HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gregg@pinot.zehntel.com (Gregg Fuhriman)
Subject: Re: toronto subway gauge
Reply-To: gregg@pinot.UUCP (Gregg Fuhriman)
Organization: Zehntel, Inc. Walnut Creek, CA
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 20:20:25 GMT

In article <1992Oct7.121726.19815@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> ggg9y@poe.acc.Virginia.EDU (Garth G. Groff) writes:
>
>I wasn't aware the Toronto surface lines were wide guage.
>Didn't many of the Toronto cars serve under lease on 
>San Francisco's MUNI in the 1970s?  If so, they would 
>have been narrowed at great cost and later widened again
>when they returned to Toronto.  

I think the original question concerned the SUBWAY in Toronto, not the
STREETCARS in Toronto.  The streetcars probably are standard guage, if
they have been used on other systems like SF MUNI.

I visited Toronto in August and found a wonderful variety of public transit:

SUBWAY: Long silver trains running underground downtown, and above ground
elsewhere.  One main east-west line and two lines branching to the north.
There's an above-ground yard along Yonge Street north of downtown.

SCARBOROUGH RT: Boxy "people-mover" trains, elevated in the center of
Scarborough, and it connects to the east end of Toronto subway.

STREETCARS: Red LRV-style cars, some single and some articulated.
This system goes everywhere in downtown Toronto ... I was impressed.

WATERFRONT: Brown and beige PCC cars, tracks connect into the main
streetcar system.  There is a common carbarn/service facility at
Sunnyside, west of downtown.

GO TRANSIT: Green and white diesel-powered (F59PH's) commute trains,
running push-pull.  Main line is along the water front through Union
Station, with several lines radiating out into the greater Toronto area.

Other passenger service includes VIA and Ontario Northland serving
Union Station.  I saw VIA F40PH's and LRC's pulling an assortment of
equipment.  Ontario Northland's "Northlander" is powered by a rebuilt
FP7A with a converted F-style B-unit for HEP.  I think there is an Amtrak
train that runs into Union Station as well, although I did not see it.

					Gregg Fuhriman
From: rah@public.BTR.COM (Richard A Hyde  rah@btr.com)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Railwork in Cupertino
Keywords: n
Date: 13 Oct 92 20:47:21 GMT
Distribution: ba
Organization: BTR Public Access UNIX, MtnView CA. For info contact: info@BTR.COM

I had a chance to talk with some of the SP workers today.  Their work on
this line is essentially complete.  I was told that it was a state
mandated upgrade and that the bare mimumum of work was being done to
keep things "up to snuff".

Rick

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   Richard Hyde  |  RaH@btr.com  |    This space intentionally left blank   |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: iain@ee.ryerson.ca (Iain Campbell)
Subject: Re: Aircraft Parts Cars
Organization: Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, Toronto
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 14:32:58 GMT

In article <1992Oct1.181715.16484@athena.mit.edu> sathomas@athena.mit.edu (Stephen A Thomas) writes:
>On a recent trip to LA, I was fortunate to have a college buddy give me a plant
>tour of the Northrop F/A 18 assembly facility.  Parked outside of the assembly
>building were a couple of fairly large, squarish, oversize (white on ends of
>roof) cars, which were freight car red and I believe lettered for the SP or UP. 
[stuff deleted]

Up here in Toronto, McDonnel-Douglas has a large plant which makes wing
subassemblies for the DC-10 line of aircraft.  They have specially 
constructed "flatcars" to transport the completed wings to the 
assembly plant south of the border.

It's been a while since I've looked at one of them, so I can't give a
decent description; perhaps some other Toronto area net.readers could
help out??

Iain

Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: Baird_David@Tandem.com (David G. Baird)
Subject: Re: Railwork in Cupertino
Followup-To: rec.railroad
Organization: Tandem Computers (Cupertino, CA)
Distribution: ba
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 19:23:26 GMT

> There is some kind of spur? line running along the west side of Bubb Rd
> in Cupertino and by the 85/280 junction.  It appears to be undergoing
> extensive renovation.  They (SP?) have replaced every 10th tie or so
> along the tracks, dumped a lot of new ballast, tamped it down, and
> straightened the tracks (which were badly out of true).  The work has
> progressed to the 85/280 intersection and seems to be proceeding westward.
> 
> Hopper cars filled with crushed granite go by every few hours during the
> day.  The regular traffic on the section seems to go by between 4:30 and
> 5:00 pm weekdays carrying 8 to 10 Rio Grande hopper cars filled with
> coal (coal?  who uses that much coal in the bay area?)   Another, longer,
> train passes north to south along Bubb Rd about 6:30 pm.  I don't
> believe there is any other regular traffic on this route.
> 

