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  • Air Ship follows wrong tracks to crash land in South Amboy

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New Jersey
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New Jersey

Moderator: David

 #1405693  by Tom_E_Reynolds
 
While doing some research on the RRRR, I came across this fascinating story of the first Air Ship to cross over New Jersey in 1910. The plan was to follow the Pennsylvania Railroad Mainline from Philadelphia to Elizabeth, where he would then fly west to NY.

But apparently he had engine troubles over Metuchen, gets confused, and follows the Lehigh Valley tracks to Perth Amboy, where he then crash lands in the meadows at South Amboy.
The New York Times hosted the contest, the first to fly “round trip” between two cities, and chartered a special “chase train” to follow the plane.

There is a grainy train shot of the train \ plane at Monmouth Junct.

http://raritanriver-rr.com/home/history ... june-1910/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anybody know if there are more train \ plane pictures of this event?
I expect there are more somewhere, as this was a pretty big event in 1910.
 #1406014  by GSC
 
Great story. Thanks for posting it.

The daring-do of those early aviators!

As fragile as those early planes were, all he had to do after he crashed was install a new prop and then fly again. Amazing.
 #1406595  by mmi16
 
Tom_E_Reynolds wrote:While doing some research on the RRRR, I came across this fascinating story of the first Air Ship to cross over New Jersey in 1910. The plan was to follow the Pennsylvania Railroad Mainline from Philadelphia to Elizabeth, where he would then fly west to NY.

But apparently he had engine troubles over Metuchen, gets confused, and follows the Lehigh Valley tracks to Perth Amboy, where he then crash lands in the meadows at South Amboy.
The New York Times hosted the contest, the first to fly “round trip” between two cities, and chartered a special “chase train” to follow the plane.

There is a grainy train shot of the train \ plane at Monmouth Junct.

http://raritanriver-rr.com/home/history ... june-1910/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Anybody know if there are more train \ plane pictures of this event?
I expect there are more somewhere, as this was a pretty big event in 1910.
Amazing that planes could get off the ground in those days considering the size of the male appendages necessary to contemplate flying those aircraft.