I just did some research on the HAGER tower. The roundhouse was demolished in 1999, but there is a museum called the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum. (www.roundhouse.org) They have a Western Maryland style logo, and the home page says the roundhouse complex was a WM engine service facility. The first picture is from Google Images, and shows the Hagerstown Roundhouse. I do not know the date of the picture. The next one is a location I found on Google Earth. There are what appear to be foundations from the large shop buildings still there. The orange circles are the same building, and the red circles look like they are the same street intersection. That would mean that HAGER would be up where the two tracks diverge, next to the baseball field in the Google Earth picture. I found some maps on the Norfolk and Western historical society website (nwhs.com) that show the same location. There is a second map that I did not include. It shows the tracks that disappear off the bottom on the Google Earth picture. They lead to the intersection of Washington and Walnut, which is only a few blocks away from the Google picture. This is another screenshot I took in the same location as the first. The green circle is around the street name, Highland Avenue. The orange circled building can still be seen next to the baseball field. This next image is from the historical society. Highland avenue is circled on that one too. The tracks are slightly different, but the map is from 1913. WMRR is circled in blue where the Roundhouse would be. The purple circle shows the CVRR, The Cumberland Valley. The square buildings are on the map, but it doesn't look like the roundhouse was built yet. The yellow circle is where HAGER should be. I would say that the tower was WM controlled, since most of the action around it would probably be for the roundhouse. Hardcoaler's picture shows WM tracks heading straight to the roundhouse, and Cumberland tracks diverging where the car is.
Thank you Mr. Trainiac -- cool stuff. You got me to thinkin' and I found a Bing Map that I edited to cover the same area, with north at the top. We can faintly see the footprint of the old roundhouse.
That picture shows PRR tracks that cross over the WM tracks behind the tower. On the map I found, they were Cumberland tracks, now owned by PRR. It could have been a PRR tower. When I didn't even see PRR on the junction, I just assumed it was WM. I found this (http://list.nwhs.org/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/Week-of-Mon-20160509/024287.html) about the towers. It says there were two in Hagerstown, one north of the station at the Cumberland WM crossing. That looks to be this one. It gives some pretty good evidence that it was PRR, since it was constructed in 1930 and ran by PRR employees. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_Valley_Railroad) shows in the "Demise" section, that a branch went to the HAGER tower, so it looks like I was wrong about it being a WM junction. The tower was most likely PRR by the time of your picture.
At one time, this sign hung in Houston Union Station. Back in the good old days, some folks would flee the hot, humid Houston summers by heading north. This advertisement was to entice them to take the Twin Star Rocket in order to get there. (yours truly on the right)
It was donated to the Gulf Coast Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. It has been in the collection since the Rock Island pulled the train off. After the chapter museum was evicted from their former site in north east Houston a few years ago, everything has been in storage in various places until we get moved into our new site in Tomball, Texas. This sign was somehow stuffed into the car in the background, which has since been sold to the museum in Chandler, Arizona. We were making a sweep of the interior of the car when we found it in an upper birth behind the curtains. We decided it was more appropriate for it to stay in the Houston area and not go to Arizona. Besides, our new museum site will be along the old Burlington-Rock Island tracks where the Twin Star Rocket used to roll. They are now maintained by the BNSF.
By the look of the cab (beveled inward from just below the windows), it looks like an old export or army unit, RS-1 or RSD-1. I'd opt for the latter, looking at the brake cylinders on the trucks. That's part of the box for the train set (it does look like cool box cover art).
Interesting, it says that that loco was scrapped in 1972. That slide was taken in late May of 1972, so it must've been shortly before that RSD-1 was cut up.
Another Carl Nelson shot, this one of the funky Track Welder cobbled together by the Holland Company from a former Santa Fe RPO.
Does it really say "NTRAK WELDER CAR" on the side? Would not take much to get rid of the extra "i". Looks like a former RPO car was used for the conversion.
View attachment 180204 About the shortest Z train I've seen in awhile! Possibly dropped a part of the train in Tacoma, before heading to Seattle. MP26.4x, Sumner Wa today.
Interesting day today! Caught Longmont Local making up their train for the day. A pair of GE's and an SD60M. Coupled power to train and left! Thought I might be able to catch north of town, at Highland. Found another train at Highland, apparently just finished picking something up. Backed up to train, sitting in siding. Local showed up a few minutes later! Interesting, because the local then dropped the SD60 off, picked up train and continued. Eventually, they couple their train to the southbound freight! The crew from the freight, eventually went back, and picked up the SD60. What I figured would be a quick meet, turned into a 4 1/2-5 hour event! 90% on the time, spent waiting for something to happen! Freight train powered by an ES44DC, ES44C4, ES44C4 Local power was a pair of GE8-40B, and an EMD SD60M.
Even the prototype! Looked like this pushed, or pulled! Slow moving, since it was being switched in town.
I am guessing the car at left had some sort of cushioning device, and the assembly has some significant wear.