This SP line goes  between the downtown Cahill Amtrak/Caltrain station and
the Permanente Cement Plant at the end of Stevens Creek Blvd. in Cupertino.
Thrice weekly a work train takes coal up to the plant, and brings back
hoppers full of cement, probably. I've seen trains of 35 cars pulled by
4 or 5 locos - GP9's and SD9's. A great time to see this action is on 
Sundays between 5 and 7PM. The time varies somewhat, but the train goes
up to the plant, leaves the coal cars and empty hoppers, and takes the
cement cars back down to San Jose. These are the tracks that you see

At the Highway 280 right at the Foothill exit
At Stevens Creek and Bubb Rd
At Bubb near McClellan
At Rainbow near Stelling
Crossing Saratoga-Sunnyvale between Prospect and Cox
At Winchester Blvd (Vasona Junction)
In downtown Campbell
Crossing 280 near Meridian

I've heard that SP is considering selling the line to Santa Clara county
for possible use with Light Rail. Maybe that's why they're fixing up
the line. It's in terrible shape now. The trains go very slowly and 
wobble a lot. It's a great speed for chasing, though. I've done so with
my bicycle.

A lot of the trackage parallels the new highway 85 corridor that's under
construction.

DGB }
Organization: Sophomore, Design, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Date: Wed,  7 Oct 1992 00:56:33 -0400 
From: Alan Edward Petrillo <ap2z+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: LIRR joke



"Did you know that the almighty created the LIRR?"

"Really?"

"Sure, the Bible says He created all things that creepeth and crawleth."

-as quoted in Ron Ziel and George Foster's "Steel Rails to the Sunrise."

This joke is from the early 50's, when the LIRR suffered a succession of
accidents and a general deterioration of service.

Alan Petrillo
Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh
Cape Elizabeth, Maine

          _______________________. ._______________________
     .---/__|_|____|O|___|||||___| |___|||||___|O|____|_|__\---.
     |      |_|    |_|         | | | |         |_|    |_|      |
     |   .__|-|____|_|_________|_| |_|_________|_|____|-|__.   |
     |___|[o]=[o]|_____|[o]=[o]|_|=|_|[o]=[o]|_____|[o]=[o]|___|
=====================================================================
From: hudson@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Hudson Leighton)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Does anyone know the status of Amtraks swedish car trials?
Date: 13 Oct 92 15:25:03 GMT
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.

I saw a note somewhere that the X2000? was on its way to germany to be loaded
on a boat for USA


UUCP: {crash tcnet}!orbit!pnet51!hudson
INET: hudson@pnet51.orb.mn.org
ICBM: Lat. 44.59 x lon. 93.13
HAM:  NONMX  444.100 repeater
Advertisement: Try the Railway Post Office BBS (612) 377-2197 a Railfan BBS
From: brennan@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Joseph Brennan)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: LIRR joke
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:40:16 GMT
Reply-To: brennan@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Joseph Brennan)
Organization: Columbia University

In article <1992Oct7.153456.23357@s1.gov> a senior citizen writes:

>   This, and the opening of a tunnel
>to Penn Station, would suggest some kind of commitment to improving
>LIRR service.

And they've replaced the steam engines with diesels on the other lines!

--Joe
From: Steve_Hooper@mindlink.bc.ca (Steve Hooper)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Empire Builder Lost? (was: LIRR Joke)
Date: 8 Oct 92 22:28:48 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Distribution: world

> schumann@msus1.msus.edu writes:
>
> So, Steve, while it IS hard to believe, it apparently really did
> happen.  I never did hear a good explanation for why the crew was not
> familiar enough with the route to notice the switch was lined the
> wrong way.


If it DID happen, it sure would be a scary thing!  I mean, out on a strange
piece of track with no clearance etc..

In the remainder of your message, you talk about crews unfamiliar with their
territory.  As a crew member that lived (and often still LIVES) on the
spareboard, I have to agree with you.

On what we call "freight", you take a train from your home terminal (in my
case, Vancouver) to your away from home terminal (North Bend for me).  You
cannot really stray or get lost.

