As part of an engineering convention this past week, I had the opportunity to either take a tour of the St. Louis Museum of Transportation or spend three hours listening to someone talk about 3D modeling software.
Guess which I chose?
From recent comments about the tour of the W.P. Chrysler Museum, published the day before I took this tour, it appears a number of you have been to the St. Louis Museum of Transportation. Whether you have been there or not, many displays keep changing and evolving. So sit back and let’s take a trip.
With my being part of a tour group, we were given a guided tour by Mr. Eastin, a retired English teacher and, as I would later discover, a member of the museum board. Mr. Eastin is in his mid-70’s and has been associated with the museum since he was a teenager. His overwhelming knowledge of the outside exhibits was both captivating and intoxicating; he relayed much more information than what could ever have been conveyed on the simple signs near each exhibit. My hope is to accurately convey what he so thoroughly shared with the group.
Plans for the museum began with a group of physicians in the early 1940’s. At the time, no transportation museum existed in the United States. The founders were met with skepticism by many as, at the time, nobody could comprehend why that were interested in “old junk”. I would counter these gentlemen were true visionaries.
The founding and growth of the museum garnered attention by others. When working there as a teenager and into his early 20’s, Mr. Eastin stated a gentleman wearing a white dress shirt and glasses would spend two to three days there each summer. Mr. Eastin was always curious as to who the man was. He would later discover it was the director of transportation from the Smithsonian Institution; it seems this gentleman was very interested in the success of the museum, as he was concerned its failure would cause all the displays to be given to him – and he didn’t want them!
Were there trains? You bet, so let’s start with those.
Mr. Eastin stated there are fifteen locomotives at the museum which are the sole survivors of their specific type. This steam engine, the famous Norfolk and Western 2156, is not the biggest locomotive ever (or at the museum) but has the distinction of being the most powerful steam engine left in the world. On of the famous N&W Y6a class of 2-8-8-2 four cylinder compound engines, it ultimately had a tractive effort of 166,000 pounds. In a famous 1952 test of steam vs. diesel power, these locomotives were shown to be the equal of a set of four EMD (GM) FT freight diesels in power and efficiency. They operated until at least 1959, and given all the coal the N&W hauled, it was only the maintenance costs that finally caused them to be replaced by diesels.
Originally one of thirty-five, 2156 is the sole survivor of its class, commonly considered to be the ultimate evolution of the big American steam locomotive. Weighing 500 tons, he said this was also one of the most difficult to deliver to the museum. While the museum is still able to access active track a few hundred feet from their location, getting this locomotive across the Mississippi River almost caused a calamity.
The boiler was inoperable at the time of delivery; therefore, a pulling locomotive was attached to the front with another in the rear to allow braking. Mr. Eastin said at the time of delivery, there were thankfully still watchmen at the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. When stopped on the Illinois side, the east side watchman learned the combined weight of the three units; he knew this amount of weight would cause a bridge failure in the first span and all would have likely wound up in the river. After some degree of better planning, the combination was split apart for the crossing and rejoined for the remainder of the trip to the museum.
Mr. Eastin told us the Katy Railroad was one of the few railroads in the United States to not go into receivership during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. He also stated the Katy Railroad was the first railroad to reach Texas (what part, I do not know) as well as the first to reach the reservations for Native Americans in the southwestern United States. For the 75th Anniversary of the Katy Railroad, the company had an ice cream tour that started in Central Kansas and ended at Union Station in St. Louis. This is the train used and it was delivered to the museum after the celebration. Mr. Eastin said this was donated as an entire train; most items are donated as separate pieces.
What was most interesting about these train cars is the arrows from the Native Americans were still stuck in the roof at delivery. The arrows have been removed for preservation and will be replaced upon the train being stored indoors.
