More pictures of Whitcombs in the Middle East: Above and below are WD 71201 and 71592, both photographed by Ernie Jones at Beirut on 18.01.1945 The third picture is of WD 71555 with cab armour plating, taken at Az-Zib locomotive depot on 26.06.1945 by R.E. Tustin Chen
Fantastic Chen, where are you finding these? Any details about the photographers? The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has a few Whitcomb photos - http://www.rrmuseumpa.org/ including the original negative from WW II of the camouflaged 65 ton Diesels in Africa: I would like to put this into Wikipedia commons and attach it to the Whitcomb article. Steve
I don't know about the last one from PA. I suspect it was Army Signal Corps since they were taken in Africa during the war and would be in the theater of operations and I doubt that civillian photographers would be allowed in those areas. Steve
From Railway Preservation News forum and a member that found these photographs. The Leatherwood Museum, in Oakdale, Louisiana, has a 650 photograph collection of photographs taken by local photographer Harold Hudgens in 1941 and 1942 in fullfillment of a U.S.Army contract to document the construction of the Claiborne and Polk Military Railroad. Included in these photos are pictures of British War Department 65 ton armored Whitcomb units #1242 and 1243. Steve
Steve - thanks for the references to the wonderful and important shots! The photographs I uploaded are from the collection of the Israel Railway Museum (of which I am the manager). Most of them are from the estate of the late Paul Cotterell, and were taken by British service man who served in the Middle East and also happened to be railway enthusiasts. Chen
I don't recall ever seeing remnants of the Claiborne-Polk Military Railroad, while I was at Fort Polk. That was over forty years ago. I have a copy of a (Trains Magazine?) article done on that operation. I need to do a page of my few train order examples from that operation.
Chen, I consider you a gold mine for my research and anything I can do to pay you back I will do ! You will absolutely be mentioned in my book along with the Israel Railway Museum. This spring our local museum in Rochelle - which currently has a Whitcomb WW II display up - will have you and with your permission some of your fantastic photographs included in a permanent display with proper credit going to you and your museum. If you have biographical information on Paul Cotterell or any of the British service men I would love to read about them. Steve
You know more than I do. I never heard of the Claiborne-Polk Military Railroad before this gent in the other forum brought it to my attention. Did you serve in the Army down there? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Claiborne Steve
Do you have it? Can it be scanned? You might like this: [video=youtube;kz54FcA4wqA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz54FcA4wqA[/video] Starting around the 3:30 mark is a Whitcomb running and building a train. It is a 65-DE-14a with armour plating. Steve
What I have is a photocopy of the article. PM me your email address. I'll try to get it scanned some time tomorrow. Interesting video. I wish it covered more about the territory. Would be fun to see the landscape, stations, etc.
Just PM'd you my email address. The gent in the other forum found this video and alerted it to me. It is the best quality film from WW II of operating Whitcombs I have yet to see. Steve
Yup, got it and thank you Boxcab. I might hunt around for that issue on ebay. This will definitley get put into the book with the Whitcombs operating there. Interesting orders from the website. Are those yours? Steve
Yes. That is my site, and those are a part of my collection. I also have a few examples from both the ETO and PTO. Much more to add to the web site pages, but that will be a lot of work.
I think I can help you. I just received an email this weekend from a gent who might have what you are looking for. I will PM you with his email. He sent me yet more photographs of Whitcombs and some others of the Claiborne-Polk military railroad. He says that about 650 photographs exist from WW II in this collection that he has scanned. http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=209874#p209874 PM has been sent. Steve
Steve, You are welcome to use the info and photos in relevant museal displays. Below is a quote from the introduction I wrote for the English edition of Paul Cotterell's second and last book, "Make Straight the Way", published by Israel Railways in 2009: Paul Cotterell, the author of this work, was born on 9[SUP]th[/SUP] July 1944 in Birmingham, England, but later made Israel his adopted homeland, loving this country until his very last day. Paul first arrived in Israel in 1968 as a volunteer at Kibbutz Bet Ha'Emek, drawn by the descriptions he had read about the Jewish Holocaust and by an affinity to the Jewish People which these awoke in him. As a lifelong railway enthusiast he immediately started to devote most of his spare time to the study of the local railways, past, present and future, in Israel and in the Middle East in general. Following the publication of his first book, The Railways of Palestine and Israel in 1984 (Tourret Publishing, Abingdon), Paul became known as a worldwide expert on the subject and later published hundreds of articles which updated, completed and expanded on the book. He helped in the establishment of the Israel Railway Museum and following a period in Canada, returned to Israel and started working as a signalman. During a decade in this job he was stationed in signal boxes in Zichron Ya'akov, Tel Aviv Central and Haifa Central, amongst others, until he was transferred in the late 1990s to the Railway Museum to help in establishing the historical archives there. Paul's interests included trains of all types and sizes, but he was especially fond of steam locomotives, steam machines and industrial railways. Appropriately, these are very well represented in the current work, despite the complete lack of steam locomotives in Israel upon Paul's arrival here and the minuscule and diminishing number of industrial systems. His passion for photography is also represented in these pages, in the pictures he always aspired to endow with artistic qualities. The idea for the creation of the current album arose shortly after publication of Paul's first book. There were many more photographs that Paul thought would interest fellow enthusiasts and students of this subject, which he could not fit into the first publication. He continued to collect these pictures and items of information for almost a further quarter of a century, and prepared the accompanying text and captions, but he didn't live to see his work completed. Paul passed away unexpectedly on 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] May 2007, around noon, while engaged on museum business in the Qishon Workshops of Israel Railways. The circumstances of his last day were in a way symbolic of his work, as his death occurred in the country's former centre of steam locomotive expertise, while marking historic passenger coaches destined to be preserved in Jaffa Station, the country's first railway station. Chen
