Hi,

Finally got around to posting pictures of the locomotives and cabooses on display in Tamaqua, PA. Here are a couple. The rest are at http://www.robertjohndavis.com/aott/

Rob

Great stuff Rob! Thanks for sharing.

robertjohndavis wrote, "Finally got around to posting pictures of the ... cabooses on display in Tamaqua, PA."


Hi,

Does anyone know the road number for the second steel, cupola, NH caboose at Tamaqua, PA?

Thanks, Roger

robertjohndavis wrote, "They are at http://www.robertjohndavis.com/aott/ ."


Hi,

Also on the site mentioned above, are photos of mine "larry/larries". I'm curious about the origin of that term. I've never encountered that term in regard to a mine or quarry locomotive.

Is this a local term? If so, I wonder if it's a twist on "lorry/lorries" a British term for a work truck used to haul men &/or equipment?

Thanks, Roger

I've always seen the term as "larry car", and it is always a car that just shuttles back and forth, such as the car that the dipper dumped into on a Hullett, or sometimes a self propelled car that both operator and load rode the same car, as here. I've always taken it to be a corruption of "lorry".

Roger,

I would bet dollars to donuts "larry" is a slang version of "lorry." I have a feeling "larry" is a term not widely used outside of Pennsylvania.

In steel-mill speak, coke was moved in "charging larries." In a specific case I know the employees said "larry" but official mill docs read "lorry."

When it comes to anthracite mining, larries were pulled by dinkies and lokies.

You might say they were gondolas pulled by small tank engines, but I wouldn't know what you were talking about. :-)

Rob

The word "larry" is in use in Michigan to describe the little 2-axle flat cars pulled by Fairmont cars and used to carry small amounts of ties and other track materials and sectionhands' tools. At least it was in use on the GTW, and I presume it's a Canadian export. I also presume it's a corruption of "lorry" by the Scots-Irish workers associated with the Grand Trunk.

In the U.P. (upper peninsula for those of you who don’t know) and the Gogebic Range of northern Wisconsin, the “larry car” shuttled out on the trestkes over the ore storage yards to build the storage piles. I’ve also run into the term on the Vermilion Range in northern Minnesota; the Tower-Sudan Mine (now a Minnesota state park with undergraound tours) had a larry car that took the ore from the hoist to the loading tipple, running around an oval trck like a little electric train.

The term seems to be used anywhere you can buy pasties, which is any place Cornish miners settled in numbers. The “a” sound in larry may be their corruption of the English word lorry.