Here’s the biggest steam locomotive ever built in the world, the famous UP “Big Boy” Class 4000 freight locomotive. This 4-8-8-4 articulated monster locomotive was delivered to Union Pacific at about the time the decision was made to ultimately convert all locomotives to diesel. Designed to haul freights over the tough Wasatch grade, they ultimately pulled trains up to 4,000 tons over the 1.14% grade without a helper engine, and did so until they were withdrawn from mainline service in 1959.
Mr. Eastin explained, steam locomotives were an every other day type of engine; you used it on Monday but had to clean everything up on Tuesday so it could roll again on Wednesday. The conversion to diesel was not based upon fuel efficiency, he explained; rather, it was a matter of overall efficiency as one locomotive could run continuously for days and weeks on end with minimal maintenance. Always before you needed two locomotives for a given route due to the need for maintenance.
This engine was so powerful, and loud, it was kept in rural parts of the western United States. Mr. Eastin said the amount of smoke, noise, and ground vibration made by this particular engine prevented it from being used around any population centers.
We were told by Mr. Eastin the relationship between Union Pacific and the City of St. Louis was a strained one at times in the past. The museum, a not for profit entity, was not receiving a warm reception from Union Pacific when looking to acquire this locomotive. One of the museum board members, an executive of Ralston-Purina, called someone with Union Pacific to again seek this locomotive. The Union Pacific representative stated it would never happen. The board member said that was fine, but inquired if Union Pacific enjoyed transporting Ralston-Purina products and stated their relationship need not continue. The locomotive was delivered soon thereafter.
The museum does have automobiles, covered later in this article, but trains are a goodly percentage of what they have. Mr. Eastin stated the number of “rail-philes” they host is phenomenal and their knowledge is breathtaking. A few years ago, he hosted a number of German tourists. Upon their arrival, they immediately asked about the Daniel Nason, the oldest train in the collection.
Mr. Easton said their knowledge of the Daniel Nason was quite formidable, as they even had a strong idea on where within the museum the train was located.
Sadly, we were on a tight schedule that didn’t mesh well with the number of trains on display as well as our desire to hear more from Mr. Eastin. So here are some more pictures of various train exhibits.
I have a Lionel train manufactured in 1957 whose engine looks a lot like this one.
Here’s a better look at the sign. It’s one of the original EMD FT demonstrators, that proved the effectiveness of diesel freight locomotives and brought on the huge wave of dieselization. Remember, it took four of these to equal Norfolk and Western’s 2156 seen above.
The Pacific Northwest sure seems to be a recurrent theme on Curbside Classic, doesn’t it? This is just one instance.
The St. Louis Museum of Transportation consists of two buildings, the lobby / gift shop and the automobile collection, with the rail exhibits all being outside. During the tour of the trains, a member of our party had sought warmer surroundings due to the chilliness in the air. At the conclusion of the tour, he was not in the gift shop, so I volunteered to find him. I shot straight toward the automobile building hoping to find him but in reality aiming to get these pictures.
Once inside, a whole new and wonderful spectacle presented itself. Please note the lighting in the building and the angle needed for some pictures was far from optimum; these pictures have been adjusted to get as much detail as possible.
When the W.P. Chrysler Museum article was published (the day before I took these pictures, so I’m thinking CC minds are often on the same wavelength) we were able to get a good look at the interior of the Chrysler Turbine. While the constraints didn’t allow for interior shots, I was able to….
…get some underhood shots! This example is fully operable and is the only operable Chrysler Turbine car on public display. According to the museum and its website, this car will operate on kerosene, white gas, or anything flammable.
It should be noted Chrysler wasn’t the only manufacturer to ever produce a gas turbine powered vehicle. During a previous trip to the museum, there was a late 1950’s era Ford road tractor on display that was powered by a gas turbine. There is more information on this Ford here.
Michigan and Indiana are both noted for their automobile manufacturing history. Missouri, specifically St. Louis, deserves inclusion in such consideration. By 1929, there had been 29 different makes of automobiles produced in St. Louis. These makes were well represented at the museum.
