Heads up - today a link to a high resolution photo via Shorpy of the B&O Eckington Yard in Washington D.C. in 1923:


http://www.shorpy.com/node/17482?size=_original#caption

/Mitch

Take a good look at all the conduits running along those coach roofs. It looks like cars that were converted to electric lighting, had fans added, or both. Interesting details; not too many images from that time period were taken from above, at least that I have seen.

Eckington Yard was the freight delivery yard north of Union Station at the junction with the B&O lines running northeast to Baltimore and north/west to Cumberland. The photo looks northeast, with modern-day Ivy City engine terminal/Acela shops/etc. lost in the haze in the background behind the barely-visible overpass.

Interesting photo.

With this being a Masonic gathering, there's some interesting "foreign cars" that wouldn't have normally been seen in Washington.

On the track immediately to the right of the right support for the "Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Freight Yard" sign (looks like track #14) are a group of double-vestibuled Gothic-style cars belonging to the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. I can see names, so I'm guessing these are sleepers (although MILW also had named parlors). The Milwaukee Road, like the GN, had a history of owning/operating sleepers outside the Pullman pool, so these aren't necessarily Pullman-owned sleepers in the photo. In total, I see four Gothic-style cars interspaced with three newer non-Gothic cars (all sleepers?) along with a baggage on that track.

Looks like the larger Masonic temples each had a separate train chartered, I see signs (from right to left) for temples in Des Moines, South Dakota, East St. Louis, Sacramento, Stockton, et. al.

Lots of fezzes in the right foreground!

Wow, talk about conduits, conduits, and more conduits (one group of cars must have three sets of lines on the roof), and lots of roof ribs, too.

And also take note of the polished Mallet (very likely an EL-something class of 2-8-8-0) peaking out from under the freight yard sign, apparently on exhibit duty for the convention.

Here is a 1907 map that shows the area, including the track layout:

http://ghostsofdc.org/2014/05/19/1907-m ... 5-69318489

I'm guessing this photo was taken from the left side of the map, near the area marked Florida Ave/Section A/B. If that's the case, also note the WUS 0-6-0 working in the back ground.

Bob

You are correct, this is just west of the area of the map, in the vicinity of where New York and Florida Avenue would intersect. This yard apparently wasn't in existence in 1907, and is not on the map itself.

http://ghostsofdc.wpengine.netdna-cdn.c ... 24x718.jpg

What was around in 1907 and 1923, and is still around today, is the wye configuration you see in both map and photo. To the left of the photo, and headed upward on the map, is the B&O west to Silver Spring, Harpers Ferry, Cumberland, and beyond. Curving out of the photo in the background behind the switcher and under a huge display of semaphore signals, and curving to the right on the map and running past the Ivy City engine terminal with its twin roundhouses (sadly gone now), are the tracks of the B&O and the Pennsy headed northeast to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. The smokestack visible at the left of the photo is part of the heating plant and the Pullman commissary, and I think those structures still stand. Of course, all of this is now under wires, courtesy of the PRR electrification project of the 1930s.

It's also interesting to look at how smokey Washington was in 1923; I would guess a good deal was from steam locomotives from the B&O, PRR, C&O, Southern, SAL, ACL, RF&P, and Washington Terminal, all of which ran here!

Note the strategically placed buckets under each of the discharge hoppers.

I read that Pullman actually had a part number for these galvanized buckets.