The metro is super nostalgic for me. We'd go to DC once a year when I was a kid (in the 90s) for the 4th of July. I loved riding the metro so much. When I was in college I was in a long distance relationship and would take the Blue Line to see my boyfriend almost every weekend.
Great video of R J Corman & Hulcher crews clean up the mess. Those sidewinders may have been designed to lift & carry pipeline pipe, but they takes care of fully loaded coal car like it's empty!
Literally was on the trains earlier today, just for a job interview. I'm not used to trains, even though I was born and raised in DC. And, I don't know why I like the sound of DC trains. The stops sounds and click clacks maybe?
If one looks at the Burlington Route Pioneer Zephyr of 1934 or the Union Pacific M-10000 4 car articulated set also from 1934 you can clearly see where the St. Louis Car Company came up with this concept for an articulated train set.
Red Arrow got both sets in 1963 delivered by Pennsylvania Railroad Baldwin diesel switchers via the Cardington running track in Upper Darby. Both sets were operated as 4 unit articulated sets until the 1970's on Red Arrow and Septa. They were sold off in 1981. One set going to The Rockhill Trolley Museum in Rock Hill Furnace Pennsylvania about 75 miles west of Harrisburg on I-76. The other set went to the Illinois Railway Museum were it was restored to the North Shore livery. These extremely rare sets were the only two ever built by St. Louis Car Company in 1941. They were named Electroliners when originally built for the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Road. They ran between the cities of Chicago Illinois and Milwaukee Wisconsin until the North Shore was abandoned in 1963.
That's a Leslie A200 single note blatt air horn. That type of air horn was used on many early streamlined EMD F7A road diesels as well most EMD GP7 and GP9 road diesels and most of the early 1940's diesel switchers from EMD and Alco as well. The Alco S1, S2, S4, RS1 etc. used the Leslie A200 as well but many were later upgraded to the Nathan M3 ( 3-chime ) or M5 ( 5-chime ) air horn on some roads. Penn Central kept the A200 Leslie on most of their early diesel switchers from the 1968 merger to the bankruptcy in 1970 until most were retired with the ConRail takeover on 4-1-76.
