All this talk about the calendar got me started looking through the pictures for the coming months again. The photographs really are excellent. One note of about an error in a caption though, the caption incorrectly says that the truss bridge in the background it the Lehigh Valley's. It is in fact the Lackawanna's Ithaca branch curved truss bridge across the Susquehanna River. This bridge was the one of the primary reasons that steam engines of the 300 or 700 class on freight and 900 class on passenger trains were used until the end of steam. As for diesels, switchers were the only engines that could run on the branch and then according to the employee time table nothing bigger than say an SW-1 was supposed to be allowed. This is a curiosity since in Bob Bahrs Lackawanna engine assignment article, an NW-2 worked the Candor job that day. These were explicitly restricted in the early 50's. I don't have the ETT's for the mid 50's so maybe that changed. By 1957 the ETT doesn't even mention the Ithaca branch or the bridge restriction. Maybe they used that NW-2 because they didn't know not to. Loaded cars were restricted to 70 tons or less. Another interesting detail in the photograph is signal 2125. the position light target is one of 5 Telephone Train Order signals on the Buffalo division (Rule 509-J originally later 509 (i) ). Here is an trivia question for the list, evidently at least one other Telephone Train Order signal was put into service in the 50's. Can anyone name it? Regards, Will Shultz ------------------------------------------------------------ Visit the erielack photopage at http://el-list.railfan.net ------------------------------
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