Railroad Forums 

Discussion relating to the Penn Central, up until its 1976 inclusion in Conrail. Visit the Penn Central Railroad Historical Society for more information.

Moderator: JJMDiMunno

 #690570  by FL9711
 
The LIRR west side rail yards are not the same yards that were once there. I think it was in 1986 they were built. This is what the 72nd street yard looked like:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=1032983

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=519618

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=299940

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... id=1218340
 #692107  by TomNelligan
 
The Tenth Legion wrote:With regard to that head-on collision, what were the circumstances? Were there fatalities? Were the locomotives involved scrapped? Thanks.
The answers to your questions are in the comments by photographer Dick Hovey in the link that Otto posted... just scroll down on that page. At the time Trains ran the photos of J. C. Smith Jr., who also comments on that page. His shots, taken earlier, showed the locomotives rather disturbingly stacked on top of each other before the cleanup began.
 #706790  by Penn Central
 
I can comment on the circumstances as I learned about them in rules classes during my early career. The southbound had received a trainorder at DV to come south on track one against the current of traffic. The northbound received a signal to go north because the operator believed that it was making a yard move, which wasn't the case. The investigation found several mistakes on the trainorder of the southbound that should have made them unacceptable.
 #714794  by narig01
 
This really kind of caught my curiosity. I lived on Riverside Dr across from Grants Tomb as a child from when I was born to 1968 when I was 9 years old. The wreck really caught my attention(especially as I don't remember it). If you look in the backround you see Riverside Church(the gothic tower in the backround). The Neptune Sign you see in the up middle right of the picture was on 125th st. There is an apartment building there now.
Also Swift had a meat processing plant of some sort @ 125th st under Riverside Dr. I do remember they were getting carloads during the 60's & 70's.(If you look at the picture of PC 8685 there is a refridgerated car in the foreground) They had a dock on the upper floors of the building. This building is now a food market of some kind. As I remember it the New York Times had a printing plant adjacent to the 72nd st yard(60th st?).
I am not sure about this but as I remember it I think I remember seeing U-25's and Alco FA's coming out of the overbuild. I am not sure if this memory is what I saw or a picture. Also the North Portal out of the overbuild under riverside park had a telltale into the 70's.(these were a set of small ropes hanging from an overhead to let brakemen know there was a tunnel or other lo clearance ahead). The last time I remember seeing the telltales most of the ropes were gone.
Rgds IGN
 #901744  by Nyland8
 
I recognized the distant wall with the two obelisks, so I just went down to photograph the location. The train wreck that appears in the "infamous photo" in question was located @ 147th Street. One can obtain a view nearly comparable to the camera position when the photo was taken by descending the stairs from River Side Drive at 148th street, going over the pedestrian bridge and looking southward. Just past the more recently installed black iron fencing it is easy to see that the cap stones of the wall were never replaced after the accident. They are still strewn about precisely where the train cars dislodged them. Rather than impacting the wall, the train cars launched themselves upward and came crashing down, so the stone wall which retains the western slope wasn't damaged and no repair was called for. With no reason to repair the wall, it must have been decided not to bother repositioning the displaced cap stones. As such, the evidence of the train wreck remains to this day.