Penn Central in Columbus, Ohio (1970s)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ย. 2024
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Silent Super 8mm movies of Penn Central around Columbus, Ohio in the 1970s before Conrail. The cab ride scenes are on the Columbus Terminal Helper where the photographer was the fireman.
Most of the scenes are around the Union Station complex, but there are some shots at then-new Buckeye Yard, Olentangy Tower, Grandview and CP-Russ. By the time these scenes were taken Union Station only hosted a pair of Amtrak trains (National Limited), and also served as division headquarters for Penn Central.
The method of operation around Union Station was straight out of the dark ages: It was all hand throw puzzle switches that doubled as moveable point diamonds operated by switch tenders under the direction of train directors at High St. and US Towers.
A lot of good historical information on Columbus can be found here. www.columbusrai...
Audio recorded inside High St. and Mounds Towers:
• (Columbus) High St. To...
• Audio Inside Mounds an...
This one put tears in my eyes. It may have been a bad era but the men on duty got it done. RIP Penn Central. She didn't get a fair shake.
Sadly the Penn. & NYC merger was doomed from the start. The severe “rockin & rolling” on some shots is a reminder of how bad the infrastructure had gotten.
Another great post of railroad history! Thank you!
30:37 is ground zero for the 70s. Derailed cars just left on the once-mighty double track Pennsy ROW which track looks like some modern shortline with a 10mph limit. LOL
But if anyone thinks times are bad now, they just need to watch this video. Wow... the 70s was dystopian bad.
A great video. I miss the double track mainline through my hometown of Piqua, Ohio. It went from 40+ trains per day to being abandoned in 2 short years after a complete upgrade. Sadly. 😢
Nice to see my home city, Columbus Ohio, as it once was, in all its wonderful glory!
Now it's all immigrants here killing each other.
It’s sad that within a decade’s time a lot of this rail would either be severely downgraded or abandoned altogether. 😢
Tha 1st 20 seconds of this film made my 80yr old railfan day 👍👍
Just crazy to see how different it looked here. Especially downtown. All the building that had yet to be built. The skyline looked so different! I can see the Lazarus water tower! I rememeber back when I was a kid in the 90s when Lazarus was still around. When they would turn that into a Christmas tree. I could see it from my house if I climbed my tree in the backyard lol. It always reminded thst Christmas was just around the corner. I miss it dearly
@ 28:51 it looks like Rhodes Tower is still under construction which puts this at like 1972.
great Video! Thank you! The music makes you get deep with what was. Those switchmen and tower guys have all my respect. Throwing switches all day in all sorts of weather. The muck and grime had to be slippery. What a fantastic testimony of a greater era!
I’m 50 years old and it’s amazing how much if this is still recognizable in 2024. Great video! Great memories!
The PC sadly inherited a property that suffered heavily from deferred maintenance in many cases. Improvement did take place, at first, but the ever worsening cash situation soon had conditions going even further downhill. Still there's alot from this era I truly miss!
My German ancestors are U.S. railroad people. Pennsylvania Railroad and Baltimore & Ohio are the ones I know about. My great Uncle Dick was on the practice squad for the Columbus Panhandlers. The 15-story white marble building with the greenish patina roof is the former State of Ohio Departments Building. It’s interesting to see the building that replaced it the Rhodes State Office Tower is shown here too. Today the white marble building is home to Supreme Court of Ohio and it’s named after the late Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer. I wonder what those old timers thoughts when they looked up at their rail yard and watched at the interstate highway system was being built…wondering how it would change the way freight was shipped. Must’ve been an interesting time for them. Thank you for this video by the way.
In my opinion , the US government ignored several of underlying causes of the failure of the PC merger, as well as the EL and several other roads. The ICC was an albatross hung on the necks of the rail industry. Had the Staggers act been proposed and passed by the late 1960s, there could have been a better chance of survival for PC. We could discuss all day the way the primarily NYC management selected winners and losers as far as core routes. Generally, the Pensey was the loser by Conrail time west of Pittsburgh and a big loser west of Columbus except for the section from Terre Haute to St.Louis. But, back to causes of failure besides poor leadership and the ICC, many local governments where any rail property was subject to taxation, rates were many times and many locations at a rate far in excess of the proportional value of the land. The video is great tho and appreciated. I grew up in Lima Ohio close to the EL mainline, but also saw plenty of PRR action as my mother helped at the serviceman’s canteen each month.
