Weekly Photo Fun Dec 3 to Dec 9

[P5se Camelback]

... The PRR had A5s (Belpaire boilered, non camelback) as well, specifically for Philly (Delaware Ave and Front St.) and Baltimore. Those Atlas #4s must have been a bear!

Yeah, I forgot about the little Pennsy Class A Four-Coupled switchers (and I also forgot about Great Uncle "Yank," who had been an engineer on the Pennsy and "drove" an A5b on Dock Street in the '40's and early '50's -- I do remember the sloped-back "high visibility" tender.) And yes, the Pennsy's Class A switchers also did their share of street running down on Dock St. along the Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia.

Those turnouts were at least #4's, if not less ... the clearances were very tight and curves were very sharp ... lots of flange squealing was involved! As far as I can recall, all of the history of the shipping industry and tracks in the streets and dodging switching moves as you made your way along Dock Street are gone, replaced with the "Beautiful paver brick walkways and lovely raised planters and playful fountains of Urban Renewal." (Read that as the systematic removal of every trace the shipping and receiving functions as well as the "ugly" riverfront piers and other structures that were once one of the most important seaports on the east coast, and replacing it all with the common-every-day, by-the-numbers, textbook, "clichéd colonial" architectural sterilization of a city that was once a leader in American Industry!)

I'm sorry. Yes, the new parks are pretty, and the city had to employ (and raise taxes to pay them) many more Parks Service Workers to maintain the new vast expanse of City Park areas along the Delaware River. But it irks me that every vestige of what was formerly a busy, important industrial area has been removed (think "cleansed") and the entire area for several blocks west of the river has been sterilized in favor of "chic" shopping plazas and "prestigious address" mid-rise condominiums.

Just as our amazing history as a nation is being rewritten, and Important portions deleted from the textbooks that our children are being taught from thereby denying them the knowlege of how courageous and exceptional our Founding Fathers were, our physical history as the once most important industrial nation in the world is being bulldozed over and replaced with "Green Areas," the only apparent use of which is to look beautiful for those few people who can afford to live in the exorbitantly priced condos (that relaced the warehouses on the riverfront piers,) to stroll along for an hour or two on a sunny Sunday afternoon, pausing to "people watch" while sitting in an open-air bistro, sipping a $8.00 glass of Perrier..

I'll apologize now for climbing up on a couple of soapboxes, but this "cleansing" of our written and physical history makes me madder than a hive of angry hornets