Page 3 - January February 1997

CUPOLA
...FROM THE EDITOR
ROUNDHOUSE FEBRUARY 1997
CONSIST...
CUPOLA 3
PRESIDENT’S CAR 4
AN OPEN LETTER... 4
Sylvia Holland
LAYOUT OF THE MONTH 4
Paul Doggett
RAILFANNING THE B&M 6
Chris Hopper
AN ALCO IN OXON 7
Keith Webb
BEANERY & UNCOUPLED CARS 7 TIMETABLE 9 OUT & ABOUT 10 HEY THERE! Info from John Hey 12 AGM MINUTES 1996 12 Steve Park
A FEW NYC ITEMS 14
Tom Ingram
WHY NOT O SCALE 14
Lawson Little
REGISTRAR NEWS 16 OBITUARIES 16 RAILROAD REVIEW 17 CONSTRUCTORS' CORNER 19 Popular Vote Contest - Operations on
an Exhibition Layout - Athearn Dash- 9 Modifications
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FEBRUARY 1997 3
1918, but they did not understand the dif- ference between an ancient 2-10-2 and a Texas, or between an old 2-8-8-2 Mallet and a Challenger. (To throw an even sharper focus on the problem, another D.P.Morgan essay quotes a reliable source as stating that as at 1935 90% of all American locos rated as obsolete!)
Apart from the growth of Super Power from around 1924, during the Depression the railroads had had to hone every fibre of their being to just stay alive economically, and some of the results had shown up in vastly improved traffic control and signalling, more organised operations at places like ports (often a congested, stagnating shambles in the first War) and the great improvement not only in loco- motive speed and power, but their ability to stay out on the road for longer - shorter servicing times, quick turnarounds and less time in the back shops.
All kinds of obscure (to non-railroad- ers) technical advances came together - roller bearings, cast steel engine beds and endless other engineering improvements, resulted in the far smaller number of loco- motives producing over twice the passen- ger/miles in 1944 [compared to 1918] and nearly twice the freight revenue ton/miles. This was achieved with only just over half the freight cars and passenger cars too, compared with the earlier date. The employee total however had risen from 1,200,000 to 1,400,000.
Without this superlative performance under desperate conditions, the American industrial machine would have ground to a halt, the military following suit, and the war in Europe could have been stretched out for years more, or even lost, in spite of the atom bomb.
So when we run those handsome looking Berkshires, and Yellowstones, and Hudsons and Northerns, remember they are not just “a pretty face” - could be they saved the free world, which might not be so hot at present, but it is the only one we’ve got!
Martin Boyask
Browsing through yet an- other unexpected literary ar- rival, an old Kalmbach book called “I Love Trains”, I came across a reference to the rail- roads' contribution to the 1940's war effort. Most mod- ellers have heard of "the Golden Age of Railroading" and I think assume this to be the much-favoured late steam/early diesel era.
This is a good period to model
because you can have so much variety - all that big modern steam alongside brightly coloured cab units and Geeps, lots of Alcos, Baldwins and so on.
However in historical terms, the Golden Age must surely have been the Forties war effort, largely steam powered because there were not yet enough diesels around to have a big impact, and new construction was strictly limited. The David P. Morgan article in “I Love Trains” quotes a very senior military man as having stated that the US military performance, vital though it was, had been overshadowed by that of the railroads.
To see why this is so, we have to look at a certain the lack of “official” aware- ness [in those unconnected with railroad- ing] as to just what had happened since “The First Lot”! Quite senior planners and strategists in Washington DC looked at the available figures, and “knew” that unfortunately the railroad system was doomed to break down under the demands the war would place upon it, within months. They were, of course, wrong. They looked at figures showing that the States had around 42000 locos in 1940, compared with nearly 70000 in
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