From the President,

With this issue, Dave Hunter takes over the editing from Paul Welsh. Paul has done a great job publishing the monthly newsletter with interesting articles and photographs for as long as I can remember.  Some months it is an abbreviated version, other months it is packed with articles.

Paul has added animation to our title head, provided links to articles or photos and overall provided an interesting read for the members and those stopping by our website. Bringing our club into the 20^th century( so to speak)

 I want to thank Paul for his hard work and diligence in publishing a high-quality product each month.

Dave has some big shoes to fill. 

I believe that over the months you will probably see some changes made as Dave gets comfortable in his new role as editor.

Let's help him out with any articles or photos you may have. I know there should be a bunch of the Big Boy going around PA.

I will add some of my stories from my railroad career.

IF there are topics you want to see, feel free to research and send to Dave for publication.

Again, many thanks to Paul and good luck to Dave.

From the Editor,

A big Hello to all the members of the club. I am the new editor of the Nordel monthly newsletter. I’m Dave Hunter from Chadds Ford, a member since about March of this year. I’ve had an interest in model trains since I was about 7 years old, an interest that has been rather dormant until recently when I joined. I’m looking forward to being your editor for a long time, as I do like to write, especially about technical and historical subjects, so it should be a good fit. I am now responsible for compiling and reporting on all of the activities of the club, so I am appealing to everyone to please call my attention that I’m not aware of, or that I may have overlooked, so that I can include it in each issue, at least until I get up to speed with all of the projects and activities around the club. So here goes, wish me well!

Paul Welsh did a very thorough job covering  everything in his final issue, which provides a good foundation for proceeding, which he listed as follows:

Current Projects

From the last issue that Paul composed, the ones listed are Peach Refers, Installation of a peach cannery, Oil Refinery and Port of Wilmington, and Maintenance project for update of signaling system. Please, if everyone doing this projects will connect so that I can provide updates.

Matt Appleby reported that he completed the repair of the main crossover, which has now been fixed.

I’m beginning a new column here called Talk of the Club to report on railroading trips that club members may have taken, or interesting rolling stock or equipment that they may have acquired or modified.

Talk of the Club

Mike O’Shaunessey kindly gave me an overview of his classic Roundhouse brand, lumber locomotive, which is a lovely thing to look at. Mike tells me that it is over 55 years old, was a kit that he assembled. He subsequently replaced the old open frame with a can motor, having added a DCC controller at a later date. It is a 04-40 configuration. It is a box diesel converted to steam with crankshafts on the inside. Truly an innovative work of model railroading. It does look like it’s entirely handmade, which apparently it is! Pic follows: [Insert pic]

Frank and CJ made a trip to Scranton to see the Big Boy, and shot some amazing video of the Big Boy racing, or whatever call they it, another steam locomotive. I wish I could’ve been there. Frank’s videos should be available by the next issue.

Kate and Eddie have made a number of trips to different railroad museums, as well as train layouts and stores at various locations, which I hope to add details of in the next issue.

Finn recently got a brand new Broadway Limited loco with matching lighted passenger cars which I will have more detail on in the next issue. The pic of his Southern Pacific streamliner is attached. [Insert pic]

Nick showed me his PRR L1 Mikado dated 1914, which is a 2-8-2 configuration. Pics to follow.

Personally, I started at the club with a Bachmann BI2 CSX loco, which Matt is modifying for me to add DCC, sound and lights, which I’m looking forward to getting. I acquired several used locos from E-Bay which are in various stages of upgrading.

I took a membership in the Pennsylvania Railroad museum mainly so I could receive their quarterly magazine and emails of their activities to report on here. The March issue of the magazine has a fascinating article about when the railroads added air conditioning to the passenger cars starting in the 1930’s, and how it was done, including detailed technicals and schematics of the equipment used. I have a copy of it if anyone wants to see it.

I just received an email from the museum outlining their Model Railroading Days 2026, which are the next four Saturdays in August. This is the link for the schedule.

Model-Railroading-Days-2026-Flyer.pdf

Glenn has kindly provided a partial bio of the beginning of his career at B&O, which I include here.

From Glenn:

Most of you know that I worked the vast majority of my career with B&O, Chessie and finally CSX.

In 1971 (18 yrs old)I received a call from my aunt, a clerk at the B&O freight house in Wilmington letting me know that the Signal Maintainers were hiring.

I drove in town and got a ticket for Baltimore and walked over to the train station; it being only a couple of blocks away.

Walked from the Baltimore train station to the B&O building at 2 North Charles st for a physical and an aptitude test.

Apparently, I passed both.

