Stumbled across these while looking for something else:

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/02 ... eyard.html

Can anyone identify the location and possible time? The locomotives being cut up look like they might be from the Southern; of particular interest, note the 2-8-2 being cut up in the second photo still retains bell and whistle! Wonder if anybody got those prime "souvenirs?"

Other photos from the same site:

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search/ ... locomotive

That Pullman is interesting; what's the story on where it is, with a Royal Hudson, at something called the Nethercutt Museum?

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/05 ... ntury.html

http://justacargal-s.blogspot.com/2011/ ... train.html

Some other material:

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/search/label/train

Have fun.

The first photo in Car Guy's page looks familiar, like I've seen it, possibly in a book about SR (perhaps the one with the final regular steam run on the cover). Whatever it was it was an older book, something I'd seen as a kid. I'd look at that photo and imagine the engine moving slowly along while parts just fell off it on their own.

Steve

The photo with the 2-8-2 in the background is of GM&O power being cut up. The photo was in a contemporary issue (1949-52 era) of Trains Magazine, I think.

Howard P.

We traction fans still weep (or at least, cringe) when we see the photos of Pacific Electric 1200-class interurban cars smoldering at the Kaiser Steel plant in 1951-52. Only 1299, the one-off business car has survived, and it started out as a Portland "Red Electric", not a native PE car.

Somewhat off topic from J3a-614's original post, but I've always kind of been interested in steam scrapping photos. They are most certainly sad, I guess my interest is in the fact that they are indeed part of the steam story.

Cab Forward being cut up in San Francisco, 1959:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 97&nseq=12

IC Mountain partway through, Paducah, 1960:
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ic/ic-steam-g.jpg

God bless. Seth

Ahh, what memories of rolling along on the Southern mainline through downtown Orange. VA with CPR 2839 running at speed (prior to the 40 mph days) on the head end.

Wesley

It looks like, for whatever reason, IC was a little more methodical with their scrapping.

Think of all that asbestos!

The photo is from a Life Magazine article dated October10,1949 and covers the Dieselization of the GM&O Railroad.

I've long wondered just how many of the workers involved in scrapping steam locomotives back in the day got sick from working around all of that asbestos.

Consider, on top of asbestos, how many smoked all day long. Plenty of people died from lung cancer, but the obvious connection and statistical analysis was not necessarily acknowledged. "Grandpa smoked all his life and he died of 'old age'!" People just breezed over the connection or took no legal action, as they were from a railroad family.
Retrospective analysis of death certificates would be telling, but muddied by the amount of asbestos used not only on boilers, but in tiles, insulation, protective clothing, lab supplies, furnace ducting, you name it.

But in the case of scrapping Steam locomotives, I would think the exposure would be worse as you are tearing up the asbestos, making it fray, and making all sorts of fibers airborne!

I believe that the steam engine scrapping photos were taken in 1948 in Jackson, TN, and the power being scrapped is GM&O. There were photos in this series from both Bloomington, IL and Jackson, TN.