However, we have about 12 Road Switcher jobs that switch all over Vancouver
and outlying urban areas (New Westminster, Surrey, Richmond etc etc) and they
are all branch lines.  They can get VERY confusing.  In fact, on one trip I
recall we went to what we refer to as the "O" Yard, a small industrial yard
in the heart of Richmond.  We left Coquitlam (the home terminal) and had to
travel through the Southern Railway Of B.C. (SRY) yard to get to the O Yard.
Well, I did not know that we were to call the SRY prior to arriving.  I
assumed we went around the "CP Old Main".  Well, I had a green crew, of which
none of use had been to the O Yard in 3 years.  We putted around the "CP Old
Main" and just about ran into an SRY switch engine.  We stopped in time, but
now we had him blocked and he could not go backward.  So my brakeman walked
back to the tail end of our train (79 racks for the SRY and 40 cars for the O
Yard) and about 45 minutes later we made our backup movement, got PROPER
directions to the CORRECT track in the SRY yard, and proceeded (after another
30 minutes waiting for the brakie to walk back from the tail end.)  We had
four or five crossings blocked the entire time.

And, yep, the shit hit the fan.....

Oh well...but the key is, this is all yard area.  When I said that I doubted
the above story could actually happen, I simply meant I could not see a train
straying from the mainline on to a branch line.  In my case, ther IS a main,
but it is all yard limits (about 15 miles of lousy track in which three major
rail yards are located.)

Ah, railroading...ain't it fun!

--

 steve_hooper@mindlink.bc.ca   []  Conductor on the High Iron of
 OR      a777@mindlink.bc.ca   []     CP Rail - Cascade Sub
 The Great White North in      []
 Vancouver, BC CANADA          []   Opinions are mine, NOT CP's
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: ggg9y@poe.acc.Virginia.EDU (Garth G. Groff)
Subject: Re: toronto subway gauge
Organization: University of Virginia
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 20:20:08 GMT


TORONTO GAUGE

Sorry, but this thread is getting incredibly muddled.
Originally some of the posters implied that the 
Toronto streetcar lines used the same wide gauge as
the subway. My comment was that their PCC cars which
were used on the San Francisco Muni must have been
reguaged and then restored when returned to Toronto.

So what is the real gauge of the Toronto streetcars?
Can anyone clarify this point?

No flame, here.  The other points are interesting.

Thanks.

~S
--
Garth (Haridas) Groff
"Not yet famous author"
ggg9y@poe.acc.virginia.EDU         Chant "Govinda Bohlo Hare"
From: james@cats.ucsc.edu (James C. Bohem)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Info on North Pacific Coast RR
Date: 16 Oct 92 19:40:35 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu


forags@smokey (Al Stangenberger) writes:
(about where you can still see parts of the NWP line)

Add to the list Samuel Taylor State Park (on Sir Frances Drake about
5-10 miles before you hit Olema) - there is at least one bridge, some
trestle, and old ROW that is now a hiking trail.

-- 

James C. Bohem          +1 408 458 5358          fax: +1 408 423 6519
james@cats.ucsc.edu   (or preferably)  james@holycow.santa-cruz.ca.us
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: pratta@rpi.edu (Anthony Edward Prattico)
Subject: Re: Water scoops 
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
	<1992Oct16.135840.28152@news.uiowa.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 23:06:13 GMT

In article <1992Oct16.135840.28152@news.uiowa.edu> jones@pyrite.cs.uiowa.edu (Douglas W. Jones,201H MLH,3193350740,3193382879) writes:

>   > Was there a lot of dammage associated with their use?
>
>   I assume a stupid fireman could rip the scoop off, but the pans had ramps
>   at each end to prevent the scoop from trying to scoop up ballast or ties.
>
>   There are spectacular photos of trains taking on water with a scoop.  The
>   splash is tremendous.  Think of the rate at which a scoop takes on water.
>   All you have to do is translate miles per hour to feet per second, and then
>   think of one cubic foot of water per foot of travel.  When the tender fills
>   to overflowing with the scoop down, you get close to 100 gallons per second
>   of overflow!

The biggest concern was what happened if the tender filled before the scoop was
raised. I imagine the railroads learned the hard way about the incredible force
of water pressure and exploding tenders. The tenders designated for this ser-
vice had vents on the top of the tank to let air and water out, and on most
(citing NYC tenders as my example here, specifically the Niagras) these vents
were routed down to a point at or below that frame to dump the excess water on
the roadbed.

-Anthony
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: tvervaek@col.hp.com (Tom Vervaeke)
Subject: Raton Pass???
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 16:38:38 GMT
Organization: HP Colorado Springs Division

I have a dumb question to ask -> I've heard many railroaders talking
about the Raton Pass as a great place to watch railroading.  Is this the
Raton Pass that is at the border of Colorado and New Mexico?  If so,
have any of you been there and could you give details on how to get
close to the line for pictures?  This place is only 2 - 2.5 hours from
my house.

Thanks.

