Florida East Coast E-units race south through West Palm Beach with the FEC leg of the Illinois Central's City of Miami. FEC helped operate the train from Jacksonville to Miami until the FEC strike of 1963, after which the City of Miami and all ACL Miami-bound trains were rerouted through Orlando via ACL to Auburndale where they crossed over to SAL (SCL) rails to reach West Palm Beach and Miami.
Mint green (I swear!) and red Seaboard Air Line E7s race north through Raleigh, NC with the number 22, The Silver Star, which is running about 4 hours late on this March 1965 morning. The illuminated numberboards over the windshield and twin sealed beam lights mounted in the nose door are typical SAL affectations, and Seaboard also preferred to run their carbody units "elephant-style", and so almost all of them featured MU receptacles in the nose so that they could be hooked the to back of the unit ahead of them.
With two E7As, an E8A and an E7B, the Silver Meteor sprints south through Raleigh, NC on January 31st, 1966. But the Meteor was typically an overnight train, so why is it running in broad daylight? Well, heavy snow had delayed it's northern segments over the PRR and RF&P, from NYC to DC and DC to Richmond, respectively, by over 12 hours. In fact, it's so far off of schedule, that it's flying white flags, denoting it as an extra at this point.
The southbound Silver Star at Chester, VA with three E7As and a single E8A
A rather surprise announcement was made this weekend that Great Smoky Mountains Railroad has begun working on restoring Southern 2-8-0 #722 to operation. A 1904 Baldwin product, Southern #722 is a Ks-1 class Consolidation that spent most of it's original revenue career working over the Murphy Branch between Asheville and Murphy, North Carolina, the very same rails that GSMR operates over today, before being retired by Southern Railway in '52. Southern sold the #722, and sister locomotive #630 to the formerly narrow-gauge East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad, aka The Tweetsie, where they were served as switchers on the standard-gauge trackage between Johnson City and Elizabethton, Tennessee. In 1967, to complement Southern #4501 and Savannah & Atlanta #750 in the Southern's new corporate steam excursion program, Southern Railway traded to Alco RS-3s to the Tweetsie for the #722 and #630, which were returned to their original numbers.
The #630 retained the original black paint, red cab roof, and gold lettering of Southern freight engines, but the #722 was painted in Southern's Sylvan Green and silver passenger scheme, similar to #4501. The #722 ran with the Southern program until 1979, when it became apparent that a lot of the smaller engines that Southern had were too small and too slow. Southern was leasing T&P #610 and CPR #2839 and working on C&O #2716, and so they decided to lease out the smaller engines. The Wilmington & Western leased the #722 in hopes of putting some steam trips together to salvage the season, after their usual locomotive, 4-4-0 #98 was down for dry pipe repairs. Unfortunately, the #722 was too big and heavy for the W&W's spindly wooden bridges and poor track conditions and so couldn't really go to far on the W&W. It did make at least one trip on the Octoraro Railroad, Reading's for Wilmington & Northern branch, although the tracks weren't in much better care there, and then was sent back to Southern.
Returning to Southern, the #722 and #630 were both loaned by Southern to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum for use on their property. In 1985, the boiler tickets expired on both #722 and #630 and they were placed on display, and while #630 stayed at TVRM, #722 was retrieved by Norfolk Southern and placed on display in the Biltmore neighborhood of Asheville, NC. In late 1999, NS sold their Biltmore property for redevelopment and #722 from its display site and relocated it to the Asheville roundhouse for storage
In late 2000, the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, which operates the same Murphy Branch where #722 was used in revenue service, purchased the locomotive with the hopes of restoring it to operating condition. However, after the #722 was disassembled for restoration work, plans were halted due to GSMR's other steam locomotive, ex-USATC #1702 going out of service in 2005. Steam operations on the GSMR took a hiatus while GMSR constructed facilities at Dillsboro for overhauling and maintaining steam locomotives and installed a turntable at Bryson City, and GMSR #1702 was returned to operation in 2016. But for over 20 years, Southern #722 has sat outside, disassembled into many pieces that have been rusting away.
Over the years there's been a lot of wringing of hands over the fate of #722. A lot of people have been of the mindset that #722 would have been better off staying at TVRM with #630 and then TVRM could have run that pair, since Southern #4501 is now overkill for the shorter trips that TVRM runs. At the very least, it would have been assembled and on display, rather than torn completely apart. But now, another one of the "problem children" of rail preservation has a future. GSMR is under the same corporate umbrella as Durango & Silverton, giving them very powerful "in-house" technical expertise to help in decision making, especially because Durango & Silverton's engines cover about 92 miles on each round trip to Silverton, making their locomotives about the hardest-worked steam fleet in the US. So, probably not much drama going forward, resulting in a successful restoration, and GMSR has already said they are hoping for a 2026 debut.
