Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Boardwalk Flyer - mystery solved...

With Atlantic City falling on hard times I enjoy looking back at the time when the resort was America's Playground. I hope reading about the glory days will prompt my readers to take another look at the city. 


I have offered my services as an historian and author to the various tourist groups in the resort in the hopes of telling the story of Atlantic City's rich heritage but it is very political. Hope you enjoy this story I posted on my blog in 09. 

How did the Reading Railroad enter a 227-ton ( ton ) locomotive in an Atlantic City parade in 1925 and how the heck did the boardwalk not collapse?
Here is the story.

The Pennsylvania and the Reading railroads had been battling each other for year for the lucrative shore trade. They both recognized the need for marketing and in 1924 The Pennsylvania -through its division, the West Jersey and Seashore Railroad, scored a coup when it won the grand prize for floats in the beauty pageant parade with a scale model of their Delair Bridge.
The Reading - and their division, the Atlantic City Railroad, were livid and hatched a plan for revenge.
At the time the Reading's pride and joy was their Boardwalk Flyer, a 227-ton, 15 foot-high monster that carried carloads of tourists between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. At one time the Reading had twenty of these magnificent locomotives in service.

Under a veil of secrecy that would rival any covert operation today, employees began working on a full-scale model of the Boardwalk Flyer in the company's service shops in Camden, NJ.
They began with two Ford chassis and, using blueprints from the real locomotive, spent 6 weeks creating and assembling over eleven thousand parts consisting of sheet metal, wood and handmade fabrics. ( These guys were serious )

This work of art was built by hand, and when the magicians were finished, they had conjured an exact replica of the giant engine and tender.
Instead of the 227-ton real-life version, the parade beauty weighed in at 2-1/2 tons. It was secretly shipped by rail to Atlantic City in the dead of night and kept from view until the day of the parade. When it made its appearance thousands of spectators swore the genuine Boardwalk Flyer was traveling down the wooded walkway. Many ran fearing that the boardwalk would collapse. Fifteen men were require to operate the monster float. The designers left nothing to chance including an apparatus that produced steam and smoke,. The most expensive entry in Atlantic City parade history ran away with the grand prize for 1925. A tough act to follow

If you enjoy this format and are a FaceBook follower of mine on Tales of the New Jersey Shore please join this blog. As you can see I can post more high quality images on this blog as opposed to FaceBook and write longer text when needed. FB is great but it is built for short correspondence and not the type of material I can provide here. It is easy to sign on and I do not share your email address with a third party.  If I see more followers here I will begin posting more Tales of the New Jersey Shore. 

Emil

Friday, November 23, 2012

I Am Back

Hi Everyone

Most of you know that I have not been posting on this blog for a bit. Been posting on my FaceBook fan site that now has over 30,000 fans
It is : Tales of the New Jersey Shore

Also been busy with my NJTV PBS show Tales of the Jersey Shore.  I will now be blogging here again in addition to the other projects so please keep an eye out for some great Jersey Shore stories and images.
Thanks for your patience

Emil

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Our Pilot is Complete

Many of you that follow me on Facebook know I have been working on a 25 minute pilot on Asbury Park called The Real Jersey Shore. It will be the first hopefully of many.
Our goal is to show viewers the real shore as a wholesome, family destination and not the reality trash on television.
Hate to let you know but there are a few new trash shows in production as I write this.

Our next step is for our fundraiser to approach NJ based corporations and perhaps a few wealthy individuals that wish to show the world the real NJ Shore and receive funding to move ahead with production.
Wish I could post the pilot for you but I am under legal constraints not to show it to anyone but potential underwriters.

Keep you posted.
Emil

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Following and entering the raffle

A fan just suggested that I move the 'Follow" box on the left of the page to the very top so it is visible.
Good idea and I just figured out how to do it.

If you have not joined as a follower please do and join the raffle for the Replica Monopoly game that I will raffle off when we hit 1000 Followers. We are at 540 today

Emil

Young's Pier - Atlantic City

Before Captain John Lake Young ( he gave himself the rank of Captain )  built his massive Million Dollar Pier in 1906 in Atlantic City he began with Young and McShea's Pier.  John Lake Young and his financial backer, Stewart McShea, bought the old Applegate's Pier and turned it into the Ocean Pier ( later Young's Pier.) The successful showman enticed Sarah Bernhardt to debut when the pier opened.
It burned in 1912 but by then he had opened his Million Dollar Pier.

Monday, November 15, 2010

The Blog and Facebook

If you are reading this you are visiting my blog via Facebook.

THANKS  ( you see I could not do that on Facebook :) )
While I have lost some fans because people do not want to click the links I am posting to take you to this blog it is worth it to have interested readers.

Facebook is a social media site that I was trying to use as a blog. It had many limitations regarding size, quality, number of images, type styles ( see above, ) and was wide open to hated SPAMMERS.

This blog has the same stories written by me so there is no down side. Just a matter of clicking the link to the blog when I post on Facebook.

While it is not a requirement to read the blog if you register to follow it on the left hand side of the page   ( not the follow me on Twiter icon ) you get to enroll in the raffle for the Replica Monopoly Set once we hit 1,000 registered followers. All you need to register is a gmail, yahoo, twitter, AIM email address, etc

It is the "Follow" icon over the pictures of the 500 plus registered followers.

Mini Jerusalem - Ocean Grove

When Ocean Grove was first established as a Methodist Camp Meeting ground- an " Eden by the Sea," a large attraction was the model of Jerusalem built by a local member of the community.
It was later covered with a protective roofed structure but eventually was lost to age and Jersey Shore weather.
This was an illustrator's depiction of mini Jerusalem in the late 1880s.

Emil