Rolling Stock

My father had an eye for interesting rolling stock. Driving by one day after work in the winter of 1986, the unusually low number (only 3 digits!) on this otherwise ubiquitous 50' Southern box caught his attention, and later that week we drove across town to snap a photo before the local carried it away.

Unusual tidbits like this made living at the end of a tired old branchline quite fun for this boy-railfan. When our ICG branch was still supporting two locals a week, it was a great adventure to figure out from the car window, driving through town, what rolling stock had arrived and what had departed with every new turn. Gondolas for the scrap yard, covered hoppers for the feed distributor, and frequent boxes ... for the lumber company, the ag supplier, and -- in the case of Southern's #145 -- the local beer distributor. From who-knows-where, half a dozen cars full of who-knows-what made their way to our little town of Covington week after week. That is, until the traffic gave out and rails paved over.

In the 1960s, my father worked as the electrical engineer for the municipal electric system in Huntsville, Al. In 1966, an order was placed with Westinghouse Electric for a mobile substation for temporary use during outages or line reconstruction (left). In December of that year, dad received a call from the Southern Railway agent that a flatcar had been left in town by the day's local, ready for delivery. The mobile substation was fresh from the factory, with masking paper still over the rubber tires from the spray painting process. Despite the fresh appearance, however, closer inspection revealed that the substation had been damaged in rail shipment to Huntsville. The Southern was instructed to pick up the flat on the next local and reroute its cargo to Birmingham for repairs by Westinghouse, but not before dad rode out to the siding with his Twin Reflex to snap a series of photos of Erie flat #7012 and its damaged goods.

In the winter of 1959, while working for Gulf Power in the Florida panhandle, dad photographed the company's diminutive Vulcan tank engine bringing a large piece of new equipment -- a steam turbine -- to the site of an electrical generating plant still under construction. The crew pulled the impressive Erie depressed-center flatcar from the L&N interchange down toward the construction site, pausing halfway at the crest of the spur to rig up a makeshift braking system before descending the long grade down to the station. The car rides of four 2-axle trucks, with the weight of the depressed center balanced over each two-truck pair. For the complete series of pictures, see our Gulf Power industrial collection.