Video Extra: N&W steam east of Roanoke
By Angela Cotey | January 22, 2010
| Last updated on September 20, 2022
See Norfolk & Western 2-6-6-4's and 2-8-8-2's battling the Blue Ridge grade east of Roanoke in clips from the DVD program Pillars of Smoke in the Sky, available from Herron Rail Video, www.herronrail.com. And watch for a glimpse of the "Jawn Henry," N&W's experimental steam turbine!
No mistaking a Y class locomotive with the Volkswagen Beetle garage size front cylinders. But geez guys ya cut it if just when the Jawn Henry put in an appearance.
In response to Alan Thomas: Check out the educational film made for school kids in 1940 by the B & O available on YouTube, where you can also find “Railroadin’ 1941” and “Flight of the Century” made by the NYC in 1935. I’m going to show my teenage granddaughters the B & O film the next time I see them. The B & O film shows how passengers traveled, including making up a Pullman berth, although it’s a diesel-powered train.
That was really a great video especially those shots from the rear of a passing train. right n!!!!!!
Sure would have enjoyed seeing the “Jawn Henry”, sitting idle in that last clip, do it’s thing with a hundred coal cars behind it.
It is interesting and puzzling how steady the on-board camera footage is in this film. Long before gyroscopic steady-cams were in use/available I believe.
I love watching these snippets of steam train operation. As long as steam was around, there is no doubt that there is 1000% more clips like this in existence, and the big question is why are they not being shown much more regularly and frequently? Surely, in the long history of the railroad, there have been some very interesting, full-length, possibly even color, features made about all the intricacies of passenger train travel, showing all of the features, such as the fold-down sleepers, the dining car, etc, etc.
It’s not actually a big mystery as to what people want to see – but somehow, they never get to see the stuff that everybody knows that people want – to more or less show what it was like, in all of the details, of life during the passenger train era. To actually see real films, taken during the actual working days of railroad life back in time of the steam-train passenger era.
Why are there not much, much more films of such as this – or, actually, any at all?