We begin at Hyndman, PA at the foot of Sandpatch Grade and catch the Eastbound Capitol Limited crossing Wills Creek and passing the town.
Next we go up to Mance Curve where we see two hot trains heading upgrade, on the same track, with the second train nearly in the lap of the helper engineer on the first one.
I remember some good natured banter between the engineers. "Hey why don't you pull over and let a real train by?". and "Hey helper, do you have that thing in run 8 or in dynamics?" The dispatcher was referring to to them as "Chicago Trailer Jet" and "St. Louis Trailer Jet". ( I forget which one is which on the video.)
Not being very familiar with Chessie at the time, I don't know if these were the actual train designations or just colloquial names. Maybe a Sandpatch regular can leave a comment with the answer.
Anyway, the second train stopped while the first cut away his helper at the top of the hill. I just cut off of the second train where I did in the video because I couldn't stand any more of that abominable flange squeal.
Closing out the video, a mixed manifest train heads downgrade.
This and the Horseshoe Curve tape are from the same trip. For some reason I had bought two Scotch brand videotapes to use on that trip. Those have not held up as well as the rest of my VHS which are mainly Maxell and few Fuji. The colors had shifted etc.
I worked quite a while on both tapes, but the Sandpatch stuff really took a lot of work. I figured nobody wanted to see "Chessie System Green" instead of yellow.
Stay tuned to this channel.....
VHS Master Recording
4 окт 2024