Southern #722, doubleheading with Savannah & Atlanta 4-6-2 #750, on the old Central of Georgia mainline at Opelika, Alabama on March 10, 1974. As the excursion program became more popular, doubleheaders became frequent due to the fact that most of the surviving Southern steam locomotives were of the relatively small and light variety.
Southern #722 in her East Tennessee & Western North Carolina paint and numbers at the interchange with North American Rayon in Elizabethton, TN. The Tweetsie had been built as a broad-gauge (5-foot) railroad, which never ran a single broad-gauge train over it's rails, then went out of business, then was regauged to 3-foot gauge. It also maintained dual-gauge tracks in and around Johnson City and Elizabethton, where most of the company's industrial customers were located, to interchange with the Southern and the Clinchfield. The eastern narrow-gauge portion of the Tweetsie vanished after 1950, leaving the 11 mile dual-gauge section, which was converted to strictly standard-gauge, to soldier on. The Tweetsie had owned a variety of small, old, secondhand standard-gauge power previously and bought the pair of Ks-1 Consolidations off of Southern in '52, where they ran until 1967.
Your post reminded me that I lived near the FEC bridge that mysteriously blew up one night in 1963.
Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:Your post reminded me that I lived near the FEC bridge that mysteriously blew up one night in 1963.
The FEC strikes were brutal, went on for 11 years, with freight trains and bridges and infrastructure being bombed pretty regularly. The strike began Jan. 23, 1963, when the road said it could not afford a 10.28‐cent hourly raise demanded by the 1,300 union men. Lyndon B. Johnson was actually visiting Florida when two FEC freight trains were derailed by bombs, and went ballistic on the FBI over the whole affair. He pretty much told them that bombing a train was a federal offense, so why the hell was the FBI sitting on their ass? Knowing how LBJ was, I'm sure it was much more crude and offensive. The whole strike also cost FEC a pretty huge chunk of passenger service: nearly every train going into Miami was handled by the FEC, and the strike and bombings ended all that, with SCL and ACL taking over that instead. The FEC strikes, which were ultimately lost by the union, set the stage for some of the issues that modern railroad operating crews face today, sadly.
ET&WNC #208 servicing the interchange with the North American Rayon Corporation plant at Elizabethton. NARC fireless steam engine #1 is coming out to pick up the cars that the Tweetsie is dropping off. While live steam on the Tweetsie in 1962, when this photo was taken, was impressive, and would continue for another five years, but NARC had that beat, with the fireless cooker running another 30 years after this photo before being retired.
Southern #722 and #4501 crosses the Ashley River at Charleston, South Carolina. During the 1970 NRHS convention this Charleston-Savanna roundtrip excursion ran over ACL rails with the two Southern steam engines in charge.
#722 and #4501 at Green Pond, South Carolina on the same 1970 NRHS convention trip.
Southern #722 and Savannah & Atlanta #750 lead a doubleheaded excursion over a trestle at Hurt, VA in 1971. This particular excursion ran from Roanoke to Hurt on the old Virginianan, then Hurt to Lynchburg on the Southern, and Lynchburg to Roanoke on the N&W. Interesting detail about S&A #750; the tender it uses is actually off a New York, Ontario & Western Class Y "Light 400" Mountain, the only surviving large part off an NYO&W steam locomotive. The Savannah & Atlanta bought some of the NYO&W's neat little 4-8-2s during WWII to help with wartime surge traffic, but they were pretty worn-out from years of neglect on the NYO&W. When the S&A shopped their Pacifics in 1948, they swapped over the larger tenders from the NYO&W Mountains to use on them. This tender is believed to have come from NYO&W #406. I read where someone alleged that S&A intended to save one of the last surviving NYO&W Class Ys, around 1951, but shortly before it was to be set aside, it derailed and was flopped on it's side and badly damaged and they scrapped it instead. No clue on the veracity of that account, but if true, it's sad that we got that close to an NYO&W steam locomotive being saved.
In reply to NickD :
It's cool to see GP's and RS's pulling passenger cars but Es, Fs and PAs look the part so much better. When I picture big time passenger railroading it is always the later that comes to mind.
Delaware-Lackawanna Alco PA-4u #190 has arrived in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Delaware-Lackawanna has decided to place it on display at Steamtown NHS's roundhouse in the meantime, and has said that in between bouts of the restoration, it will also be placed on display at Steamtown. I'll be nearby this weekend at Pittston, so I'll have to see if I can swing in and at least get a couple pics of the #190.
NickD said:NickD said:So, on the subject of 4-8-4s, Reading & Northern, and the state of Pennsylvania, I have a wild plan for Memorial Day weekend.