The oldest, and least creatively named, is the St. Louis automobile built by the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company. This example is a 1901 model powered by a 7 horsepower engine having 123 cubic inches of displacement.
When the St. Louis Motor Carriage Company disbanded in 1905, co-founder George Dorris started building his own automobile, the Dorris. There were two examples here. First was this delivery truck.
There was also this coupe.
Here’s a closer look at the Dorris’s engine.
The front of the two Dorris examples were quite similar with the coupe being a 1917 model and the delivery truck a 1919.
Also built in St. Louis was the Moon, again with two examples on display. This four-door is a 1923 model,
with the two-door being of a comparable age (I failed to document its model year). The sedan sold for $2,095 and had 58 horsepower.
While I didn’t capture the ’57 Chevrolet or the ’65 Mustang, I did snag a picture of this 1921 Cadillac Suburban, one of only 1,130 Cadillac’s produced for the 1921 model year. It’s sticker price was $4,990. This Cadillac certainly has some patina, but not as much as
this Pierce motorcycle. From 1907 to 1913 the Pierce motorcycle was produced as an offshoot of Pierce-Arrow. This example is a 1912 model.
Here’s a closer look at its four-cylinder engine.
Many collections have an example of a Stanley, and the St. Louis Museum of Transportation is one of them.
Seriously, isn’t the engine compartment absolutely fascinating?
There was another display that prompted some serious thought. One common theme in so many comments on Curbside Classic is the homogeneous look of contemporary automobiles. But how have the interiors changed – specifically the instrument panel?
These provided hard to refute evidence of how the instrument cluster has devolved from something special into something rather unimaginative.
My very first published submission to Curbside Classic was an article on Route 66 in the south central part of my state. This display is part of the old Coral Court motel, a staple of Route 66 in St. Louis, an establishment that toward the end of its run combined hourly rates with its trademark garage. What do you think has occurred behind these relocated walls?
Spending two hours at the St. Louis Museum of Transportation is not nearly enough. Mr. Eastin, with whom I have been corresponding since my visit, is a wealth of information who successfully turned static train displays into dynamic forces of man’s ability to channel brute strength onto two solid rails. He told me another 20 hours is needed to do the trains justice, and he is correct. The sheer amount of history contained in this museum is mind-boggling.
One item of note about the museum’s location: It is easy to access but it quite off the beaten path. There is no likelihood of one simply stumbling onto it. Even someone such as myself who is not a train fanatic will have a much heartier appreciation for them after a visit here.
This was at least my third time there and likely not my last. Like repeated trains from the Pacific Northwest, you just never know what you will find there.
Now there’s a place I could spend some happy hours at. Those two big steam engines are literally the cream of the crop, when it comes to big freight locos. Thanks for the write-up!
The cab of the Big Boy is usually open for closer inspection.
Great article and pictures!!! Thanks.
+1
Wonderful tour!
I have to go to Kansas in May with a layover in St. Louis. I wonder how convenient this is to the airport it would be nice to see. Here in North Carolina, which have a similarly well developed transportation museum at the old Spencer Train Works about an hour northeast of Charlotte. A good visit for anyone in the area.
It would be about 35 minutes from Lambert International, if traffic was conducive. It’s located on Barrett Station Road, close to the interchange of I-270 with Big Bend Road.
Great read Jason thanks.
I had no idea. Shoot, another great museum I could have not visited on all my work trips to SE Missouri…
Gotta like that 57-58 Plymouth gauge cluster, just like the Dodge one I had as a kid (and ruined by taking it apart)
> Seriously, isn’t the engine compartment absolutely fascinating?
While it is fascinating, the “engine compartment” of the Stanley contains only the boiler. The 2-cylinder steam engine is under the car, connected directly to the rear axle.
This is one museum on my “bucket list”, as they say. I didn’t know before what else they have there, but they have a Chrysler Turbine which I haven’t seen yet, so I must go.
