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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:09 pm 

Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2005 1:25 pm
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Thanks Don for the reference to the old RyPN thread. I wonder if the ex-CGW 200, with the TN "reporting marks" was one of the two cars that eventually went to the Michigan Railroad Club and were eventually destroyed. I'm not sure how many ex-MILW Hiawatha-type cars the CGW had. Maybe the total was just two, which would answer my question. If the 200 was an additional CGW car, I wonder if the TN might have meant it eventually went elsewhere.

Les


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:45 pm 
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Location: Hamilton, Illinois
Thanks, Dennis, for that precise information on the Soo Line 4-8-2 tender.

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 10:25 am 

Joined: Mon Aug 23, 2004 2:14 pm
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Location: Essex, Connecticut, USA
Greetings:
I believe Jensen bought that tender from Hyman-Michaels. He bought a lot of stuff from them including a complete set of driving wheels, rods and other parts off GTW 5634.
He also purchased a lot of parts off the like new, Lima built, Rock Island rotary snowplow, the smokebox front of which was to go on CB&Q 4963. Dick had a highly developed sense of aesthetics, and for him the flat CB&Q smokebox front was repulsive.
Jensen had the run of the H-M yard at the Illinois-Indiana state line. I went there with him several times. He'd just walk in and start wandering around marking anything he wanted "SAVE-RJ" in soap stone. They'd gather stuff up and help load it into the bread truck. We would drive back to the round house greatly overloaded and dump everything off so Dick could drive his route the next day.
J.David


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Tue Jun 30, 2015 8:50 pm 

Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:20 pm
Posts: 487
The home movie linked above was for a 1969 trip, Detroit to Port Huron, MI.

Below, a nice looking poster ad (found on the web) for a 1966 trip between Chicago and South Bend, IN.
"Tape recording car -- bring your recorder."
(Sorry for the large image size).

Image

Source:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=3583361


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:06 am 
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Love the open gons in that poster, something you'd unlikely see today.

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:49 am 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:30 am
Posts: 150
Happier days -- This is how I remember the 5629:

Image

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Wed Jul 01, 2015 6:45 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 9:16 am
Posts: 495
Location: Northern Illinois
[quote="Les Beckman"]Thanks Don for the reference to the old RyPN thread. I wonder if the ex-CGW 200, with the TN "reporting marks" was one of the two cars that eventually went to the Michigan Railroad Club and were eventually destroyed. I'm not sure how many ex-MILW Hiawatha-type cars the CGW had. Maybe the total was just two, which would answer my question. If the 200 was an additional CGW car, I wonder if the TN might have meant it eventually went elsewhere.

Les[/quote]

Les,
According to "The Hiawatha Story" by Jim Scribbins, two of the 1934 built coaches in the 4401 - 4440 series were sold to the CGW. Thirty-one were sold to the NdeM (I rode one in 1966 from Mexico City to Tula on a local while viewing the NdeM 4-8-4s still in service) and seven were scrapped.

Looking back at the trip flyer for the October 1966 5629 trips, I enjoyed the caveat that this would be the final steam trip on the GTW for 1966. Of course it wasn't, as the Illini Railroad Club ran CN 6218 from Chicago to South Bend and return on November 19 and 20. This was part of a feud between the Railroad Club of Chicago and the Illini RR Club, each trying to "one-up" the other. Being a steam fan, I rode one of each of the trips.....no bias on my part.

Don C.


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Thu Jul 02, 2015 11:18 pm 

Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2005 1:25 pm
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Don C. wrote:


Looking back at the trip flyer for the October 1966 5629 trips, I enjoyed the caveat that this would be the final steam trip on the GTW for 1966. Of course it wasn't, as the Illini Railroad Club ran CN 6218 from Chicago to South Bend and return on November 19 and 20. This was part of a feud between the Railroad Club of Chicago and the Illini RR Club, each trying to "one-up" the other. Being a steam fan, I rode one of each of the trips.....no bias on my part.

Don C.


Don -

I remember that the folks at the Railroad Club of Chicago really didn't care for Maury Kleboldt and the Illini Railroad Club, but they weren't the only ones. I recall a trip that the CERA scheduled on the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee using one of the North Shore's big 4 truck electric freight motors. Maury couldn't have any of that, so he scheduled an IRRC excursion using the OTHER 4 truck freight motor for the same day! Needless to say, the folks at CERA weren't really amused!


