Hi,

Rioter's want attention. Quit covering the unrest and the riots will dwindle away.

HOWEVER, the networks get paid for ads by ratings. So they cover the OH WOW! titillating events not just for content but also for ratings.

Sad sad sad. Government control of the Press is not the answer but the press should be held in check.

Once the rioting goes away (due to lack of notice), then every day visits to museums and ball games would be untroubled. Just find a way to get it done. I do not know how.

Doug vV

I can't help but recall a photo spread in Trains some years back featuring S&A 750 in the days of the original SR steam program. Seems some people would see one of SR's steam specials running at night and call the local fire department about a "a train that was on fire." It really wasn't anything but the light from the open firedoor lighting up the smoke and steam above the cab.

I also have an account of a couple in postwar Boston that took a liking to Stanley steam autos who had an encounter with the fire department there.

This young couple actually used an ancient Stanley as a "daily driver" for a while.

Now, one of the characteristics of a Stanley steam car is that it uses a vaporizing type of burner, with a pilot burner to keep the main burner hot. The pilot burner runs continuously, while the main burner comes on or shuts off automatically based on steam pressure in the little boiler (which is wrapped with wire for reinforcement and carries up to 600 psi!)

Occasionally, such as after running down a long hill, the main burner would still cool off enough (even with the pilot burner) that when the main burner would come on, the fuel would not vaporize. The resulting flood of fuel would be ignited by the pilot burner, and you had flames coming from under the boiler compartment (which was where the engine would be in a "normal" car). The Stanley brothers knew this would happen on occasion, and provided for it with the simple expedient of making the boiler compartment essentially fireproof. All you would do was stop at the side of the road, open the hood to keep the fire from burning the paint off, and wait a minute or so for the excess fuel to burn off and reheat the main burner to where it would vaporize again. Then you just dropped the hood down and went on again.

In the case of this couple in Boston, the young lady was on her way to the grocery store when this burner flared right as she was passing a fire hall. The firemen inside saw an automobile on fire, and proceeded to chase the lady in her steam car through Boston.

She tried to outrun them--she knew what they would attempt to foam her car--but she got stuck in traffic. Still she tried to explain--"It's a steam car. It's supposed to have a fire in it. How do you make steam without a fire?"

The firemen were in too much of a hurry to listen, and foamed her car. She supposedly spent an hour cleaning out the burners to where she could finally light off again and raise steam to go back home.

One year when the Mt Rainier Scenic was doing a series of trips up the Tacoma Hill, the fire department came by and talked to us after the first run, when they got several calls. We worked out a deal where I'd call them and say "OK, I'm getting ready to head up the hill again..." and then they knew to ask folks a few more questions when they got the calls.

Hi,

A&WP 290 was the central point in the formation of the Atlanta Chapter NRHS. However S&A 750 is my favorite. I rode many miles behind her and helped refueling her many times.

I love the fire department call for a Train on fire. I never heard that but believe it. My best (and admittedly not as good) item is that several times the firebox set of the hotbox detectors along the line.

My best story about 750 is repeated below from a post on Friends of the Flange:
I hope you enjoy it.

---------------------

Hi,
About 1970, the Atlanta Chapter NRHS would run a run a mid summer (c-July) excursion to Macon, GA. The train would go down the Southern Main to Macon and then return to Atlanta over the CofG main. The CofG main entered Macon Union Station by viaduct over 3-6 tracks and then down a ramp to the platforms.
The embankment to the bridges was kudzu covered.
After stopping, a couple of RS3s brought an F unit B that had been converted into a power car. We took S&A 750 to be serviced down the CofG main a bit.
After returning and attaching the train and the RS3s and FB unit power car were removed, the 750 (light pacific) started up the grade to the CofG mainline. It stalled on the juice from the kudzu and could not move farther with nine (9) odd passenger cars. The RS3s returned to help out 750. When 750 got on the bridge, she was doing fine. When the RS3s hit the kudzu, they lost traction and 750 pulled the 9-odd cars plus the power car and the RS3s up by itself.
This is why diesels and steam can co-exist. The RS3s were in their final years and I never rode on a train with them except the one time with 750.
Doug vV

Ha ha, My father (when running a NYCRR passenger train as the locomotive engineer) got a radio call from the dispatcher telling him to stop at the next grade crossing and meet the local fire department there because of a report that his train was "on fire"....

Turns out it was just a large steam leak in between some of the cars (which still had steam heat supplied from the steam generator in the Diesel loco).

I think the local fire chief was quite embarrassed....

Cheers, KevinK.

I still remember vividly the response I got the first time I ever stayed in the City - having only passed through it by bus or rail on previous occasions.

After a late arrival at BWI in 2003, the hire car was collected and we drove to a pre-booked chain motel in the southern suburbs. As it was late, we decided to walk over to the other side of the street for something to eat at a fast food place (think it was a Wendys)

On hearing our transatlantic accents, the woman behind the counter said "What are you guys doing here - you wanna get shot?" !!!