Chalk this up as something else I have learned. Thank you!
The auto exhibits evolve; last I was there, the Ford turbine was attached to an auto carrier trailer; on the trailer was a variety of cars including a ’50’s model Chrysler letter car. Trains are their bread-and-butter, but they are constantly expanding in all areas. When I was first there (late ’70’s or early ’80’s as a youngster) the Chrysler Turbine was sitting on gravel in a tin building.
Interesting bike…. appears to be shaft drive also.
An aunt and uncle of mine lived in Kirkwood, MO for 40 years, not far from the Transport Museum.
I have spent many hours of my life in the Transport Museum since mom and dad took me for the first time in about 1958 or so. Our kids grew up spending many hours there as well, and loved it as much as I. We NEVER got tired of going. After all, they were raised on Amtrak in the 1980’s! Most recently I visited the place last April while in STL on a weekend.
The “Daniel Nason” is one of the cutest locomotives, if not THE cutest in the collection, even if it has inside cylinders.
I was disappointed that since the auto museum portion was revamped, many cars they used to show are no longer on display. I suppose when more space becomes available, their 2CV will be back in its glory…
The museum has to be one of the finest in the country, but until 20 years ago, all railroad exhibits were outside in the open, exposed to the weather, and the resources to properly cosmetically restore everything just isn’t available. Last I heard, the GM Aerotrain was undergoing refurbishing – that thing is really cool.
Finally, I equate the backhead of the Big Boy with all its gauges, valves and levers as the steam-era equivalent of a Boeing 747!
What’s cool now is that there are platforms for observing passing Amtrak and Union Pacific (formerly Missouri Pacific) trains on their double-tracked main line just outside, paralleling the museum.
I heartedly encourage a visit by everyone who loves big things that move.
Trains!
I’ve always had a thing for trains since I was a little kid, they seem so massive and impressive, I always would hope we would have to wait the rail road crossing near our house as a kid, just so I could get a peek at a massive locomotive.
There is always something very impressive about giant machinery in a museum, something very powerful that has been silenced forever.
I’ve only seen one Chrysler Turbine before, when Chryslers own car was on loan to the Ft Lauderdale Museum of Art, they had a concept car display with a their museum once.
One of the two Turbines that Chrysler still owns will be on loan to the Cummer Museum of Arts and Gardens in Jacksonville, FL from May until September. It will be the one that was NOT on display at the WPC museum, which means I haven’t seen that one yet.
Thanks for the tour I does love a steam engine, spent last Saturday amongst the farming kind now locos great, I like Paul could quite happily get locked in there and not complain, Never before seen under the hood of a turbine car Ive plenty of experience with turbines but the steam generator kind not automotive, Rover was also building turbine cars experimentally but Chrysler actually put some on the road awesomec find. Looks like my bucket list just grew one, CHUR.
Great post – I visited this museum back in 1986 and have about the same set of pictures as you.
For me, the gem of this place is the Chrysler turbine car – to think that they built a couple hundred of these things for real-world consumer evaluation is just mind-boggling in our current times.
If you go out to this museum and you can spare another half-day, I heartily recommend the Daniel Boone home which is about 25 miles away to the west:
http://www.danielboonehome.com/index.html
This is just to the south of GM’s Wentzville assembly plant (which I also toured as a GMI student back then) but sadly, I don’t believe that they regularly offer plant tours or I would also recommend a visit there.
I’ve never been to the Boone home, although I do own one square foot of the property. My wife worked there as a tour guide for a brief time before we got married.
There were 50 Chrysler Turbine cars that were loaned to consumers. 9 cars are still in existence. 2 are still owned by Chrysler, 5 are in museums, 2 are in private hands.
One of the two in private hands is owned by Jay Leno, and his works.
One is at the Petersen Museum in L.A. I saw it last December. It’s roped off with the hood closed, windows up.
