Historians Go Fund Me Link updated Thursday, December 8, 2022

  On-line https://www.gofundme.com/f/the-historians-podcast-2022

U.S. Mail Send a check to Bob Cudmore to 125 Horstman Drive, Scotia, NY 12302.

A Christmas balloon train in Amsterdam

By Bob Cudmore

          Amsterdam had a huge Christmas parade on Saturday, November 22 1947 featuring a large balloon train. 

          Local history contributor Emil Suda researched newspaper clippings about the parade and provided the cover of a Mohawk Carpets employees’ publication, Tomohawk, showing the balloon train in Amsterdam.

          The picture shows a large crowd spilling onto East Main Street craning their necks to get a view as the engine of the balloon train passed in front of Lindsay’s Shoes.  It looks as if the train barely cleared the Christmas decorations hung across the street.

          Suda wondered if the balloon train is the same as one used in a 1948 parade in Schenectady, described in a recent Daily Gazette article by Jeff Wilkin.

          According to newspaper accounts, the Amsterdam parade in 1947 featured “inflated balloons and augmented bands.”  The parade began at Coessens Park in the East End and traveled down East and West Main Streets.

MOHAWK VALLEY DOODLEBUG

          The winter issue of Classic Trains magazine has a story about a 1929 Brill gas-electric car or “doodlebug” used by the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville Railroad (F.J. & G.) for mail and express service only.  On other rail lines, the “doodlebugs” carried passengers.

          According to the magazine article by area rail fan Jim Shaughnessy, the F.J. & G. used the gasoline powered vehicle on its traditional railroad line between Fonda and Gloversville to retain the lucrative U.S. mail contract and carry other express freight when the railroad’s trolley service ended in 1938.

          The gas-electric car was built by the J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia in 1929 and sold to the F. J. & G. in 1938 after use by two other railroads.

          Numbered 340 by the local railroad, the car had operating controls at either end.  The car made three round trips six days a week between Gloversville and Fonda.

          Shaughnessy wrote that on March 28, 1946, Number 340 was involved in a fatal crash with a traditional F. J. & G. freight train near Sammonsville because of a misinterpretation of orders.

          “The express man on Number 340 was crushed to death when a coffin being transported shifted with the impact and pinned him against the wall,” Shaughnessey wrote.

          Number 340 was retired in 1958 as the F. J. & G. shifted mail and express service to trucks.  In 1960, the car was sold to a company in Winnipeg, Canada.

Friday, December 9-Episode 452-New York City correspondent Jim Kaplan looks at the importance of French aristocrat Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette in the American Revolution.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, December 8, 2022

The leaves are gone, the view is the same...

Leader Herald

Make Us A Part Of Your Day

https://www.leaderherald.com/