Double Headed NYC Hudsons on an N&W Coal Drag - Huh???

The N&W delivered coal to the NYC at Columbus, OH. for shipment north to the steel mills along the Great Lakes.

I guess when there is a load to move, you move it with whatever power is available.

Hard to tell for sure from the shots you posted but they "appear"
to be empty( at least the first two anyway). Considering what Big Jim mentioned is it possible the hudsons are returning empties?

Interesting topic Nick thanks for posting the shots!

Thanks for the info Jim. And Rick, unfortunately it was only about 10 seconds worth of shaky footage so those were the best shots I could pick out. The first few do look empty.

This arrangement still sounds about as typical as a Big Boy in revenue passenger service...

Those engines look beautiful pulling anything!  Very interesting.

Art

Very interesting Nick. Thank for posting this.

Or an N&W J on a coal train. Hey, it really happened!

Nick,

Here is a thought. With all of that customizing you are doing to your Hudsons, why don't you take a couple and bash them into an NYC 4-6-6-4? That ought to look good on the head end of a hopper train.

Great shots, Nick 'specially from a screen capture!

So nice, I saved a copy 

Best,

Dave

Wow.  Its sort of asking a dozen quarter horses to pull the Budwieser beer wagon instead of eight Clydesdales - just doesn't make sense.

I have that video, I believe there is also a shot of double head Niagara's pulling a not long passenger train. NYC just loves speed. Double click the image so you can read it 

if  pulling a coal train delayed these steamers from being retired and destroyed then it was well worth it. i would have put anything behind a hudson or niagria even if it was tofc or stacks. it was acrime to the railroad community that none were ever saved.-jim 

You guys don't seem to realize that in the waning days of steam, a locomotive was a locomotive. The roundhouse didn't care whether it was a Hudson, a Mike or a Mohawk. If it ran, it was assigned to whatever train was next.

A couple of Hudsons on a coal train would do just fine.

Could have happened anywhere on NYCS in the '50s, perhaps even earlier.  Long retired Big Four engineer, Billy "the kid" Vom Hofe, told me years ago at the Columbus railroad show, about the heaviest train he ever saw started with a single steamer...was a Central J1 Hudson with working booster and 7600 tons. He was traveling at the time, not working. Hudsons with freight are not real common, but are certainly well documented.

Very nice shots Nick.

Thanks,

Alex

Nick:

GREAT shots - THANKS for sharing! 

Incidentally, my VL Hudson is currently pulling a consist of 9800 "Standard O" reefers and boxcars:

Stroh's, B&O Sentinel, Schaefer, GT Reefer, Miller, UP, and Clark.

Pulling up the rear is NYC low cupola caboose #6907.

Entire consist, sans engine, is US MADE! 

Great picture captures!

Those locomotives look great.

Now I am having second thoughts about the very same locomotive (MTH Premier Hudson) I just posted in the For Sale forum earlier today.

Thank you for posting.

Alex

Jim, 

Did these trains operate on the Ohio Central towards Toledo or up the Big Four towards Cleveland? I would imagine that the usual power, prior to the waning days of steam, would have been Mohawks.

I'm very familiar with the N&W/PRR operations to Sandusky, which involved N&W As and PRR Js. 

I guess I should have realized that there was more than one routing/destination for Pocahontas coal traffic via Columbus.

Really nice pics.

Nick, I lived in Buffalo in 1975-79, going to med school. Those 4 years had horrendous snow totals. I can remember a news broadcast that talked about the N&W bring coal to the Bethlehem Steel Plant in Lackawanna. Snow was put in the hoppers for the return south to help get rid of it!

Peter

NYCRR would use new locos for a"break in" period on freight runs. If the engine broke down on a passenger run there would be **** to pay.

These are J-1 Hudsons trailing PT tenders, so they are definitely not new.

Many roads would break in engines on local freights after shopping them, since the frequent stops, starts and reversing were what you would desire during break-in operation.

But I concur with Rich Melvin's comments above.

This was most likely a case of the Central squeezing some remaining value out of motive power that had been bumped from its intended job.

Mr.Melvin, and some others, are correct, of course. Power is power, and the NYC 4-6-4 was

a big, powerful steam locomotive. Much of the "specialness" concerning things

railroady has been the romanticizing of every-day things done for utilitarian reasons.