I used to live a few miles from that museum. It is awesome and highly recommend seeing it if you’re in the St. Louis area. One of my favorite trains was an experimental General Motors “aerotrain” I believe it was called. It was pretty rough when I saw it there 10 years ago. Does anyone know if it’s still there? At the time they were talking about restoring it.
Love it, especially that shovel nose Burlington Franken-streamliner. Most engines of that style rode on four-axle trucks and were semi-permanently coupled to their trains. That one has a front three-axle truck and looks to be a stand alone unit with a rear coupler, like the postwar UP E9s Paul thought about stealing a while back. Those shared their handsome sculpted face with the FT Jason showed us above.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/trackside-classic-1955-union-pacific-emd-e9-the-last-of-the-classic-diesel-streamliners-gms-greatest-hit-10/
The original articulated Zephyr is in Illinois, and its eastern twin “The Flying Yankee” is in New Hampshire IIRC, where it was supposed to be restored back in the 90s. Not holding my breath.
Always had a thing about the shovelnose Zephyrs. Must do a post sometime…
Actually, this particular unit, Silver Charger” is half locomotive, half mail/baggage car. It has just one prime mover in the front, providing juice for two motors in that front triple-axle truck. The rear bogie is just a dummy, same as used on the passenger cars.
This unit was the last of that kind, used to pull a short train of three streamlined cars, conventional ones, not articulated.
The articulated era was very short, as it made rearranging consists difficult, or pulling out one car for repairs.
Thanks, never seen that before.
I’m a St. Louis-born-and-bred car and train nut but never visited the museum in all that time. Then, on a visit to my dad’s place many years after I had moved away, I took my 3-year-old son over there. So many trains, so little time. We loved it. Maybe someday, I can convince my now-adult son to go back there with me.
Another wonderful museum tour. The pairing of the Chrysler Turbine and some of the trains is an apt one. Walter Chrysler’s first employer was the Union Pacific Railroad. Also, his last job in the railroad industry before being hired at Buick (thus joining the auto industry) was as the man in charge of the Allegheny shop of ALCO, the locomotive manufacturer which built the Big Boy in the museum.
I have a thing for those monstrous steam engines. I had to look it up, but the only one I have seen in person is the Allegheny 1601 built by Lima in the early 1940s, one of ten 2-6-6-6s used to pull 10,000 tons at 15 mph. I would be interested in a knowledgeable comparison between the two. Both are certainly impressive.
This is a museum that I was unfamiliar with, and not a terribly far drive from me. I will have to make the trip some time.
Never knew about Chrysler’s railroad career, that’s pretty cool. ALCO ended up part of Studebaker at the end.
By the way Jim, just saw over at Hemmings blog they have Dillinger’s Terraplane out at your airport. Terraplane….at the airport, cute.
I saw the story about the Terraplane in my local paper. It will be there for awhile, I will have to get out to the airport. Let’s see – free car on display, $47.50 to park. 🙂 Seriously, I will have to do a little research on the Dillinger Terraplane. As an aside, we also have Dillinger, himself, buried here. But not in the airport.
Jason,
Great write up, I’d love to visit. I had an automotive museum feast last summer on a long road trip to my brother’s in Michigan. I knocked out The Henry Ford/Greenfield Village, the Gilmore(absolutely wonderful), and Americas’s Packard museum in Dayton.
I may need to swing by St. Louis on my way to see him next time. The whole Budweiser clydesdales and dalmations thing may be enticement enough to get my animal loving family to go along with the detour. H’mmm, SC to MI via MO, I wonder how long?
Best regards,
Patrick
Given that you’ve mentioned Budweiser, there is a connection between railroads and the growth of the Anheuser-Busch brewery.
