Imagine if financiers Oris and Mantis Van Sweringen who controlled the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, the Pere Marquette Railway, the Erie Railroad, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad were successful in their attempt to merge the four railroads. Let's say they were left as separate entities as B&O, C&O, and WM were for a few years (or decades) afterwords...

NKP #765 & PM #1225 Double Header Pan

It would be very interesting to consider how things may have panned out...<sorry> in regards to the effect on today's modern class 1's!

/Mitch

Mitch -

Fantastic pan shot....as usual! I just wonder if there were any places where a PM 2-8-4 and a NKP 2-8-4 might have crossed paths when in regular service. Chicago maybe?

Les

Did Pere Marquette have a line into Chicago? Or even IL?

I know both PM and NKP had routes in OH and IN, though I do not believe? the NKP had a line in MI?

/Mitch

That's one of my favorite train photos of all time.

Mitch - First of all, you are right, the Nickel Plate did not have any Michigan lines. But, the Pere Marquette DID have a line into Chicago from New Buffalo, Michigan and the Berks supposedly did operate over this line. I am just not sure where the PM yard was in Chicago. I know that C&O steamers in freight service used the NKP's Stony Island Yard for servicing at one time, but I am not sure if the PM also used that yard. There is one other place where they COULD have possibly met over in Indiana, and I am embarrased for not thinking of this before. During the last 6 months of PM steam operation, the 1200's were occassionally used out of New Buffalo down the PM line to LaCrosse, Indiana. They crossed the NKP main at Thomaston, so it IS conceivable that a PM 2-8-4 might have waited for a NKP Berk there, or vice-versa. And it is possible too, that if such a thing actually happened, the two engines involved could have been the 1225 and the 765. The crossing still does exist, along with a relocated interchange track, with the railroads now being Norfolk Southern (ex-NKP) and shortline Chesapeake & Indiana (ex-PM). Say....anyone think that maybe one day a re-enactment might be possible? The Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum down at North Judson at the far end of the Chesapeake & Indiana line, actually has a program to restore their vintage freight cars so the possibility is not really completely out of the question. At least it's something to think about.

Les

From some info I heard somewhere, just remembering, no links, that the Sweringens owned the NKP but owned another major line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Swerin ... d_holdings

Apparently the C&O, PM eventually to the NYC. The Vans made the NKP their prime high speed running railroad then crammed all the slow traffic on the C&O, keeping the NKP clear of the slow moving traffic.

Also note the NKP berk design is practically a scaled down C&O 2-10-4 design, looking at the 2 engines the looks are very close. The berk is not a scaled up 2-8-2, but a downsized 2-10-4!

Mitch -

I was a little dubious about the Pere Marquette having a line in Ohio, but I checked into it and you are right! They had a line that reached down to Toledo, Ohio. And the Nickel Plate had a line that ran up there. The question then becomes; did both railroads run their 2-8-4's into Toledo, or for that matter, did even one of the lines dispatch Berks to there? If they both did, then that would be another spot where the two roads Berkshires could have met during steam days.

Les

Mgoldman, I belong to a number of forums of which you are a part of and anytime you post it seems simply to inflate the number of views on your photos, not much different from another person who would just post links to their YouTube videos. At the very least, you could insert the photograph like this which don't require viewers to click outside the forum they're currently in.




Will

Here we go...

I've been a member of RYPN for nearly 4 years, I have 83 posts and only a very small percentage of them are linked to RP (maybe 1 or 2 per year). The simple fact is sometimes it's just simpler to link then to go and resize and rewrite all the information that has already been done. Railpictures isn't going anywhere - the links will always be valid. I'd say "at the very least" you could state such assumptions and thoughts via e-mail rather then attempting to call me out. If I was only looking for extra views I'd have links to the other 450 photos vrs only a handful of unique images that have a historic nature to them.

/Mitch

The Chespeake & Ohio tried to merge the NKP after WW-II and after PM had been merged as I recall. The ICC did not approve.
Dave E. Crawford

From old records I've seen, typically daily turns for the 1200's in the 1940's were Toledo-Plymouth-Flint, Detroit-Plymouth-Wyoming (Grand Rapids), and presumably, Grand Rapids-Chicago.

Odd historical note: PM 1225 was actually bought by the Pere Marquette Railway of Indiana, probably owing to the workings of Michigan personal property tax law at the time (still being debated in 2009).

Right-click, "Copy Image Location", back over to RyPN Interchange, click "Img" button, paste in the URL. Five seconds for a wiz like us, ten seconds for the old-timers. Then thirty seconds for caption info for the RyPn Interchange post.

How is that faster than posting a link? And if you are sincerely trying to build up hit counts, so what? You get the hits either way.

Aarne - Great! So now if the Nickel Plate dispatched its 700's to Toledo, then that would be another possible place where the two roads Van Sweringen Berkshires might have encountered one another when in regular service. Any NKP fans out there that would know if the NKP Berks made Toledo?

Les

While the Pere Marquette did go to Toledo, it may not have extended all the way into Ohio proper. The yard for Toledo, named Erie, was just north of the state line. I'm pretty sure the line did continue south to the C&O's Walbridge yard, but I'm not sure if the Berks traveled that far south, at least before the C&O takeover.
Another real possibility was the Belt Railway of Chicago's Clearing yard. This is where most of the Pere Marquette's freight traffic ended up, and I would assume some of the Nickel Plate's trains terminated or originated there as well. The night photo session of the recent Lerro charter provided an interesting view of what the potential meeting could have been like. http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 570&nseq=4

First of all, great photo. And the info about BRC's Clearing Yard is interesting. As for Toledo, the question about whether the PM's 1200's actually got into Ohio turns out to be moot. I talked to a member of our museum who is also an officer of the Nickel Plate Road Historical Society and he says that a bridge over the Auglaize River at Dupont, Ohio held NKP power into Toledo to just light 2-8-0's. The bridge was built when the old Clover Leaf was still a narrow gauge line and was never replaced when the railroad went to standard gauge. Thus the NKP 700's never made it to Toledo. The same gentleman told me that the Wheeling & Lake Erie's 2-8-4's DID get up to Toledo, but none of these Berks, numbered into the 800's after the NKP merger, survived. So we are left I guess with just the two possible steam era locations where the NKP and PM 2-8-4's might have encountered each other. At Thomaston, Indiana (as previously described) and in Chicago, as Gregg has so nicely replicated with his photo.

Les