North Raleigh Model Railroad Club

Articles from TRAKing Ahead

This page contains selected articles from TRAKing Ahead, the Club's Newsletter, that relate to prototype railroading. Check through the topics; you may find something of particular interest for you! The topics include stories of rail travel by members of the Club.

According to the current brochure of the New Hope Valley Railroad at Bonsal, NC, for a monetary donation you can operate a locomotive for 1 hour on their main track on a non-operating Sunday. Advance reservation is required - call (919) 362-5416 and leave your name and an after 5:00pm phone number on their answer machine.

On Sept. 12, 1996 Rocky Mountaineer Railtours dispatched a 34-car train, carrying more than 1,100 passengers, from Vancouver to Jasper and Calgary. Three locomotives pulled 25 Signature Class cars (daynighter coaches), one bilevel Goldleaf Class car, one Silverleaf Class car, three power cars, three baggage cars and one lounge-smoking car.

At Kamloops, BC the train split into Calgary and Jasper sections.

Previously, the longest passenger consist in Canada was Canadian Pacific's Dominion, with 27 cars on July 13, 1965.

Rocky Mountaineer Railtours purchased the Vancouver-Calgary/Jasper daylight service from VIA in 1990. Patronage has grown from 11,700 in 1990 to more than 40,000 in 1996.

For anyone who has traveled to Churchill, the Canadian province of Manitoba's grain shipping port on Hudson Bay (that's far north and cold), memories will include the picture of miles of railway sidings crowded with boxcars, their uniqueness ensured by the figure of a buffalo painted on the side with the designation "Manitoba." These were the so-called "Buffalo" 40' boxcars dedicated by the province and Canadian National to the movement of grain from prairie farms to the salt-water port.

Everywhere else in the Canadian West, grain is shipped in cylindrical hoppers operated by the grain boards, the provinces and the railways. The route to Port Churchill, however, is over a land made treacherous by muskeg. Until recently, the line was deemed unsafe for the largest hoppers. The boxcars have been used exclusively for about a decade. Now, however, that has changed. The line is carrying hoppers to Churchill and the boxcars are rapidly disappearing. Apparently, CN has been able to overcome the problems associated with an insecure railbed on the tundra.

This is another case of technology overcoming history, and another bit of the past has disappeared on the railway.

Definitions:

Muskeg: n. a sphagnum bog of northern North America

Tundra: n. a level or undulating treeless plain that is characteristic of arctic and subarctic regions, consists of black mucky soil with a permanently frozen subsoil, and supports a dense growth of often conspicuously flowering dwarf herbs.

Note: In January 1998, MicroTrains released a model of the CN Buffalo Boxcars.

By Bruce Faulkner

Hamlet, North Carolina is a small town about 2 hours south of Raleigh. Hamlet came to be known as the Hub of the Seaboard in reference to its location at the convergence of 5 different Seaboard Air Line routes: one line went north to Raleigh and Richmond; another went south to Columbia, Savannah and Jacksonville; a 3^rd went west to Monroe, NC; a 4^th went east to Wilmington, NC; and the 5^th went southeast to Andrews and Charleston, SC. While CSX Transportation has taken over and downgraded 2 of those routes, Hamlet is still very much a busy hub for CSX operations in the Carolinas.

Background
Hamlet was the site of a major hump classification yard and shop facility for the SAL., and was historically the busiest point on the entire system.

The SAL built the 3-mile long hump yard in 1954 to handle ever increasing freight traffic. Three miles south of the yard is the site of the Hamlet passenger depot where all 5 lines converge. Hamlet was also the site of a major diesel shop for the SAL.

Museum
The old Victorian-style depot at Hamlet is still in use today by 3 different groups. CSX still changes some crews there for trains which do not actually terminate or originate in hamlet yard, Amtrak's Silver Star stops at the depot twice a day on its way from New York to Florida, and a group of retired SAL employees operate the National Railroad Museum and a Hall of Fame.

The museum is housed in what was once the lobby of the Hamlet depot, which was built in 1900. Included in the museum's collection are numerous examples of railroadiana, primarily from CSX predecessors and other southeastern railroads. The museum also has an HO scale layout with numerous CSX predecessor models. Located on the museum grounds at the depot are SAL SDP35 1114 and caboose 5241 which are available for touring.

Former SAL employees staff the museum, which is open Saturdays from 10am to 5pm and Sundays from 1pm to 5pm. All these former railroad employees are quite friendly and willing to share stories of what it was like working for the railroad over the years. Some of their tales are quite entertaining!

Today's Operations
Hamlet remains a busy hub for CSX transportation. The line to Raleigh was cut north of Raleigh several years ago, and thus only 4 trains out of Hamlet run to Raleigh each day. While the line to Columbia is still intact, CSX has downgraded it and this line also only sees 4 trains per day. The other 3 lines are as busy as ever, perhaps even busier!

Since the CSX yard in Rocky Mount, NC cannot efficiently cope with all the traffic on the ex-ACL, many trains from the ACL line leave the mainline at Pembroke, NC or Dillon, SC for the trip over to the Hamlet hump yard to be classified. Hamlet also originates and terminates many trains for other CSX corridors, with destinations as far flung as Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans and Chicago. In addition, the daily Winston-Salem Southbound Railway train from Winston-Salem turns in hamlet yard after being reclassified.

