Train no. 416

NG503038

Train no. 416

Steam Passenger Train

The tangent on the Cincinnati line between English Avenue and Belt crossing was the setting for this picture and the one following. On this stretch, eastbound passenger trains begin picking up the pace for the fast run to Shelbyville, and eastbound freights work up momentum for the tortuous last lap to East Hill. Here, bearing down on Belt crossing behind the sharpshooting exhausts and mournful whistle of a famous J-3, is no. 416, the mid-afternoon run out of Indianapolis for Cincinnati. Though the NYC's fleet of speed merchants in its period of peak strength was uniformly outstanding from prototype 5200 up through the ranks, there were a special few whose appearances, assignments, or abilities, or all three, gave them extra distinction. One of the very rare ones with high marks in each of these categories was the 5451, shown here in one of her less glamorous poses. She was one of ten (no's. 5445-5454) originally shrouded for regular assignment on the Century, and of these ten, she was one of five (no's. 5450-5454) equipped with disc drivers and roller-bearing assemblies. Of seven J-3s transferred to the Big Four when dieselization made work scarce on the rest of the system (these were the 5409, 5413, 5421, 5423, 5431, 5439, and 5451), she was the one preferred for the Riley. When she finally fell victim to the torch, how should the event have been reported. - as the alteration in form of a mass of metal, as the useful disposal of an obsolete mechanism, or as the death of a queen?

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

2-1/4x3-1/4 neg

Spring, 1954

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402

J-3a

#5451

Alco-Schen

Keystone St., Indianapolis, IN

See NG503038a