Please excuse me if this is the wrong one...  :-)

Tom V

Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: cab@cbnewsm.cb.att.com (carl.a.benevit)
Subject: Re: Unusual Conrail Cars
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 11:54:04 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.135053.5077@pellns.alleg.edu> pgifford@reis36.alleg.edu (Pete Gifford) writes:
>      ____
>     /    \
>    |      |
>    |______|       (Lousy picture)
>     wheels
>Any ideas what it might be or what it might be hauling?
>- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
>Pete Gifford

Not so bad picture, really. My guess based on the picture, is a coil
car. The cars carry coils of wire. The wire could be shipped in gondolas
but it is exposed to the elements. These cars shield the wire.
______________________________________________________________________________
 Opinions and commentary are personal and not those of AT&T and subsidiaries.
______________________________________________________________________________
Carl Benevit       -           att!cbnewsm!cab           -        215-439-7664
AT&T Bell Laboratories -              555 Union Boulevard, Allentown, PA 18103

                                                         |
                 ...be ready...                       ---|---    ACTS
                                                         |       1:11
                                                         |
______________________________________________________________________________
From: dtm@castle.ed.ac.uk (D Muxworthy)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Tramway/trolley gauges
Date: 12 Oct 92 12:37:12 GMT
Organization: Edinburgh University

In article <1834@eagle.ukc.ac.uk> jmb@ukc.ac.uk (Mike Bremner) writes:
>Funny: all this talk of non-standard gauges to prevent railway/railroad
>access.  In the UK it appears that we had a non-standard gauge to *permit*
>this.
 [Examples from Portsmouth and Glasgow deleted]
  And half-way between those two places Huddersfield Corporation Tramways
  also chose 4' 7 3/4" gauge specifically so that railway coal trucks could
  run over their tracks.

David Muxworthy
From: jwj2@po.CWRU.Edu (Jermaster)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Diesel vs. Electric Locomotive Maintenance
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 19:51:53 GMT
Organization: Eastern & Ohio Railroad Company
NNTP-Posting-Host: b63154.student.cwru.edu

In article <Bw6BLI.5EF@access.digex.com> terryfry@access.digex.com (Terry Fry) writes:

>Now, the E33's were Virginian property before the Pennsy got them, right?

Actually, the Pennsy never owned them. When Virginian sold them, they went
to the New Haven. After Penn Central's shotgun marriage with NH, they 
became property of PC, (and utlimately CR, etc...). PRR was part of PC by
this point (12-31-1968). But yes, they were originally VGN locomotives.

Later,
-Jer
--
Jerry W. Jordak       "And if I am elected, I promise the formation of a
a.k.a. Jermaster       new party.....a third party......A WILD PARTY!!"
(jwj2@po.cwru.edu)                                          --Alice Cooper
From: DLEIBOLD@VM1.YorkU.CA
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: GO Transit cars to go to Florida
Date: 12 Oct 1992 13:20:01 -0500
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

GO Transit (Toronto region) will lend four bi-level passenger cars to Florida
to help with transportation needs following the hurricane Andrew disaster.
This move should not affect Toronto-region operations, and GO states that up
to 12 cars could be made available.

The Toronto Star reported the plans by GO, but didn't specify whether this
was specifically for the Tri-Rail service from Miami to West Palm Beach or
not.

Does anyone have information on how rail was affected by the hurricane
(CSX, FEC) and whether Tri-Rail is in full operation again?

reply: dleibold@vm1.yorku.ca
From: Steve_Hooper@mindlink.bc.ca (Steve Hooper)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Empire Builder Lost? (was: LIRR Joke)
Date: 7 Oct 92 20:25:56 GMT
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada

> Dan Meyer writes:
>
> This supposedly happened, shortly after Amtrak took over the actual
> operation
> of their own trains in this part of the country.  The westbound builder
> didn't
> throw a manual switch to get on the BN line to the west coast, and ended up
> traveling up some industrial trackage on the Minneapolis - St.Paul border.
>
> when the train did't show up, the dispatcher got worried and called by
> radio,
> asking about the train's whereabouts. they replied that they went through
> park junction about 20 minutes ago; the dispatcher said that they hadn't
> shown
> up on his ctc machine so he asked somebody ( probably a frieght waiting for
> amtrak to pass ) if they had seen the train. finally, the dispatcher asked
> the
> amtrak crewmember to describe what they saw around them, and this is when
> they
> figured out that they were seriously lost and took the train the wrong way!


Call me a non-believer or a story wrecker, but I find this hard to believe.
Train crews MUST be familiar with the territory they are on, otherwise a
pilot from that particular area MUST be called.

