E-paw's EOY challenge.

[P5se Camelback]

One can only imaging the resulting violence when a rod comes off an 86" or a 92" driver at 80 or 85mph! I can remember standing next to Reading Atlantic one day as I stood on the platform at the Logan station, where I often stopped for a little train watching on my walk home after a day of fifth grade classes at Logan Demonstration School in North Philadelphia. I can remember looking up at those wheels and thinking, "Boy ... those wheels are VERY tall!" At the time I think I was barely much taller than the axle centerline!

Those tall wheels made the Reading's "P" Class locomotives real speedsters. At one point in the 1890's, the fastest scheduled train in the world was pulled by a Reading "P" Class Atlantic from Philadelphia to Atlantic City ... in 55 minutes! You can't drive that trip today, driving straight through, down the Atlantic City Expressway with a 70 mph speed limit, in under an hour and fifteen minutes ... and the train made station stops!

But along with the great speed came the danger of the occasional results of the turmoil and destruction pictured above.


Yeah, yeah ... but I still have a thing for them anyway!

EDIT: BTW ... both of those locomotives were "High-Stepping" Atlantics!