I had the opportunity recently to turn back the clock and do an EMD F3 locomotive delivery training class from 1946 using the appropriate photographic projection equipment. Fortunately the slides and equipment have survived seventy years. What is the appropriate equipment EMD used for teaching in this time period? The delivery training package consists of 50 large format glass slides used with a side loading, one slide at a time, projector.

Compared to the projection and audio-visual equipment we have available seventy years later, the 1940s gear is slow, inconvenient, and not very effective. It really requires a second person, as the projector operator, to maintain an efficient and orderly presentation. But it was good enough to get the job done in its day. It gave me an appreciation for what the instructors accomplished in the narrow classroom of the mobile training cars that EMD sent out with the locomotive deliveries in the early postwar period. They did not have a permanent training center at La Grange until 1947. During World War Two, the classes on EMD engines were frequently held at local colleges.

Anyone aware of any railroad museums that maintain a display of the photographic equipment that railroad enthusiasts and the locomotive builders would have used in the time period that some of the equipment on display would have been delivered?

PC

I wish I could see that presentation.

Something to think of: for most roads those F3's would be their first experience with road diesels. Those slides were the portal to a whole new world.

As to the cameras, you're thinking stovepipe Graflexes, later 122 (3 1/4 x 5 1/2 inch negatives) folding Kodaks shooting Verichrome. For color, Leicas ($$$) Kodak Retinas, Argus C-3 "Bricks" shooting ASA 8, later ASA 10 original Kodachrome from the late 1930's. Maybe an early Weston selenium cell light meter. That would be an interesting display!.

Phil Mulligan.

This place needs a like button!!

I also wish I had been there.

My organization maintains a operable F3A in good as-donated condition, with a 24RL brake system and 567BC engine, which was rebuilt to BC specs while still in revenue service on CN. 9000 was the first EMD road diesel CN acquired, as part of a 6 unit order (2 A-B-A sets), and would have been the subject of those presentations back in the day.

http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=10244

We do not have scans of any of those training slides (let alone the actual equipment), but you are right, they would make a excellent display. The would go especially well with a Instruction Car of any kind.

Here is a little more information to finish out the chronology of training equipment use by EMD. I suspect that Alco, Baldwin, and the other locomotive builders would have gone through a similar series of transitions:

By the time of GP9 production, training slides had become 35mm format, glass slides with metal frames. I have seen several sets of these for the locomotive series in the 1950s and early 1960s, they have survived well. The projectors used in the 1950s were generally a Bell & Howell TDC with inline trays.

By the late 1960s, EMD switched to slides with plastic frames, and began using Kodak Carousel 550 type projectors (the metal brick style) in the classroom, with a string of remote extensions so the projector could be operated from the front of the room. They unfortunately changed to non-Kodak processing of Ektachrome and a lot of the slide sets did not survive as well as the slide sets they had done in the 1950s.

By the early 1970s they had changed again, to the Kodak Carousel AV series projector with the wide slot tray that could take paper, plastic and glass mount slides. This change was made while I was working in the training center. We were also still using 16mm film projectors occasionally at that time.

By the 1990s, PowerPoint was being used to produce the captioned slides, and the projection equipment eventually progressed to digital. Nowadays the industry uses PowerPoint with digital projection almost exclusively, I carry a thin Epson projector in the same bag as the computer, using wireless connection, and all the projector requires is a power cord. With the addition of a tiny set of desktop speakers, the job that used to require traveling with several bags and a baggage dolly to move the equipment now is done with a hand carried computer bag about three inches thick.

There were product orientation programs with outlines and slide sets produced for almost every series of locomotives. The slide sets were sold to the railroads, they were listed in the back pages of each years training school brochure. These materials, the instructor notes, the outlines, the slide sets, and the class handouts all occasionally show up on eBay where they are usually completely ignored by the railroad paper collectors. I suspect part of this lack of interest is that auction descriptions often do not do a good job of describing the materials, and since the railroad industry education programs have never gotten much discussion in print, these item pass by unnoticed.

Additional Note - The artist who did most of the illustrations for the FT, E7, F3, and postwar switcher training packages was William Hottinger, who also did all the artwork in the EMD catalogs advertising their diesel shop design services and locomotive maintenance support equipment. If this is a topic of interest to you see Railroad Model Craftsman magazine, April 2008, for an article on the EMD designed diesel shops that shows Bill Hottinger's excellent artwork of shops, cutaway views of shops, and cross sections of shops. Hottinger never achieved the "visibility" of the artists in the Paint and Styling section, his work was mainly used in Service Department publications. He was a superbly skilled individual, his pen and ink renderings of shops and machinery are amazing.

PC

Update 14 March 2021:

Just for information, I have given a copy of my EMD SW-1 electrical and mechanical training slide set to the Heritage Rail Alliance (HRA) for posting to their internet technical library sometime soon. I do not envision doing any more EMD product electrical/mechanical classes/clinics in the future. The material will be posted in PDF rather than PPTX format. Keep in mind this is in the format of a traditional training program designed to use slides, it is not necessarily the way you would set up a program nowadays for PowerPoint.

PC

Maybe this is prehistoric and shamefully low tech, but I bet DVDs of this material would be hot sellers --- Maybe it would be possible to sell enough to restore a favorite lost cause.