Three Giant Steps | New York Central

From the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society archives, this film was produced in 1957 and tells of the progress made in three distinct areas - Electronics, Automation, and Imagination. The Centralized Traffic Control or CTC system shown in the film between Buffalo and Erie was the largest in the world at the time. At the time this equipment in Frontier Yard was considered to be state of the art.
#newyorkcentral #throwback

[@trainmaster844]

I grew up not far from Frontier Yard when I lived in Buffalo. My memories are of Conrail and CSX trains working the yard.
It’s a pity CSX ripped the hump out of the yard after drinking the PSR Kool-Aid, ‘cause that was what made yard switching fun.

[@brianfalzon6739]

Awesome

[@dennisboyd4262]

Eliminated the need for 'car counters' along the main line, my gr. grandmother was one at BCT.

[@davidwhiting1761]

I can see why Flexivan didn't take. While it saved time, it required specialized equipment for it to work. You couldn't take a preexisting trailer and use it for Flexivan, and it limited where you could move your trailers to or where your trailers could originate from. Shippers already embracing the flexibility of road haulage would not have taken a liking to the additional equipment investment when they could just keep sending trailers down the road. Mobile cranes solved the problem of piggyback service - rather than back a trailer onto a flatcar just lift it and drop it on the flat, then chain it down.

[@Thej611]

Although you can also see in flexi-van the earliest idea for what would eventually become contanerization. Just took some tweaking to get there

[@-_Spiral_-]

Sweet, that’s some cool footage!

[@northpennvalleysteamrailroad]

Awesome 😊

[@ajknaup3530]

Kewl

[@jmtrainz2582]

A bit off topic, how is no.624 doing?

[@dknowles60]

that is Something the PRR could never do

[@rodneykantorski736]

Spot On. PRR was in the stone ages