--

 steve_hooper@mindlink.bc.ca   []  Conductor on the High Iron of
 OR      a777@mindlink.bc.ca   []     CP Rail - Cascade Sub
 The Great White North in      []
 Vancouver, BC CANADA          []   Opinions are mine, NOT CP's
From: chrisp@regenmeister.Sun.COM (Chris Prael)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: SP logo
Date: 13 Oct 1992 20:21:38 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: regenmeister

From article <1992Oct9.213551.15532@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>, by zephyr@cory.Berkeley.EDU (COIFMAN):
> 
>  while driving US101 between San Francisco and San Jose, there is one or
> two ex-SP (now the pinsula commutr line) overpasses that have the old SP
> logo on them. I believe there is similar SP overpass on the way to Santa
> Cruz from San Jose.

Not quite.  The SP logo was white on a black background.  These logos
are SFSP because they are yellow on a boxcar red background.

Chris Prael
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
From: jbvb@vax.ftp.com  (James B. VanBokkelen)
Subject: Re: Diesel vs. Electric Locomotive Maintenance
Nntp-Software: PC/TCP NNTP
Reply-To: jbvb@ftp.com
Organization: FTP Software, Inc., Wakefield, MA
Distribution:  usa
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 16:17:59

In article <1992Oct7.182321.1992@athena.mit.edu> sathomas@athena.mit.edu (Stephen A Thomas) writes:

    ...  stretches of catenary along the NEC Connecticut Shore Line which
    obviously still exist from the New Haven era due to the triangle structure
    of the attachments.  This means that it has not needed replacement for
    approx. 20 years!

It's actually a lot older than that, most of the metal other than the contact
wire dates from the original electrification before WW I.

Regarding the underlying issue, North American electric locomotives have
tended to remain in service 30 or more years, which is fairly uncommon
in diesels.  Part of this may be that diesel technology has advanced
quickly, rendering the older locos obsolete, but some does reflect that
electrics are simpler than diesels (on a per-HP basis at least).

James B. VanBokkelen		2 High St., North Andover, MA  01845
FTP Software Inc.		voice: (508) 685-4000  fax: (508) 794-4488
From: ajw@squid.mel.dit.CSIRO.AU (Andrew Waugh)
Newsgroups: rec.railroad
Subject: Re: Tramway/trolley gauges
Date: 14 Oct 92 03:25:06 GMT
Organization: CSIRO, Division of Information Technology, Melbourne

In article <1992Oct13.161431.7462@sq.sq.com> msb@sq.sq.com (Mark Brader) writes:
>>   The Landport and Southsea Tramway Company was authorized in
>>   1863 to lay a line from Portsmouth Town Station to Clarence Pier, a
>>   distance of a little over a mile.  It was opened in 1865 with grooved
>>   rails and a gauge of 4ft. 7 3/4in., this being chosen so that ordinary
>>   railway wagons and carriages could use it.  Though there is no
>>   evidence that in fact they did so ...
>
>But this doesn't make sense, unless (a) the gauge is being measured in
>a way different from railway practice, or (b) the wheels are riding on
>the tracks in a nonstandard way.

(b) is the correct answer. The railway wheels are running on the edge
of their flanges.

The problem is that railway flanges are deeper than normal tramway
flanges. Therefore, the distance between the tips of the flanges
on railway wheels is slightly less than the distance between the
flanges of tramway stock running on 4' 8 1/2" gauge.

If you want railway and tramway stock to run on the same street
trackage, you have two options. You can use non-standard girder rail
with deeper grooves; but rolling a non-standard rail is very
expensive. Alternatively, you can narrow the tram gauge so that
the flanges of the railway wheels run in the grooves.

New South Wales had a number of tramways isolated from the main
tramway system. It was common to transfer stock amongst the systems
by running it over the railways, hauled behind a standard steam
tram motor. The only problem was that tramway rolling stock had
shallow flanges and had to be run at slow speed over points and
crossings to prevent derailments.

There were also a few tramways in N.S.W. which carried standard 4
wheeled railway goods trucks; again hauled behind standard steam motors.
The tramway stock on these lines were fitted with railway profile
wheels. I don't know about the rail; but I would guess that it would
be standard flat bottom (railway) rail in dirt roads.

Incidentally, with all this talk about gauges, I am surprised that
no one has mentioned that the 'standard' gauge of the much of the
railways in the South of the U.S.A. around the turn of the century
was 4'9". This was close enough to 4' 8 1/2" that freight and passenger
cars built to 4' 8 1/2" could run on the lines; albeit roughly.

andrew waugh
Newsgroups: rec.railroad