James Ozment, who took a lot of photos around St. Louis in the '50s is selling prints at this web site. Some nice stuff there, all color. http://www.westernrailimages.com/Fr...s-San-Francisco/7187638_Rnc4S#465981208_Xq68F
Don, Wow. The second photo shows the old Flyler Avenue Bridge. A college friend, who was in my wedding, lived a block or two east of that bridge. BTW, he and family were locked up in Arkansas during WW II. Dick Shimamoto is a fourth-generation American, but was treated as a toddler threat to the USA. Enough politics. What might have been, was. Photo 111 is the best even seen of the old 47000-series stock cars.
It is cool and all I just feel sad looking at the pictures of all the old steam engines waiting to be scrapped
I throught the contrast in the yellows on the b/y locomotives in photo SLSF 26 was interesting. Did the yellow really fade that badly or were different yellows originally used?
Great find! Shock: I didn't realize the lettering on SLSF steam engine's was YELLOW? Was this a final years thing... or was it always yellow?
Passenger engines' (Which were oil burners) lettering and earlier pin striping was the "imitation" gold color. Freight engine (Coal and oil burners) lettering and numerals were white. Of course at times passenger engines pulled freight trains and vise-versa. Tom
Not 100% sure on this, but didn't the gold lettering go away after all locomotive paint schemes were simplified? I know the stripes and such were removed, but I thought that they switched everything to white numbers and letters. Could these engine just have escaped the repaint or what? Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Millican
Passenger engines colors remained "Imitation gold."(*) About the time Clark Hungerford became Frisco president (Whether he actually ordered it or not), the steam locomotive "paint schemes" were changed and the imitation gold (Basically a yellow-ochre color) pinstriping on the passenger engines was dropped and larger numerals were painted on the tenders. The passenger engine color stayed the same. The freight engines just had new larger tender numbers, but they were white as before. Tom (*) Some call that color "DuLux Gold." DuLux was a DuPont trademark.
Thanks I learn something new every day here. I'm really glad I never bothered altering some Brass engines in the simplified gold scheme. This will help me determine my road power when my layout is up and running again.(hopefully soon) Thanks again & Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Millican
Several of those photos can be found in the Frisco section of Trackside around St. Louis 1952-1959 with Jim Ozment by James Sandrin. One appeared in Frisco Power by Joe Collias on page 246. Does anyone know when the Fyler Avenue bridge came down? I remember crossing it in the the car as a child with my mother. While I was straining to catch glimpses of Frisco nirvana below, she was complaining how narrow and rickety the bridge was! Thank you Jim Ozment for capturing the vistas that I missed! Rich
I think the bridge came down while I was away in the Army. Whenever I-44 was going in, that whole area changed. A friend says he remembers going over it in 1964, but I don't think it was around much after that. The bridge in it's original life was over the Warrior River down south from what I've been told and was brought up here, but I don't know when. I think back in the '20s-'30s. Was a good place to watch the goings on.
Don, it would make sense that the Fyler Avenue bridge would be taken down in preparation for the building of I-44 which would put the somewhere in the 1966-1969 time frame. BTW the last of those natural gas storage tanks that show up in some of those pictures are to be demolished sometime soon. Their prominance west of the Lindenwood yard gave the area the nickname of "Monument Valley" according to Joe Collias. Rich
Take a look at the Missouri Pacific in the '50s section at shot MP143. It shows MP Alco FAs at Ewing Ave, but in the background is a wood Frisco reefer. I thought they were all gone by 1956. Worth ordering the print just for that.
