Here is a link to a movie about NY's DewIT Yard. Among other cool things, it shows brakemen riding the tops of boxcars down the hump and a huge trackgand manually moving one of the NYC's between track water pans into place. Neat stuff!

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://media2.syr.edu/OHA/DewittRailYardssm.wmv">http://media2.syr.edu/OHA/DewittRailYardssm.wmv</a><!-- m -->

Wow that hump yard action was amazing , I've never seen anything like that before .

Agreed. That was really cool. Looked pretty dangerous too. I imagine those box cars come down that little ramp at a pretty decent clip before they lose some momentum. hock:

Who was that idiot backstepping over the switches in front of a moving locomotive? Must have been waaay before OSHA.

Yeah, I was pretty amazed at that sight too!

Gary

I know...I saw that and I was thinking "What da....". but if you look closely, steam from one of the vents was also getting sucked back in......., and the fireman was facing in the opposite direction.
Ooops

This is really, really good stuff. Thanks for the link jglfan! That's the best detail images of track pans that I've seen. The other thing that caught my eye that hasn't already been mentioned was the Hudson with 14 heavyweights. That's a really healthy train!

Matt

You're quite welcome Matt. Yeah, as that passenger train went by I guess about 8 cars had passed by when I started thinking "this is a long train" and it kept going!

eightyeightfan1 Wrote:steam from one of the vents was also getting sucked back in......., and the fireman was facing in the opposite direction.

Duh! You are correct, I should have noticed that, I thought the way the guy was walking backward without looking over the tracks was unnatural. His whole gait was off for walking backwards.

Gary

One of the more interesting things for me was watching the installation of track pans. I hadn't realized just how shallow those things were. I always figured there was a foot or two of water in them, not just inches!