By Harry McCue

The spring issue of The Record featured a great front cover action photo of "The Black Diamond," highballing through Lodi Station. I have been asked to comment further on what I gleaned from it. Let's read the photo again to see what we can find.

The locomotive is what is commonly called a "ten-wheeler." This was designated as a Lodi Station: click to enlargeJ class in the 1600 number range by the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Steam locomotives were commonly described by referring to their wheel arrangement. This is called the "Whyte classification" and describes how many wheels are in front of the driving wheels (pilot or pony truck), how many drivers, and many are after the drivers (trailing truck). Thus, this locomotive is a 4-6-0 or "ten-wheeler."

This locomotive was designed to burn anthracite coal. Most locomotives used "soft" coal or bituminous, but the Lehigh Valley's "bread and butter" was hauling anthracite. So, it and a few other anthracite hauling railroads, devised a special locomotive that could burn that type of coal.

Burning hard coal required a large "Wooten fire box" so the cab of the locomotive was moved to the middle of the boiler. This type of cab arrangement was called a "camel back." The engineer sat here on the right side. The fireman was at the rear shoveling coal to keep the steam pressure up. In case you were wondering, both these jobs were dirty, dangerous and back-breaking.

There is a lot more to learn about this engine, but we should look at other parts of the photo. Look at the water tower, built just like a silo, out of wooden staves of cedar or cypress, most likely. The wooden structure in the middle contains a pump, piping and a heater to keep the pipes warm in winter.

The vertical stick by the ladder is a gage to tell the engineer how much water is in the tank. The numbers are upside down. That is, the higher the marker is on the tank, the lower the water level.

Notice the signal on the station. These are lower quadrant semaphores. At the station these are called "order boards." They told the trainmen whether they had to stop and receive new orders or could continue to the next location. In this photo, the signal is telling the Diamond it may proceed.

The station appears to have living quarters for the station master and his family. Note how neat and tidy everything was. Look at how even the ballast is raked. This was a matter of pride among the "section gang," the men who kept each section of railroad track in top shape.

Note that the car directly behind the engine is a railway post office, complete with postal employees sorting the mail, each armed with a .38 Smith & Wesson.

Lodi's mail would be placed in a sack and hung on a hook alongside the track. A postal worker in the car would swing a hook out and catch the bag, on the fly. It would pound the sides of these "RPOs" so hard that there was a large wooden pad where the sack would hit to prevent damage to the car. Even so, many a window to either side of the door would get smashed from time to time!

This photo takes us back almost a hundred years, to an era of hard work, pride in your job, knowing your trade and connecting a sprawling, rural America with a transportation infrastructure that knitted us together as an industrial power and as a nation.

(Harry McCue is chair of Ithaca College's Department of Art, a member of the Lodi Historical Society and a railroad buff. A library at his Lodi home on Skinner Road includes publications and other railroad collectibles.)