Time for "Heater Cars" in the Northeast

Too bad RMT did not make an O&W Peep. While the Peep B-unit would be a bit to small, it would fit in nicely.

Lad

Too bad RMT did not make an O&W Peep. While the Peep B-unit would be a bit to small, it would fit in nicely.

Lad

You are right!

Peter

Thanks for posting the NYO&W photo.  It's hard to not have a soft spot for the O&W, which tried so hard but just didn't succeed.

Here's another favorite picture of mine.....an F3 leaving Kingston, NY and this shot is where the O&W used to cross under the NY State Thruway.

Peter

The old Algoma Central used heater cars because their motive power was GP38-2's.

Rusty

The New York Central built a number of steam heat trailers to facilitate the use of R Class freight motors in passenger service.

Bob 

This is a British "Ethel", or "Electric Train Heat Ex-Locomotive". As their name suggests, they were locomotives with the traction motors disconnected, and the generators used for train heat. The throttle setting usually meant the raucous Sulzer engines drowned out the locomotive that was actually pulling the train.

They had steam generators inside, just like passenger diesels, and supplied steam to the train through the train line steam connections. Some railroads even had "steam injector" type air-condition units, thus the steam not only provided heat in the cold months, but also cool air-conditioning in the hot months, as well as hot water for sinks & showers and dinning cars.

Always enjoy material about the "Old Woman".  Have seen a heater "car" on the Burlington Northern (decommissioned F unit "B", at the Zephyr Pit in Chicago, providing stationary steam) and a Milwaukee Road Hiawatha Hudson tender outfitted with a boiler, in Madison, WI.

Another heater car was build by the Great Northern from an F3B, it was No. 10.  RMC had plans of it back in Feb. '67. 

Here's another pic.....

Peter

I'm sorry.....I just love everything about the O&W.......my birthday cake from June 2007...a little 50 years O&W's demise.

I find the "Heater Cars" a charming chapter of a struggling railroad desperately trying to survive.....

Peter

Brake fluid is readily available for removing old paint.  Spray paint is available all over. Decals can be purchased from several firms.  You can have equipment painted and lettered for any railroad, including your own.

Lee

Liked the NYO&W Otto Kuhler "stream styled" 4-8-2, too.

El Classico - Bet that was the "B" unit steam generator car I saw, as it was in 1982, not that far removed from the Great Northern era. Believe the Big G had some originally constructed 40' steam generator cars in classic clerestory roof passenger car style, too, for use with the Cascade electrics. Mid Continent Ry Museum in North Freedom, WI has one.

Something that has always intrigued me was I presume the NYO&W being  the prime conveyance for Jewish folks headed to the "Borscht Belt" resorts in the Catskills. The OW, from what I have seen, employed some remarkably elderly wooden cars (and remarkably beautiful, from my perspective) in that service. I think of all the Jewish comedians, like Sid Caeser, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Brooks, Buddy Hackett, Jerry Stiller, Henny Youngman, Myron Cohen and many, many who preceeded them, and all the people that enjoyed their humor, in those now defunct Catskill resorts! And "enjoying" the trains of the Old Woman!

Good adaptation. I understand the O&W was too much of a nowhere-to-nowhere route. (apologies to both ends of the line!) I still fancy the name for my own (eventual) layout. It suggests a trans-continental border-straddling US-Canada railroad.

That's interesting to see passenger operation with freight diesels and a home-built heater car. It would make a good kit-bash project. And an excuse to run a "tender" behind a diesel locomotive !

Having grown up a mile or so from the end of the O&W in Scranton, I'll take Firewood's comments seriously

As I walked to Junior High School, I crossed the D&H mainline and Green Ridge yard, either by a bridge or under the viaduct depending on my route. I crossed the O&W line next to the Lackawanna River which at this point was still being used occasionally by the DL&W (actually probably the EL by then). I do remember seeing EL switchers occasionally (although not frequently enough). The D&H was another matter - There was always something active in the yard and roundhouse.

Thirty years later, my in-laws moved from Yonkers to Napanoch, NY, so I had time to explore the O&W.

My parents said that we had visited Kerhonkson, NY the summer before the O&W shut down and thought they had a picture of me next to an O&W train, but never found it. I would have been too young to remember.

I do not think I appreciated the railroad heaven Scranton was in the 50s and early 60s. (and also the multiple trains stores there.) To walk to High School, I had to cross the D&H, DL&W, and Erie.

Our church was just behind the Jersey Central and I remember getting getting reprimanded by the priest when the other Altar Boy and I went to look at trains from the sacristy porch during the homily making the excuse the the censor need a new charcoal.

Those were the days - Happy Thanksgiving

Lad

Love the comments and stories, everyone.....Happy Thanksgiving.

Peter