NYC film - Chicago area 1940s

[Schuylkill Valley]

Hi all,
I hope enjoy this old time look of the New York Central, The film was taken by The late Sam Parks of Chicago, Ill. in the 1940's with 16mm film . The information was provided by Mr. Parks it was written on the back of the film box. I bought this film off E bay last year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhMQa6gaUrU

Len

[BR&P]

Very cool - thanks for posting!

It would have been nice to see even ONE freight, but it's sure way better than nothing.

[Schuylkill Valley]

Well the "The Mail Train Limited" was sorta like freight.

Len.

[Allen Hazen]

As BR&P said, "Very cool - thanks for posting!"
--
Several shots of Hudsons accelerating away from the platform seemed to show large puffs of steam from between the engine and tender. Is this exhaust from trailing-truck boosters?

[NYC1956]

As BR&P said, "Very cool - thanks for posting!"
--
Several shots of Hudsons accelerating away from the platform seemed to show large puffs of steam from between the engine and tender. Is this exhaust from trailing-truck boosters?

That was my guess, too. Steam loco seemed to have steam oozing from every place, didn't they?
Steam was fed to the booster on the fireman's side. The exhaust line was on the engineer's side. Trouble is that it wasn't vented there. On the J-1e and J-2 Hudsons it was piped up front and exhausted through the small auxiliary stack located behind the main smoke stack. The J-3a Hudsons had the booster exhaust routed to the rear tender deck.

I still think what we are seeing is booster exhaust. The reason being that the steam lines had flexible joints which were required because the rear truck was able to swing on curves. There had to be considerable leakage at these movable joints.
--Mike

[Allen Hazen]

NYC1956--
Thank you for the additional information. I thought I remembered about the auxiliary stack for booster exhaust, didn't know the configuration was changed on the J-3. (Routing exhaust steam to the rear of the tender makes sense, intuitively-- run the pipe through the reservoir and it will do something, though perhaps not much, to warm the water. But it involves another point of flexibility-- between engine and tender-- that it will be hard to keep steam-tight.)
There was a certain amount of tender-swapping, and if a J3 ever got an older tender (they were more likely to get big, Niagara-style, seven-axle tenders) there wouldn't have been proper piping, so... I had wondered, without any information to go on, if the booster exhaust had been "simplified" on some Hudsons, but simple leakage through flexible connections may be enough to produce the clouds of steam we saw.
Thanks again for the information. ... People who were familiar with booster-equipped steam must be getting rare: questions about what it was like in practice may be answerable only by looking at old films!

[wilwel1024]

As BR&P said, "Very cool - thanks for posting!"
--
Several shots of Hudsons accelerating away from the platform seemed to show large puffs of steam from between the engine and tender. Is this exhaust from trailing-truck boosters?

That was my guess, too. Steam loco seemed to have steam oozing from every place, didn't they?
Steam was fed to the booster on the fireman's side. The exhaust line was on the engineer's side. Trouble is that it wasn't vented there. On the J-1e and J-2 Hudsons it was piped up front and exhausted through the small auxiliary stack located behind the main smoke stack. The J-3a Hudsons had the booster exhaust routed to the rear tender deck.

I still think what we are seeing is booster exhaust. The reason being that the steam lines had flexible joints which were required because the rear truck was able to swing on curves. There had to be considerable leakage at these movable joints.
--Mike

Perhaps I misunderstand, but are you indicating that the trailing truck on a hudson had drive wheels?

[NYC1956]

Perhaps I misunderstand, but are you indicating that the trailing truck on a hudson had drive wheels?

Yes. Many steam locomotives used a small steam powered engine to increase tractive effort, especially for starting a heavy train.
Typically it was installed on the locomotive trailing truck, but some installations were on tender trucks.
--Mike K