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Chesapeake & Ohio Superpower to Diesels byThomas Dixon Jr C&O 1984 Soft Cover
Chesapeake & Ohio Superpower to Diesels By Thomas Dixon Jr C&O Soft Cover 1984 128 Pages
INTRODUCTION
THIS BOOK IS an album of photographs which shows the Chesapeake & Ohio in the great era of late steam railroading and the first years of diesel operations. The images are taken from negatives on file in the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society's collection and are almost all from two sources. The first source is the excellent work of the professional photographers hired by the C&O public relations offices in the 1940s and 50s. including William Rittasse, whose World War II C&O photos are among the best of their genre for any railroad. The second source is Gene Huddleston, who grew up in a railroading family at Russell, Kentucky, and as a teenager joined H. W. Pontin's "Rail Photo Club." In this organization Pontin supplied his "members" with film which they exposed on their local railroads and returned to him for processing. He then gave them a print and kept the negative, which he used to make prints for sale. Most of Huddleston's material was acquired by the C&O Historical Society in 1972.
The purpose of this album is to show the C&O as it was in what we can call the modern steam-diesel era, but I have also written a short introductory history which is meant to give the reader some background about the railway's origins and development. Although many of the older railroads are well documented pictorially, the C&O seems to be an exception. Very few photos dated before 1930 can be found, and most dated afterward were taken at major terminal cities such as Washington, Cincinnati, or Charlottesville. Few photographers ventured into the heart of C&O country-up the Big Sandy, at Cabin Creek, or in the New River gorge, for example. But we can be grateful for the few who did. Their brief visits produced for us at least a glimpse of the C&O as it was in the 1940 to 1955 era. Today the C&O is one of the most popular roads among modellers and railfans, and its present-day operations are well documented-there will be no dearth of photos for the future showing our era.
One of the element in popularizing the C&O is the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society, Inc., which was organized in 1969 to promote the study of the C&O's history and current operations. The society collects, organizes, preserves, and disseminates photos, documents, and drawings of the C&O and its predecessors. The C&O public relations department chose the society to house and service the company's official negative files, and its archives are the repository for much obsolete engineering data from company files. People who are interested in joining the society and receiving its monthly magazine should write to P. 0. Box 417, Alderson, West Virginia 24910.
All the photos in this book are from the society's collections and are credited to the photographer or source when known. The C&O Railway and Chessie System logos are used with permission of the Chessie System Railroads.
I sincerely hope that you will enjoy this pictorial journey over the C&O beginning at Newport News and ending on the Pere Marquette lines in Michigan and Canada. The period covered generally ranges from just before World War II, through the steam-diesel transition years of 1949 to 1956, ending about 1960. I hope the reader will gain a little better appreciation of the C&O's operations and that this album will be of benefit to both the railfan and modeller.
I want to thank particularly Ted Gleichmann whose close cooperation, good advice, and constant attention to detail ensured that I did the text and captions right, Bob Gifford who assisted in digging negatives out of C&OHS files, and Dr. William K. Riley, who assisted by giving the final text a thorough editorial review.
All pictures are of the actual item. If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad. Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. Large inventory of railroad books and magazines. Thank you for buying from us.
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