I received a call to report to Chester Monday morning at 7am. The office can be seen at the first exit for Chester, in front of the old Chester Crozier hospital and site of a BIDs terminal.

My dad and I drove up there Saturday morning to see where it was, so I wouldn't be late on my first day.

We got off the exit and followed the basic directions we had. We asked a little old lady for the final leg and shed pointed out the driveway. We thanked her and she told us "don't leave your car there, it won't be there when you come back!"

I'm thinking what have I gotten myself into and my dad said "don't tell your mother"

Luckily, I only had to report there for the first week, all of the crew were coming out of Delaware, and the boss said we could report to the B&O station across the street from the Deer Park.

The railroad was converting its overhead communications and signal power to underground cables. It was our job to drive; I think it was 12-foot copper rods into the ground by all the relay boxes to ground the system.

We had to carry any left over rod into the station to prevent theft each night.

We would drive our stake body Ford to the boxes assigned and back the bed as close as we could so one man could use a sledgehammer to drive the rod into the ground as one of two others held the rod still by hand. Definitely a hard hat job for the guys holding the rod. The guy driving would often time lose his balance if he missed the rod and had to jump from the truck.

We finally drilled a hole in two 2x4's so we could slide the 2x4 over the rod to hold the rod still and be out of the way of any wayward sledgehammers.

This was great until you hit rock four or more feet down. It was almost impossible to pull the rod out and start somewhere else.

We had a tester to measure ground and sometimes it worked out that the rod was deep enough and we cut it off. There were times when we drove two or three rods before we got the proper ground.

Along with that job, I would sometimes accompany a maintainer if a crossing gate was malfunctioning, or a signal was down.

Often the signals were down because the copper connection between lengths of rail was broken. This was before a lot of welded rail was in place. 

We would call the track gang if needed and grind the old wires off and set up a contraption that rested on the rail with two cups over the side of the rail. We would place a short piece of wire across the gap, fill the two cups with a flammable powder and set them off. The powder would create a weld to hold the copper to the rail. Most times this would fix the problem.

During the winter and summer, the heat and cold will cause rail to expand and contract. During the summer there were usually slow orders so engineers could see if the rail had kinked. Wintertime extra care was placed on inspecting wheels for flat spots to prevent the slamming of the wheel from breaking the rail.

If we needed to take the track out of service either the maintainer or track foreman would contact the dispatcher. To do that a long-handled pole with a hook and a wire connected would hang over one of the overhead wires, the wire from the pole would be connected to a phone box and the dispatcher could be contacted. Sometimes the wires were too high and the maintainer would have to put on his climbing spikes and belt and climb the pole to reach the wire.

One day the maintainer I was working with was about eight feet up the pole and his spikes let loose.  He fell in a heap, cussing up a blue streak. All I could imagine was all the slivers sticking out from other climbing the pole, and them sticking in his leg.

He dropped his pants and was lucky enough that he was wearing jeans and coveralls, so he got away with scratches.

He pulled his pants up, looked at me, and said that's the last blankety blank time I will ever climb a pole. 

We drove to the next crossing and make the call from the relay box.

Getting back to our driving ground rods into the ground. It turned out our rod driving failed a follow up inspection and we were taken off that job. The foreman was demoted and we were assigned other duties.

Now the first month I worked I hadn't received a paycheck. We were paid every two weeks and the first two weeks were held back. The crew I worked with would always go into local bars for lunch. Being 18 I was afraid to go in. Most of the time I ate my packed lunch either in the truck or up on the bed if it was nice weather. I would assume they had a cold one with lunch but I couldn't swear to it.

I was furloughed in November and out of work until the track gang called me in April. That's another story.

Back then the railroad would call furloughed employees back to work other crafts if need be.

_______________ 

Finally, I would like to detail upcoming articles and columns I plan to add for the next issue. There will be a historical column, a summary of interesting events or features of railroad history, and alternately, articles about this history of model railroading. The first I have a great deal of knowledge about, having read many books and articles about railroad history over the years,  the second almost nothing but I planning to come up to speed with. The upcoming September letter should have a very interesting overview of the Railway Post Office system in the US. Another category will be railroad book reviews, which will only be occasional and only as summaries. The first appears below.

Book Review

The first one will be a review of Secrets of a Locomotive Engineer by Thomas Hughes, which I’m currently reading. The fascinating review covers all of the hundreds (more like thousands) of operating rules and regulations of a modern railroad, even the paperwork that must be filed. It covers rules about switches, how damage is handled, as well as damage control strategies. How hazmats are taken care of, including the many categories of hazmats. Even details about each job classification and what the responsibilities are. [Insert book cover pic]

--End of Letter--