Overall description of the Northern and Western District Terminals album (NG507) contents

NG507001a

Overall description of the Northern and Western District Terminals album (NG507) contents

Operations

Most of these photographs were taken in 1953 before the Perlman "quiet revolution" began on the New York Central, at a time when the system's western terminals typified the obsolescence then virtually universal throughout the staid Water Level Route. Very much in evidence are the widely known and highly reputed (and equally obsolete) steam locomotive classes which powered the railroad from the beginning of the modern steam period in the mid-twenties to the final diesel conquest thirty years later. Some of the action, however, is internal combustion, an indication that change is inevitable even where tradition and parochialism are most entrenched. There is also a set of photographs taken at Elkhart in 1959, featuring the hump classification yard which was only a little over a year old at that time. The resulting contrast is nearly as symbolic as it is vivid, because it was this yard which brought about most of the changes in operation that took place later on the west end of the system. This album, then, is offered as a pictorial glance at a major period of transition on the Central, encompassing perhaps the most thorough conversion in its history from birth in 1831 to merger with the Pennsylvania in 1968.
Huntington Station, N.Y. September 30, 1969

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

8-1/2x11 document

9/30/1969

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