Great to see this footage!
Wow! That track condition at 18:34 is something. Really bad. I like the old method of “trains move on a hand signal from the switchtender”. Gotta say that’s pretty cool 😎. I’ll bet that a real pain in the winter time with snow and ice and all those hand thrown switches.
The switchtender's shanties were heated, not that they were probably ever in them a lot during a shift.
Funny how almost 60 years on, the Penn Central "mating worms" logo has aged so well as to look almost contemporary. Not so much for the Amtrak arrow thingy. The Rhodes tower and remaining Union Station smokestack frame the date pretty reliably. And those carloads of new Camaros, probably coming up from the Norwood, Ohio (Cincinnati) plant?
Those Camaros were probably model year 1974, so probably taken no earlier than late Summer 1973.
Notice the total LACK of grafitti
Fabulous time machine to the past!
Great footage!
Best one yet. Cherry on top was trackside views of Columbus Union Station. I assume that's The National Limited pulling out of Union Station. I don't know how many passenger trains visited Union Station, at that point, but read that the National was the last train in, and out before being permanently shuttered.
Typical power for the SRCO was a PC SD40 and two SR SD24s. Here we have three SD24s. Never saw three of them.
Seriously,,,how smart is it to advertise in bold letters,,,,,,here is the BOOZE!
I have never ever seen this on a RR car.
They were called BILLBOARD REFEERS. There used to be alot of them, as each company had its own colors and scheme. One of the nicest was for HAMM'S BEER.
It's refreshing to see no graffiti
True Railroading of the 70s and National Limited with brand new SDPs at the end
Beautiful
That Chateau Martin reefer!!!
Thanks for sharing
Cool video. I'm wondering about the person who had the foresight to film this. The camera he used. The lab that developed the film. The rattly projector it was first played on.
@@paulrickman7549 The was taken by Paul Geiger, who was a tower operator and fireman for PC while on furlough from the towers. I don't know what camera he used or the lab that processed it, but the film stock was Super8 Kodachrome. This was digitized on a Retro-8 from MovieStuff, which is no longer in business.
No graffiti on the freight cars. To be fair, central Ohio in the 70s was actually in the 50s, culturewise.
F’s, U Boats, SD24’s…… they’re all here, but how they ever stayed on the rails was anybody’s guess! So sad that the majority of this stuff is long gone!
My understanding is that Buckeye Yard is nearly totally gone now, going to be redeveloped.
@@paulw.woodring7304 The last time I was in Columbus in May all the tracks were gone except the intermodal portion which isn't going anywhere.
The Bradford Side 18 minutes in looks particularly bad. Lots of slow orders. Extraordinary footage and appropriately mournful music to go with it.
Nice not seeing all the graffiti on the cars.
People used to have respect for other's property. Not anymore.
Are these tracks still there or have they been ripped up
@@jmream2618 Have you looked at Google Maps or rail.guide of Columbus? It's much easier to seek out on a map.
I will say through what used to be Union Station there's only two tracks today. When the Convention Center was constructed in the late 70s the trackage through area was significantly rationalized.
Too bad the sound of the train can’t be heard
The quality and historical value of the video more than make up to me anyway
Just fabulous documentation of a warmer time in railroading..And yet someday they'll look at videos of railroading back in 2024 and perhaps feel the same, that trains then were warmer, more charming then, than their, say, 2065 trains !!.... Yikes ! 17:33 - at least 19:21. Dat be some really bad track !!
Wow... the grainy video, haunting music and it just being in the 70s gives it a surreal vibe. A friend of mine was an engineer on PC/Conrail between Buckeye and Pitcairn during this time. He had some crazy stories of the failings of the PC.
My grandfather Robert (Mike) Earley worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad for 43 years and retired as the Yard Master of Grogan Yard which is the freight yard that sat below the state fairgrounds.
Its probably a good thing i didnt chase my boyhood passions. Had i gotten to be a conductor or engineer, id been fired on day one for hanging out of the cab trying to high 5 every conductor and engineer on the oncoming train