Two Mallet compound articulated 2-8-8-2 Y6Bs, each generating 10,000 horsepower at full throttle, pull fully loaded coal hopper train up the Norfolk and Western Blue Ridge Division with Y6B pusher for the ascending part of the grade. Summer 1956.
ETA: According to legendary railroad photographer O. Winston Link, who is known for his high quality nighttime shots of operations on the N&W from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, locomotive engineers on the N&W would temporarily throttle down their engines when they spotted homes along their routes with laundry hanging outside, so as to prevent soot and embers from dirtying the laundry as they passed. This was not really part of N&W locomotive engineer school protocol, but this, and other acts of kindness, such as giving buckets of unused coal to residents living along the tracks for their stoves, were an unspoken rule among all N&W train crews.
ETA: According to legendary railroad photographer O. Winston Link, who is known for his high quality nighttime shots of operations on the N&W from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, locomotive engineers on the N&W would temporarily throttle down their engines when they spotted homes along their routes with laundry hanging outside, so as to prevent soot and embers from dirtying the laundry as they passed. This was not really part of N&W locomotive engineer school protocol, but this, and other acts of kindness, such as giving buckets of unused coal to residents living along the tracks for their stoves, were an unspoken rule among all N&W train crews.
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