Anheuser-Busch was one of the first breweries to go beyond a local market, and they were the first to ship their beer in refrigerated railcars. It was a happy accident that St. Louis was a major rail hub at the time. I think A-B even owned a refridgerator railcar company and a railroad (Manufacturers Railway Company)
Another train lover here. I highly recommend the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, about an hour outside Chicago, Wisconsin boarder. They have an excellent collection of steam, diesel and electric locomotives, railway cars, electric trains and trolleys. They also have a 5 mile rail line and a street car loop for rides on various equipment.
Also, with all this talk of the Katy, I can’t help but think of the Blues Brothers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hB3eCv_FOk
Or, if you prefer, Taj’s original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_mcvifJ5N0
..left me a mule to ride.
Yeah, my baby she long, my baby she tall
She’s sleepin’ with her head in the kitchen and her feet’s out in the hall
Crazy ’bout her, that hard headed woman of mine
Aha – IRM is where the original Zephyr is, couldn’t remember the name. Would love to get there some day.
All these photos, wonderful! I can’t wait to get home and give this article a good long time. I’ve got a bit of the old Spokane, Portland and Seattle in my model railroad. And Northern Pacific.
Instrument panels, yes! I’ve always been obsessed with dashboards. Even as a child I made a dashboard on the back of a dresser drawer so I could drive. Someday I’ll do a big Auto history piece on dashboards.
I was always obsessed with them as well. Back in the Eighties, I made an instrument panel out of Fisher Price Construx, it had moving levers and everything!
I married into a railroad family. My wife’s grandfather was high up in the Union RR in Pittsburgh (the Union serviced all the steel mills); her dad spent his entire career with the Southern RR in labor relations; and her uncle, Richard Franklin, was the one of the forces behind the Southern’s dieselization in the early 1950s. The Southern was the first railroad to go all diesel after WWII, even cutting up steam engines that it had purchased new during the war to keep up with the transportation demands imposed by that event. Lots of neat stuff went to the scrap heap, but one thing that didn’t was this bell that now sits in our home’s entryway. The thing is about 32″ tall and weighs well over 200 lbs (100 kilos). It needs another polishing. Traditionally it has been rung to help bring in the new year.
I had a great uncle who worked for the Missouri Pacific. He died in the early 50’s. My mom gave me his watch – a 1914 Elgin white gold pocket watch. No flip-open model, though, just a very thick glass cover.
I used to wear it to school in 4th grade! I over-wound it one day and the hair spring snapped. That was in 1960. I had the watch repaired in 1976 and it still works just fine!
What a great place! I have never been to Missouri, but this would certainly give me a reason to want to go.
Thank you for sharing this!
As a kid, I was a train buff. As an adult I outgrew it, and wouldn’t you know, fate gave me an opportunity to go to work on the railroad. Doubled my pay, easier work…at the time it was. Not so much today anymore.
I started in the mid-1990s; railroading was still something of a family business, sons following their fathers into the rail yards. Steam was gone by 1960, and so were the veteran hoggers who ran it…but some of the old-timers rode with their fathers on steam runs.
It was an age of wooden cars and iron men, no doubt. Far from our world of CTC, cab-signals, and sometimes air-conditioned cabs…these guys sat up against a steel wall with a raging air-forced coal fire going away. The engines bucked – like a horse, because of the ways the side-rods had to be at 45-degree angles to insure a start from stop. One piston had to be on mid-stroke.
It was a brutal life, and the weak served the strong. Every terminal had its “enforcer” – and his word was law.
These days, all mainline guys have to deal with are the hours – 24/7; always on-call; and with that, the twelve-hour day is all but standard. Do the math; it means nobody’s getting anything approaching a normal sleep-wake cycle. It wears a body down, and on my last years on a major line, I noticed the young guys weren’t lasting more than five to seven years at it.
