THE WHISTLESTOP NEWS

The Official Newsletter of the Central Operating Lines Model Railroading Club

Don’t forget the February 13^th Business Meeting. Please make it a point to attend and participate in your Club’s business. Starts promptly at 8PM.

Thank You members for your support of the club raffle. Thirty two members purchased 111 books raising $555 or about 2% of COL’s annual budget. Let’s beat that in 2009!

Our Super Bowl Saturday Open House is Saturday January 31st. Bring a train and get your fill of running at this open house and then watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, unconflicted! Sorry no Giants! This is the show to run that train of Beer Reefers on the Fourth Main. We could use lots of help from members at these shows. Please sign up to help out and bring a train to run for these shows. Our visitors appreciate the variety of trains during the show. Also, on Friday starting at 7pm, members are needed at the club to set up for the open house .Please come and help out. George Hoffman will be there and will have a delicious cup of coffee for you. Thanks for your support to make these open house the best ever.

ü Scenery, Electrical Reports; Pass yard/main crossing rebuild ;cleanup of layout

ü January 31^st –Super Bowl Saturday Open House

ü February 6^th ^---Board Meeting @ 7:30 PM

ü February 13^th – Business Meeting @ 8PMJanuary 17^th – NJ Hirailers Open House

ü March 1^st – Swap Met @ Bingo Hall in Farmingville 8:30 Am –2:30 PM

ü March 6^th ^---Board Meeting @ 7:30 PM January 31^st

Mike Heindl has arranged with Tom Nuzzo of Lionel Trains LLC for a Lionel Legacy day at the clubroom on Saturday March 28^th. Tom will demonstrate the features of Lionel’s latest control system Legacy along with Lionel Legacy equipped products. There will be two sessions at Noon and at 2pm for about 20 members each session and a Legacy DVD will be there for you. Let Mike know if you will participate. Should be a fun afternoon and bring a Legacy equipped loco!

In 1838, the first Traveling Post Office departed London en route to Birmingham on the Grand Junction Railway in Great Britain and was the first time mail was sorted aboard a moving train. Fleets of TPOs, Traveling Post Offices in the United Kingdom, and RPOs, Railway Post Offices in the United States soon followed. The first apparatus for picking up mailbags by a moving train came in 1866. TPOs and RPOs operated on designated routes and were usually worked by the same personnel. There was extra pay but the requirements were very stringent. Railroads carried the mail for decades however trucks began the takeover in the postwar period. The last US RPO was on the northeast corridor in 1986. TPO service lasted in the UK until 2004.

Toy train makers offered models that were inspired by railway post offices. A. C. Gilbert introduced the operating mail car in the pre-war era in its 3/16th scale `O' gauge line. It simultaneously picked up a mailbag from a special stand, and tossed out another mailbag to the ground. The car was tinplate, painted Pullman Green, numbered 492 and had a similar mechanism to the post war cars. There was a Blue version for Gilbert’s Royal Blue Train. The plastic post-war `S' gauge operating mail cars evolved from this car and were offered in 1947 as #718 in both red and green. It became #918 in 1953 when it acquired working knuckle couplers.

Lionel #3428 (1959-1960) was a red, white and blue 3494-style animated boxcar whose attendant slid open the door and tossed out a mailbag when activated by an operating track section. Both the mailman and the bag concealed tiny magnets. Lionel #161 (1961-1963) approximated the action of an RPO picking up mail on the fly. A plastic mailbag with a concealed magnet, different from 3428's sack, was hung from a swinging arm at trackside. You had to glue a second magnet inside the car of your choice to make the mailbag cling to the car. Lionel made two RPO models during the postwar era. First came the #404, powered, and #2550, unpowered, Budd RDC’s in 1957. These were reasonable replicas of the Budd RDC-4, which included both a baggage section and an RPO compartment. Next were #1866 and its illuminated Super O counterpart #1876 (1959-1962) which came in old-time "General" outfits. These were lettered "U. S. Mail" and had mail pickup arms molded on BOTH baggage doors on BOTH sides of the car. Oddly, when Lionel catalogs depicted a #161 accessory in operation, the mail was being picked up by an SP-style caboose! In the modern era, the smaller Madison car line from 1973 offered uncatalogued combo cars for Milwaukee Road and PRR that has US post office markings on the sides.

Hotels have been part of the railroad scene for many years. The N&W had the Hotel Roanoke with its famous peanut soup and the C&O had its world famous resort, The Greenbrier. Canadian Pacific Hotels were renowned in Vancouver BC and Montreal. In New York City, the Waldorf Astoria is associated with the New York Central being over the tracks to Grand Central Terminal. The Hotel Pennsylvania celebrates 90 years in 2009. The 22-story facility was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad and was leased to hotelier Ellsworth Statler. Hotel Pennsylvania boasted 2200 rooms, 3537 beds, and the world's first high-rise elevators. It remained the world's largest hotel until 1927. It was designed by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White which also planned Penn Station. The hotel had underground passages to Penn Station; guests arriving by rail could avoid exposure to the weather. A single room rented for $3.50 per night or about $48 in today's money. "Pennsylvania 6 - 5000", a 1938 Glenn Miller hit, still rings the front desk today, and is said to be the world's longest continually-used telephone number. The Glenn Miller Orchestra broadcasted live from the hotel's Cafe' Rouge, 0ne of New York's hottest nightclubs during the big-band era. Today, "Maury" and "The People's Court" are taped in the hotel's grand ballroom. …………………….Well Happy Railroading Folks!!!!