Steam Doubleheaders

[NW Mailing List]

I remember the coal trestle near the Durham shop, but I recall that it 
was a private trestle for transferring coal from a railway car to an 
automotive truck.  When I worked in Durham, the locomotives were 
refueled by a Norfolk style skip hoist (which I operated many times) 
whose bucket was fed from two below-the-track hoppers (whose discharge 
doors I opened and closed many times) on the two  tracks where coal cars 
were spotted (one track for yard coal and one track for road coal--both 
of which coal types I often had to manually coax from the cars by 
pounding on the sides with a mallet or by prying the coal loose with a 
long pole that I would poke downward into the coal after climbing on top 
the coal pile in the car.)  No coal shakers here.

This brief  detail about just one phase of servicing may give an idea of 
the work required when a large locomotive, such as a Y class, showed up 
in a small shop with limited staff like Durham.

Gordon Hamilton

On 2/6/2021 6:58 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:
> Herb,
> Do you go visit the old Woodsdale station at the Site of the 
> Clarksville Station Steakhouse?  It looks good.
>
> Gordon,
> The coal trestle at the Durham Shops site is still standing.  Hope you 
> are doing well.
>
> Chuck Stewart
> Bahama (Durham County), NC
>
>> On Feb 6, 2021, at 4:05 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List 
>> <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
>>
>>  Gordon
>> I feel for you guys in the shops. How much time did you all have to 
>> service & turn the “Y’s”?  Sounds like a lot of tonnage moving 
>> between Lynchburg & Durham during those years.  This was pre-Hyco & 
>> Mayo coal movements.  Do you remember what the freight consist was 
>> that would require so much motive power? Was it mostly overhead 
>> traffic to be interchanged or mostly destined to N&W served customers?
>> My uncle, R. G. Robertson was the station master @ Woodsdale. My 
>> earliest memories were of watching the sets Alcos roll by with mixed 
>> freight in the late ‘50’s (missed steam daggonnit!).
>> Thanks
>> Herb Edwards
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Feb 6, 2021, at 5:49 AM, NW Mailing List 
>>> <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> I worked as a laborer in the N&W Durham shop the summers of 1954-56 
>>> and I heard much mention of a "Winfall pusher.  This pusher assisted 
>>> freight trains out of Lynchburg's Island Yard, up the stiff 2.6 
>>> percent grade to 12th Street and on another 16 miles to Winfall 
>>> where so-named pushers cut off to go back to Island Yard.  Some 
>>> pushers, however, continued on the train all of the way to Durham.  
>>> These were Y class steam locomotives and when two came in on a train 
>>> it put quite a strain on us laborers and other crafts in that small, 
>>> sparsely-equipped shop to get them serviced.  You can imagine what 
>>> we felt on one memorable day when a train came from Lynchburg with 
>>> double-headed Ys on the head end and a Y pusher on the rear--all of 
>>> which needed servicing!
>>>
>>> Gordon Hamilton
>>>
>>> On 2/5/2021 1:49 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:
>>>> Quite often, in steam days, time freights were pushed all the way 
>>>> from Roanoke to Winston-Salem. Even, in the diesel era, Belews 
>>>> Creek coal trains are pushed on the Punkin Vine.
>>>>
>>>> Dick Kimball
>>>>
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