We try to take the train as much as we can when travelling. Next week when we attend the NY Auto Show, we will take a train from Charlotte to NYP since it deposits us 4 blocks from my cousin’s apartment building. Then the Javits Center is only a $4 cab ride (one way) from the apartment making it a very convenient trip. Last year we took the Eldorado on the AutoTrain to Florida to attend a big car show in St Augustine which was a unique experience. We have done enough train travel on Amtrak to have qualified for free tickets but never took one long distance (aside from the AutoTrain) overnight in a sleeper.
I even have a radio scanner app on my Blackberry that picks up the freight lines among other things.
I traveled for business for about 7 years, and did occasionally find a way to make a sleeper make sense for business travel. I can’t help but think that if Amtrak could get their NYP-Chicago travel times to the point where you could reliably leave one city after work and arrive in the destination around 6:30am they’d have a real market. The extra cost of a sleeper isn’t bad over an airline ticket if you don’t have to stay in a hotel.
Ah…that’s the crux. Amtrak, not owning most of the lines the run on; and limited to running ONE train a day over most routes…tries to please the most reliable of their customer base. That is…the tourist/recreational-travel customer.
For the most part, trips are set up so that daylight travel is through more scenic areas. For example, trains west of Denver leave in the morning; and make it into Utah in late afternoon. The desert is crossed in darkness, both directions.
That doesn’t always work out…New York State is crossed in darkness, and it’s quite picturesque country. More so than Indiana, which is run in daylight. But that’s the way it is.
There isn’t the ridership base to support more than one train a day; and since Amtrak loses money heavily, there isn’t the subsidy to support more ridership. What is REALLY needed, is an analysis of how the loss could be cut, and how passenger trains could be run at, at the minimum, a breakeven.
Your overnight-sleeper-city-to-city model is one the old New York Central used in the 1940s and 1950s, with some success. NYC made money, although not much, until it was taken over by the PRR in 1967. Their passenger trains lost money, as all of them did; but losses were controlled and it was a sustainable situation.
The NS line from Charlotte to Raleigh runs 6 trains per day (both ways) I have a friend who is a conductor for NS who works the line that the Southern Crescent runs from NO to DC (he overnights in Lynchburg) and both sides say that they accommodate the other…
I belong to the NARP and have followed Amtrak’s business model enough to come up with some general ideas that about 1/3 of the routes are clearly profitable (the NE Corridor, AutoTrain, etc.) about 1/3 are marginal (profitable some days some days not), and 1/3 are clearly being propped up. Most of those are the long distance routes that lose money heavily because of the capital costs. Almost every train that I have ridden on was full, I mean completely full, with the conductors keeping a close watch on the seating assignments. Ridership rose a good bit after Katrina and as gas prices crept upward which is a good thing but also makes for crowded conditions on the train. Ticket prices on the trains are exceptionally cheap, IMO, even though you lose a lot of time compared to an airplane. Airplane fare adjusted for inflation are considerably cheaper than they were before deregulation in general but of course the travel experience in general has diminished considerably. Whether I travel by plane, train, or ship I do try to wear something reasonable at least business casual. North Carolina has an interesting approach to the Piedmont whereas that train runs exclusively intrastate between Charlotte and Raleigh twice daily. What is unique is that the state of North Carolina owns the train equipment and Amtrak operates it.
Nice “briefing” on the trains.It’s great to see other”things on wheels” in CC every now and then.
The Pierce bike was made by Percy Pierce,the Pierce car founder’s son.Even though it’s supposed
to have been inspired by the Belgian FN 4,it has a more advanced side valve engine(T head) instead of
the automatic inlet- side excaust of the FN.The frame tubes are so big because they hold
the fuel(top tube)and the oil(front downtube)and they are copper plated inside.
It does have shaft final drive and this one looks to be the later model with 2 gears
(can’t tell for sure from the picture).The first model had direct drive from crankshaft to final drive shaft.It is 600cc and they also made another model with the same kind of frame same displacement but with a single cyl.engine and conventional
final drive with belt.
Beeing such an expensive bike it didn’t take long before they got out of business.
P.S
Where are the brakes??