Needless to say, we didn't get shot, and I have been back to the city and stayed there several times since!

The only time I knew I came close to being mugged was in Baltimore. I was in the Army stationed at Aberdeen for a while and used to go down that way often.
NOTE: I don't suggest anyone else do the following:
A pal of mine (who had been a Ranger and fought in Somalia) and I were clearly being followed by a couple of young thugs. As soldiers, we usually carried Leatherman or Gerber tools with us out of habit. We knew we were being followed and decided on one of two courses of action:
1. Walk briskly toward the Inner Harbor and hope we ran into a cop
2. Turn and confront them
We chose the latter.
We slowly took out our combo tools, opened up knife blades, then stopped. The guy with me could see them stop and talk among themsevles, probably wondering what to do. He said he saw one turn around and a coat flew open to a degree, and he could see no firearms tucked away.
That's all we needed to know.
We turned, pointed our knives at them, and charged them, screaming bloody murder. You should have seen the looks on their faces when they realized what we were doing. I'd have given just about anything to have had someone with a camera taking photos of them nearby to record that expression.
They had knives, it turned out, because we shocked them so much, they both dropped theirs and ran like heck. At one point, we were actually chasing them for a while, beforeJoel yelled, "Uh, I think maybe we should stop," so we did. We could see them a block away, still running like track stars.
I'd like to think maybe they didn't try that with anyone again, but that's probably wishful thinking.

It's been said--and you decide whether this is specious, farcical, or what--that inner-city residents (not just in Baltimore, but most such North American cities) are as afraid of outer-city "outsiders" as the stereotype suburbanites are of driving through the ghettoes.

The difference is that suburbanites react defensively and urbanites offensively.

This is part of the problem places like the B&O Museum, and groups like inner-city chapters of the NRHS, have increasingly confronted for decades. Our NRHS chapter is full of people who simply refuse to drive into the city after dark, or at all--or their wives won't let them. But holding meetings outside the city, at non-standard locations like library meeting rooms and at places not necessarily transit-accessible, bring their own problems as well. Thus, the social aspect of such meetings gets blunted. Is shifting all of our social activity online the future--and, if so, why have a club at all? Or a museum or archive or office, for that matter?

(And we're far from the only ones. I've seen this same debate in everything from libraries to churches to homebrew clubs to charitable organizations.)

This thread reminded me of one time the wife and I were walking a back street from downtown Hilo (Hawaii) to our motel, an old one located in a residential area. A car stopped by us, and the driver said, "You're not from around here are you?" We acknowledged, and she replied, "This isn't a good area--I would get out of here before it gets any darker!" We were only three blocks from our motel, so she figured we could get there in time (it was turning dusk). This in Hawaii!!
BTW. we survived ten years living in a "bad section" of town, although the doors were always locked, even when at home.

I've been to Baltimore plenty of times, though I never stayed overnight there. Every time I visited was a day trip from Washington-take the train up in the morning, do what I planned to do and then take an evening train back to Washington. The only bad experience I had there was due to bad track at Camden Yards-got a bit queasy due to rough track riding the MARC RDCs.

That said, the City has had it's problems but seems to be working to resolve their matters. It seems that much of the problem related to the riots is outside agitators who show up to inject criminal acts into the chaos. What we do not see being reported is the financial impact that those criminal acts have on the community in terms of insurance claims, income lost and jobs lost.

That's actually a common refrain, outside instigators traveling to trouble areas to escalate things that were planned to be civil.

Nonviolent protest used to work pretty well in California as both cops and protesters had learned the dance. Then suddenly stuff starts blowing up, and comparing notes they find it's outsiders and street gangs who don't normally protest but do normally commit crimes, using the protest as an excuse to wild. It was the same in Detroit when they were trying to figure out who lights all the fires on Devils' Night - apparently kids came down from suburbia and outstate.

Looking at the overall arc of protest, scandal and debate, many of these appear to be intentional acts to plunge America into open class warfare. That would certainly be right up the alley of MSS, Mossod, SVR, etc. We may find up some of these people calling up gay bakeries or stealing black protestors' flags are (unwittingly?) working for a foreign intelligence service.

Back in the 1970s. we had something known as the "Gong Show." I believe our last poster will get the gong! What pray tell did that have to do with railroading? Really, the Mossad?

As your moderator...

This tread is drifting away from railroad preservation... We should think about moving back to RR preservation or at leas think about what the next point adds to the discussion...

There are lots of productive and rational ways this could continue... for example... How did the B&O (or the Baltimore Trolley Museum) respond to the unrest... How do they interact with the (troubled) community that surrounds them

Further afield... did the abandonment of the Pacific Electric contribute to the Watts Riots... Do any railroad museums interpret the social implications of the impact of rail...

Randy

Right on, Randy.

I would be interested in what the museum did to protect the collection during this time.

The Museum's web site says they are closed through Sunday May 3rd

Randy