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This is the first of many eBay wins I will be posting here. Click on the cover to download this booklet. You must have Adobe Acrobat reader to open it. |
Bill Lane’s
PRSLHS Page Click on the photos to make them larger My
memories of the PRSL are from its last years. My Grandmom’s house is in North
Wildwood. The line into West Wildwood is visible from Wildwood Junction
across the marsh and up to the now former West Wildwood bridge. A favorite
past time as a child was crabbing and fishing from the dock. But I was
constantly watching the West Wildwood Bridge. If it started to close, my Pop
would jump into the car and we would try to beat the train to the Oak Avenue
Station. In summertime traffic in the 1970s it was usually a close race. By
that time the trains were almost always an RDC1, but there were a few trains
with gondolas loaded with large boulders for the beach bulkhead projects. My PRSL interest is in the late
steam era especially in the Wildwood area. The Baldwin AS16 was new. There
was a mixture of PRR K4, H9 and Reading steam power basking in the midday
summer sun at Cold Spring Harbor waiting to take the day trippers home. I
hope to model this area with my AS16, K4 and some P70 coaches. I also have a
GP38 that will be done for PRSL some day even though it will not have the
extended cab as the prototype did. This is what the PRSL is all about for me. AS16,
PRR K4 and RDC are laying over in the hot summer sun at Cold Spring Harbor. Sometimes
I wished
I could have seen it myself. Here is a contemporary view into
West Wildwood. The multi-floor buildings were built in the late 1970s and
forever changed the view of the bridge area. You can almost see the right
high tension tower that spanned the bridge under the red arrow. These towers
remain today. PRR K4
5495 Camden NJ 3-21-54 I am
slowly detailing one of my K4 to be K4 5495. Please
see http://www.lanestrains.com This K4 project has been in my
mind for about 15 years now. I actually painted my first K4 as 5495 until I
learned more about K4s and the PRR. I then traded it away for an unpainted K4
which has remained unpainted until June 2006 when I finally started it. 5495
was in the last batch of K4 made which was unique in that they had a cast
frame. The cast frame is visible mostly from the front because of diagonal
braces that ran from the pilot to the cylinders. It ran late into the steam
era since it was newer then other K4s. Another unique feature was that is was
never fully modernized as it kept its original pilot, but got the modernized
boiler front and headlight position change. 5495 became a small obsession of
mine because it ran on the New York and Long Branch, and more importantly the
PRSL. It was the subject of
Builders photos when it was new. All of these factors played into my decision
to model it as close as I possibly could. It is good that I waited until now
to do this since my modeling skills have improved to tackle such an involved
project. Cape May
Seashore Lines RDC running South on 9-12-04 Please contact me if you have photos or other PRSL materials
for the Wildwood or Woodbury area. I would like to buy or trade you for them. Revised on 4-19-08 © PRSLHS 2008 Resuscitated
from a 20 year nap on 1-25-07 |