Les


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Tue Jul 07, 2015 10:34 pm 

Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:20 pm
Posts: 487
The caption of this Chuck Zeiler photo says Valparaiso, October 22, 1966.
That's one week before the October 29 fan trip advertised on the flyer above.
Did #5629 operate on back-to-back weekends sometimes? Or is the photo caption a mistake?

(The more I look at this locomotive, the more depressed I get!)

Image
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictur ... 5629-6.jpg


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Wed Jul 08, 2015 10:10 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 9:16 am
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Location: Northern Illinois
[quote="rock island lines"]The caption of this Chuck Zeiler photo says Valparaiso, October 22, 1966.
That's one week before the October 29 fan trip advertised on the flyer above.
Did #5629 operate on back-to-back weekends sometimes? Or is the photo caption a mistake?

(The more I look at this locomotive, the more depressed I get!)

[img]http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictures/72573/gtw5629-6.jpg[/img]
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictur ... 5629-6.jpg[/quote]

October 22 is an error in the date. The excursions with 5629 only operated one weekend.
Don C.


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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 12:22 pm 

Joined: Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:20 pm
Posts: 487
Thanx Don. I could spend all day reading the recollections of guys like you and J David who were around in those days.

By the way, by pure coincidence I noticed from a search just now that the GTW Valparaiso depot is being moved and saved as we speak. It's a nice, attractive and decent sized building. It is barely visible in the photo of 5629 above. Anyway, there's a bit of good news for this thread. News article from two days ago:
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/port ... ba1dc.html


Image


Last edited by rock island lines on Thu Jul 09, 2015 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 2:16 pm 
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Location: Pac NW, via North Florida
rock island lines wrote:
The more I look at this locomotive, the more depressed I get!)
You, and me, both.
if there was ever a cautionary tale of building too big a collection with no idea where it's going to go, this would be it.
At least in the case of Paulson Spence, those locomotives were (as I understand it) on his own property and his idiot kids were falling all over themselves to scrap everything before his body was cold.
But in Jensen's case, it was the commonly experienced story of one man and the initial expense of something big of something you can't put into your back yard, then getting stuck at the end of a 'musical chairs' situation of trying to shuffle everything around, one step ahead of people yelling, "Get it out of my yard/roundhouse/wherever NOW. or so help me..."

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2015 9:26 pm 

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:26 am
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Location: Maine
Lee, add to the facts, there were organizations and individuals willing to bail out the locomotives at the time, and they were either denied or blocked from getting permission to acquire and preserve the engines.
A few things stand out like infected fingers. In the case of GT 5629, the judge ruled in favor of scrapping as "the locomotive is not unique, with other examples preserved". In the case of CB&Q 5632, the scrapping took place before the court case was settled and the court found in Jensen's favor! Sadly, the locomotive was already lost.

Wasn't Mikado #4070 one of Jensen's locomotive's as well?

I take it that Jensen's trips sold well, too; enough to keep the financing liquid.

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 5:54 am 

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Quote:
I take it that Jensen's trips sold well, too; enough to keep the financing liquid.


Actually they did not, that was (one of) the problem. You can find that described in a few places.

There is a certain kind of "Gamblers Ruin" logic in a lot of steam collectors, especially of that era. "If only this will happen and we get this done, then everything will be a success!" A lot of passionate people without business management skills took on responsibilities they had no idea how to manage.

And we still see examples of that on RYPN today.

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 Post subject: Re: Mr. Jensen and GTW 5629
PostPosted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 10:32 am 

Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2005 1:25 pm
Posts: 6397
softwerkslex wrote:
Quote:
I take it that Jensen's trips sold well, too; enough to keep the financing liquid.


Actually they did not, that was (one of) the problem. You can find that described in a few places.



One of the trips that DID sell very well, was his very first one out of Chicago over the Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal Company. I can't recall the amount of cars but there were perhaps 16 to 18, possibly even more. Maybe someone has the exact total. Quite a heavy train for a high drivered Pacific! This was when Dick still had the original tender on the engine. The details of that trip are becoming more hazy as the years go by, but I recall that we covered quite a bit of the B&OCT trackage. I may have a slide or two of that trip, IF I can ever find them.

Les


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