Living with Steam

This is the second of a three part series documenting a road trip John M. Prophet III made back in July of 1951. In the last episode of Living with Steam, you heard the railroad sound recordings John made in Trenton, NJ; his last stop on the trip. Now, you'll hear the incredible recordings of many Pennsylvania Railroad trains John captured in Palmyra, NJ. In my opinion, these are some of his best work. Whether he liked it or not, John captured a slice of small-town America while he was in Palmyra. His goal may have been to only record PRR trains, but he also caught all the activity taking place in Palmyra's business district from early in the morning to the early evening. The Pennsy trains that ran through Palmyra every few minutes were part of the everyday life in 1951.

This episode of Living with Steam features recordings John Prophet made at the Pennsylvania Railroad Passenger station in Trenton, NJ on July 27, 1951. As a bonus, the episode also features recordings John made during the last week Pennsylvania Railroad steam engines were used to pull passenger trains in and out of Buffalo, NY.

In this episode of LwS EXTRA, you'll be introduced to the railroad sound recordings John M. Prophet made after 1955, when he put away his Webster-Chicago wire recorder in favor of a new magnetic tape recorder. The tape featured in this episode is one John labeled as being "#1" in a set of five tapes he had grouped together. As you'll hear, the fourth tape has gone missing. John made these recordings shortly after the Penn Central declared bankruptcy and thus plunged the railroad industry into unprecedented chaos. Although John labeled each recording as being that of a Pennsylvania Railroad diesel locomotive, the timeline is such that what John actually recorded were PRR diesels that had been stripped of their original identify and painted over in Penn Central colors and road numbers.

Welcome to the first episode in season 3 of Living with Steam.

“About half-past three o’clock yesterday afternoon, the telegraph flashed the news to this city that an accident had occurred near the Village of Angola, to the New York Express train, on the Lake Shore Road, due at Buffalo at 1:30 pm, and that there was a fearful loss of life.” 84 years later, on Sunday, July 22, 1951, John got in his car and drove down to the Village of Angola, NY to make some recordings of NKP and PRR trains. The NKP Angola station wasn't being used at that point, but freight and passenger trains of both railroads raced by the station on a continuous basis and John captured roughly 10 minutes of great material. When we listened to his Angola recordings in 1993, he made sure I was well aware of the events that made "Angola" a household name in the late 19th century. Angola wasn't just a great place to watch and record trains. It was also the location of one of the worst railroad disasters that had occurred up to that time. In many ways, "The Angola Horror" remains one of the worst railroad disasters EVER.

PLEASE NOTE that listener discretion is advised for this episode. What happened at Angola isn't pretty and there's no way to sugarcoat it in the story. This episode may be a little rough on the ears of younger listeners.

In this episode of Living with Steam EXTRA, we continue the story of William A. Steventon and how he took the practice of sharing railroad sound recordings with like-minded railfans to a whole new level.

As strange as it may sound to us now, back when the railroad industry dominated the American landscape, railfans were sharing photographs, movies, and eventually, sound recordings of trains with each other. A simple “letter” or advertisement placed in a newspaper or trade magazine would serve to  present a person’s offerings to the reader. “I have an incredible collection of New York Central” steam recordings in the Buffalo, NY area,” a typical ad may have read.

Steventon wanted  to take this practice one step further by  introducing a “catalog” of his recordings (and others in the future) which he would eventually call “The Railroad Record Club.”

And this all began when he received a Christmas gift from his wife in 1952.

On September 22, 1949, John M. Prophet III brought his Webster-Chicago wire recorder to New York Central's Tower 50; a very busy interlocking tower located right in the heart of Downtown Buffalo, and perhaps one of the best locations for capturing non-stop train activity. Unfortunately for John, he arrived at the tower just as Buffalo was about to experience one of the worst weather events of 1949. It was unseasonably cold, with heavy thunderstorms, wind, and hail all occurring throughout the time he was there. John recorded from Tower 50 a total of four times. However, he had told me that, in his opinion, the recordings he made there were "boring." Well, you be the judge as you listen to perhaps two of the greatest sounds combined into one incredible soundscape; thunderstorms and trains in the heart of one of the most cluttered and busiest railroad areas of Buffalo.

In this episode of LwS EXTRA, we begin our look at the life and legacy of William A. Steventon and the Railroad Record Club.  The RRC was a brilliant and very innovative way for Steventon to share the many sound recordings he made in addition to those from other railfans who also started making recordings of trains from the mid 1950s onward. The introduction of the “consumer model” portable tape recorder made it possible for dozens of “Railroad Sounds Audio Recording Engineers” to hit the road and set up their gear near railroad tracks all over the country. Compared to many of his contemporaries (like O. Winston Link, Brad Miller, or even John Prophet), Steventon may have been more prolific in his recorded output. However, he is not as widely known as others who were also out in the field making authentic recordings of trains.

This episode of Living with Steam features recordings John M. Prophet III made in the late evening (and early morning) of September 18 (19), 1948 at BV Tower in Blasdell, NY. John made a total of 19 recordings at this interlocking tower and this is one he labeled “#6.”

While the recordings contained on this spool of wire are not spectacular by any means… in fact, the quality of the audio is pretty lousy compared to his other recordings… they’re included here as part of John’s total output simply for the fact that the difficulty he sometimes had using the wire recorder helps one to further appreciate his work.

On Memorial Day weekend in 1973, Ross Rowland Jr.'s High Iron Company organized an excursion train to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad. The train would be pulled by ex-Reading #2102 dressed up to look like D&H #302. Jim Van Brocklin, who along with John Prophet was a prominent member of the Niagara Frontier Chapter of the NRHS, packed his family into the car and chased the train from just outside Hoboken, NJ to Binghamton, NY. Prior to this event, however, Jim did a "trial run" of sorts by recording a similar excursion that ran on the D&H tracks from Colonie, NY to Montreal, Canada in late April of 1973; likewise pulled by "D&H #302." Jim caught this train just outside of Mechanicville, NY using a portable stereo reel-to-reel tape recorder and two microphones. The results are spectacular.