A.T.

I am aware of at least one drawing that made it out. Dimensionally it is about five feet wide and eight feet long and it was sent to a man in Dallas, now deceased, sometime in the mid fifties. It is of a P-14 "Sunbeam" Pacific and it is quite impressive.

Frank

proto48er <atkott@...> wrote:
Tony -

I think some of the material at Hardy Street got saved, one way or
another. In the early 1960's, "efficiency experts" from San
Francisco (this is what the guys at Hardy Street called them, that
can be printed here) came in and supervised the removal of all the
obselete steam loco drawings that were in great old wood drawing file
cabinets on the third floor of the engineering building. Some
drawings were sent to SF, but most were destroyed. They watched the
T&NO guys all the way out to the disposal container so that no
drawings would be saved. (Some were saved during lunch hour and after
work). The theory was that if the drawings got out into model
magazines, etc., that would encourage TRESSPASS onto railroad
property by railfans!! The SF guys actually said that! At least
four of the T&NO engineers saved some of the smaller steam and wood
passenger car drawings, but I have lost touch with their
whereabouts. Lawrence E. Pewitt passed away back in the late
1980's. In the early 1960's, the T&NO guys at Hardy Street were very
friendly to railfans (a couple were railfans too). Railfans who
requested drawings were usually send steam loco blueprint copies, etc.

In defense of the SF efficiency experts, a lot of the old drawings
were of individual loco appliances, etc. There may have been as many
as 50 different drawings, on linen, of just bolts of one kind or
another. 95% of the stuff would probably not be of any interest to
modelers today. However, the T&NO guys were ENGINEERS of the old
school, and appreciated the beauty of an ink drawing on linen, even
if it were of a bolt! That bothered them the most, I believe.

The older freight car drawings were on the fourth floor, and were
still there back in the mid-1970's, when I went for a visit.
Passenger car stuff (old wood cars and their equipments) were cleaned
out when the steam drawings were disposed of.

A.T. Kott

--- In STMFC@..., Anthony Thompson <thompson@...> wrote:

A.T. Kott wrote:

(Tony - My old friend, Lawrence Pewitt, chief freight car

designer at

the T&NO Hardy Street Shops in the late 1950's, always referred

to

those cylindrical thingies as "Hup-bolts" - it is probably a

Texas

thing!)

Could WELL be a Texas thing (there are others <g>). IJf only

some

of Hardy Street had been preserved . . . you will like Tim

McLennan's

forthcoming book on the T&NO, which has lots of photos of Hardy St.

and

Englewood.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history