This is a fan-disease (we all have it), and naturally occurs in all hobby fields. Ever heard anyone wax poetic about those "great" cars of the 1960's? Of course you have. I was there. They weren't that great.

I love seeing locomotives being used in unexpected ways. In one of my books - part

of the "Trackside Around such-and-such City" (I forget which one), there is a

nice color shot of a NYC J1 Hudson at the head of a MOW work train, sitting on the

siding, waiting for the order to move to the next work site.

Probably potentially one of the fastest MOW trains ever. 

I do know fully well about the multiple-uses any steam locomotive saw in the twilight of that era. What struck me about this particular train was that it was a completely unrelated road's coal drag, and I was just curious what arrangement the two companies had in order to produce such an unusual train. Big Jim answered that early on.

I definitely want to see this MoW train now! 

Not sure if you already knew, but a homegrown NYC 4-6-6-4 actually did get as far as the drawing board. A while back there was an article about it in the NYCSHS "Central Headlight". Basically it was going to be an articulated Niagara:

Did anyone here on the Forum have any personal experience with a real Hudson back then?

People who vividly remember a living breathing NYC Hudson are probably a rare and dying breed nowadays. The last one was scrapped in 1956 IIRC, so the youngest possible person to have any clear recollection would be around 64. (Accounting for lack of memory in infancy and toddler years I am picking a person born in 1950 and 6 years old by the time the last one was scrapped).

Just to make sure everyone here knows, the NYC 4-6-6-4 pictured above was the subject of an article in the Central Headlight, 3rd Quarter 2002.  It's a "what if" design, and although based on actual NYC clearances, concepts and types of service, it's strictly imaginary.  "Dr. Richard Leonard" has a builder's photo of it on his website that's positively spooky.  It looks real, even to me!

J on Coal happens all the time on my layout

PC9850 - I'll try to find exactly which book contains the "Hudson MOW train" and post 

it here. My scanner is not working, else I would scan the photo it and try to post it. It's amusing to see.

=====> found it: Eugene Van Dusen, "New York Central Trackside", 1997, pages 65 (#5303) and 69 (#5292).

-----------

Per NYC Challenger (a loco that made sense on the Water Level Route only as an even

better response to the diesel-electric than the already imposing Niagara), I have a

wasted-in-the-box Williams UP brass Challenger...I have an "extra" Williams brass Niagara...I have been known to attack locomotives with hacksaw and Moto-Tool...

I know how to lengthen a boiler...I've thought about this (I'm familiar with the

Central Headlight article)...but I really hope somebody else does it.

The UP chassis with the (longer) Niagara boiler and all the NYC-flavored bits (pilot, etc) transferred to the 4-6-6-4 - this is intriguing. There's a major detail problem, though: the UP Jabelmann Challengers used Walschaerts valve gear, and the NYC Kiefer Niagaras,

Hudsons and Mohawks used Baker gear - so that would be an authenticity problem for me. Building new valve gear is not in my skill set. The other details are just things to change.

---------

Plus - if this were done, we'd have a left-over UP Challenger boiler and a left-over

Niagara chassis/frame...locate an Allegheny trailing truck...freelance 4-8-6, anyone?

Burlington Hudsons worked freight trains regularly from about 1948, on. As diesels took over all class 1 passenger trains, the Hudsons became surplus, but they were modern power on the Burlington. #'s 4002 and 4003 regularly worked out of Lincoln (Lines West) to Omaha/Council Bluffs and to Ravenna on 80 car freights. By 1954-1956, they were frequently double-headed with O5 4-8-4's.

       Over on Lines East, the Hudsons worked the Tri-Cities Merchandise, the Galesburg Dead Freight, Stock train extras. It has been described how Hudson powered freights used to stall occaisionly on suburban Westmont  "hill", the train would have to be cut in half, the front half dropped in the Downers Grove yard, then  the Hudson would scurry back to retrieve the second half. Frequently the Congress Park assigned Baldwin diesel switcher would shove Hudson powered freight trains all the way to Downers Grove. 

        Canadian Pacific regularly used it's handsome Hudsons on freight trains, across the system.

        If anyone had suggested that NYC Hudsons would have been found double-heading a coal train, that someone would have been laughed out of the room. Nice.....photographic evidence!