Hamlet handles approximately 40 trains each day. With the coming Conrail merger, Hamlet may get even busier!

A visit to Hamlet
On a recent trip to Hamlet, I photographed sixteen trains between 10am and 7:30pm, and I know I missed at least 5 trains on the east side of Hamlet while I was out on the line to the west. If you stay at the depot, you can see everything that passes through Hamlet, except for the local to Raleigh. There are generally other railfans present at the depot on a weekend, and the depot area allows some good photo spots without trespassing on CSX property.

To visit Hamlet depot and the National Railroad Museum, take US 1 south from Raleigh past Southern Pines and Aberdeen. At the NC Motor Speedway, NC 177 veers off US 1 to the left. Take NC 177 to the stoplight at the junction with US 74. Turn left onto US 74 and stay on it until the stoplight at Raleigh Street. Turn right onto Raleigh Street, cross two railroad tracks and turn left before crossing the third. The depot is immediately ahead; veer to the left to park. You will see the entrance to the museum.

A visit to Hamlet can be an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday or Sunday watching trains!

by Chuck Dopler

On a recent April Friday afternoon, I took a road trip to Hamlet to soak in a little sun and diesel fumes. It was a gorgeous day and the rails were singing to me as they do..."Oh Chuuuck! Come on..." Well, you know that song. There's something either new to spot, or something old that's about gone for good. And this trip reminded me of that especially well.

There was a train about every 24 minutes, on average. One each way on the Columbia line, two in and three out on the west line, and one in and three out on the east. There was very little foreign power. But consists were colorful and varied. And that's my point. CSX is painting their engines or retiring them rather fast now, and only a couple hundred fallen flag engines exist. I was lucky to see old GE's and GP's in Family Lines or Chessie colors, one time all the engines on one train. Look how boring NS is now. Soon CSX will be all bright future, albeit they've taken liberties on that, too, with straight line yellow fronts instead of angled on some units. But even those are going sooner than we realize. Get your camera; take a friend! See what you can spot. It won't be long until we have only pictures and memories. And it makes for a fun afternoon.

Union Pacific's 4-8-4 steam locomotive #844, Class FEF-3, is the only steam locomotive in existence today that has never been retired from active service. It was the last of 45 locomotives built by Alco for the Union Pacific between 1937 and 1944 to power passenger and fast freight trains, and was the last steam locomotive delivered to the Union Pacific.

844 originally burned coal, but was converted in 1946 to burn #5 fuel oil. It uses about 10 gallons of fuel and 100 gallons of water per mile in normal service. Top speed allowed today is 79mph, but when it was in regular service the 844 and other locomotives in its class operated at speeds in excess of 100mph. The FEF class of locomotives was designed to pull 20-car passenger trains at 90mph without assistance on level track.

#844 is rated at 4,700 HP and the locomotive and tender together weigh 450 tons. 844 recently completed a major service and re-building program at UP's Cheyenne, WY steam shops, and should still be steaming in the year 2030 and beyond.

A major "cargo" for the railroads used to be the shipping of cattle and other livestock, but that ended mostly in the 60's and 70's as trucking took over. Until recently the Union Pacific continued to haul livestock. But hauling cattle and livestock could prove an interesting industry on your railroad if the time period is right.

To model this industry, you would need, of course, stock cars and livestock, but you also need stock pens where your livestock can be fed, watered and rested from their journey. Whether you also model livestock-related industries is probably secondary to the stock pens.

Because many livestock died in the early days of shipping by rail, various laws were enacted to protect the animals. One of the laws applied to the movement of animals restricts how long (36 hours, later 28 hours unless the shipper made a request in writing) the livestock can travel without being attended to. The livestock had to be unloaded from the cars, fed, watered and rested, before being reloaded so the train could continue. While the train was stopped the stock cars had to be cleaned out and serviced.

Stock cars often had means of providing water and feed to the cattle while in transit, but sometime, for short runs, the cars were just ventilated. In some cases men traveled with the stock to look after them while in transit.

The D&RGW, both standard- and narrow-gauge operations, hauled livestock from as early as 1905 into the 70's, with all stock cars scrapped by the late 70's. One of the services the Rio Grande offered to ranchers was to transport livestock from mountains to lowlands and vice versa as the seasons changed.

As far as routes are concerned, much of the cattle wound up being shipped to Chicago for US operations, or to Winnipeg, Toronto or Montreal in Canada.

Until recently, the Union Pacific hauled hogs from Nebraska to Los Angeles for Farmer John Pork, shipped on the front of doublestack trains, once or twice a week. The cars, tri-level with built in watering troughs (HOGX 50-footers), have now been scrapped. 40' 3-deck cars were used previously. The trains used to stop at Dry lake, NV (a siding named for a dry lake nearby, about 20 miles south of Las Vegas near where the tracks cross Interstate 15) for the animals to get water (water at Dry Lake???).

The HOGX 50 footers were originally built by Gunderson Rail Cars in Portland, OR as auto parts cars for the Missouri Pacific, and were later rebuilt for the HOGX trains.

Now let's see. Who will be the first to put HOGX cars at the front of their stack train pulled by Kato Dash 9-44's?

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Last updated: Friday July 3, 2009

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