were "safe" approaches, of course, but would they be best in the long run?
This is the first part of an article written in 1992 for Electric Lines magazine, just before it ceased publishing. |
