{"id":41190,"date":"2025-02-19T06:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=41190"},"modified":"2025-02-16T16:39:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T21:39:17","slug":"on-the-trail-of-the-999-february-19-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/on-the-trail-of-the-999-february-19-1988\/","title":{"rendered":"On the trail of the 999\u2014February 19, 1988"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

At 10:53 am on February 19, 1988, I photographed this Conrail intermodal hotshot passing the 413 automatic signals near Corfu, New York on the former New York Central Water Level Route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was on this tangent section of track, that on May 10, 1893, New York Central & Hudson River Railroad staged its famous speed run with the specially proportioned 4-4-0 999.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kodachrome 25 color slide exposue using a Leica M2 rangefinder with 50mm f2.0 Summicron lens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In my illustrated book, North American Locomotives, published by Voyageur Press in 2012 (dedicated to the Memory of Robert A. Buck), I covered 999’s famous run with this description:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1893, New York Central & Hudson River Railroad staged a speed run under the direction of George H. Daniels, Central\u2019s General Passenger Agent (and unofficial chief publicity stunt coordinator) with a specially designed 4-4-0 with exceptionally tall drivers, number 999. On May 10th<\/sup>, this engine with engineer Charles Hogan at the throttle sprinted west toward Buffalo with a special section of the\u00a0Empire State Express<\/em>. On a downgrade tangent near Corfu, New York, he opened the throttle wide; to passengers on board telegraph polls along the line blurred by \u2018like a picket fence\u2019, and those timing the train claimed to have hit 112.5 mph!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracking the Light Post Daily!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

on this tangent section of track, that on May 10, 1893, New York Central & Hudson River Railroad staged its famous speed run with the specially proportioned 4-4-0 999.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Conrail_3353__with_intermodal_wb_at_413_automatic_signals_near_Corfu_NY_1053am_Feb19_1988\u00a9Brian_Solomon_122744.jpg?fit=2048%2C1388","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-aIm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41193,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41190\/revisions\/41193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}