Between the 26th and 29th, Norfolk & Western #611 will be operating at Strasburg Rail Road. These are the final trips it is running in Pennsylvania, at least for this year, and no one really knows what the future holds for it. It's returning to Virginia, and there's hopes that it's going to run on the Buckingham Branch Railroad, but there exists a very really fear that it's going back to Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke just to sit and collect dust. If I want to see it operating, this is a surefire time to catch it.
On May 6th, East Broad Top begins regular operations with steam power. I missed out on seeing it operate back when it was originally running, I don't want to miss it again, and it's only a two hour drive from Strasburg to Orbisonia, and they'll be running that weekend.
On May 28th, Reading & Northern is running it's very first Pittston to Jim Thorpe excursion, and to commemorate the event, they're going to be using the F-units, which I have not had the fortune to see in operation.
So, the plan is looking like:
- Thursday afternoon, drive down to Strasburg and spend the night.
- Friday, spend the day photographing N&W #611, and whatever else is running (likely N&W #475), all day, then drive to Orbisonia that night
- Saturday, ride the East Broad Top and photograph it, then drive north to Pittston and spend the night.
- Sunday, chase the Pittston-Jim Thorpe excursion and head home that evening.
It is the best of plans, it is the worst of plans. It might actually make more sense to swap Friday and Saturday from a driving perspective, head all the way south west and stay in Orbisonia on Thursday night, then work my way back east and north. The only thing is, Strasburg might be more of a madhouse on Saturday rather than Friday (I saw a quote once that was "I love the hobby, I just can't stand 90% of the other people that do it." And in the scheme of time, the whole trip is only nine minutes longer to go Rome-Strasburg-Orbisonia-Pittston-Rome than it is to go Rome-Orbisonia-Strasburg-Pittston-Rome, although the distance increases by 34 miles.
Well, none of you talked me out of this damnfool plan, so now I've gone and gotten tickets and hotel reservations. I'm doing the Rome-Orbisonia-Strasburg-Rome routing, which ends up basically being a giant rectangle across the middle of PA.
So, on the subject of my trip down to Pittston, I may have made a slight error in planning. I read the R&N press release for their first Pittston-Jim Thorpe excursion and it said that "From May 28th to September 24th, regular weekend excursions between Pittston and Jim Thorpe are lead by diesel locomotive-powered trains", so I jumped to the conclusion that the trip on the 28th would be the inaugural trip and be powered by the F-units. If I had looked at the paragraph above, I would have seen that the special F-unit-powered inaugural trip is May 27th. With reservations made at hotels, my travel plans are kind of locked in. Staying in Strasburg and driving up to Pittson, and then staying in Pittston and driving back down to Strasburg adds a ton of driving. It does sound like the regular trips will be diesel-powered at least, so it won't be RDCs, but no clue if it'll be the Admiral Cab GP38-2s that they like for passenger use, or the Fast Freight SD50s, or maybe the GP39RNs. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if R&N made a last minute announcement that they were going to use the F-units for Sunday as well.
Speaking of Steamtown, Ross Rowland visited there last month and had a rather disappointing report.
Large portions of the museum remained closed ever since they had a heating system failure in October of last year. You can walk around the roundhouse and the outdoor displays but everything else remains closed. Heaven forbid you advise visitors, to a partially outdoor attraction in the Northeast, to wear a coat in the winter or spring. I imagine that the HVAC repairs will be a long time coming, considering the labyrinthine bureaucracy at work there.
He asked the park ranger the status on Boston & Maine 4-6-2 #3713 and was told that work on the #3713 was "waiting on additional fundraising" and for now is stopped. The last update from the Project3713 folks was January of 2022 and basically said that they had been able to renegotiate the contract that had kept them out of the shops since 2021, which means there has been little work since the early days of Covid. This year marks 28 years of work on the #3713 and it's still in pieces in the back shops (of which they no longer even offer a tour), not even remotely close to operating, while their only operating steam locomotive, Baldwin Locomotive Works #26, is 8 years into its 15 year boiler ticket. I suspect #3713 won't be operating before #26 goes out of service, nor does it bode well for when #26 needs it's next 1472.
When Rowland asked when the next steam excursion to the Delaware Water Gap would be he was told by the same park ranger, "I don't think you'll ever see that again as it's just too demanding on the locomotives and the staff." I tried twice to ride the longer trips with steam power when I was younger and was skunked both times, and I suspect that I'll never get the opportunity with the trajectory of affairs.
Yes, the Big Boy cosmetic restoration they did two years ago was very nice, and commendable, but the same pieces, UP #4012, GTW #6039, IC #790, Reading #2124, have been the only ones kept up for display for the last forty years. Other pieces, like CPR Jubilee #2929, Maine Central #519, CN #47, Akron, Canton & Youngstown #304, have seen absolutely zero attention since the Nelson Blount days in Vermont. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen #47 or #2929 be even moved to a different location in the yard. It's basically stagnant. No new locomotives restored either, and those that did run have been allowed to go dead.
Your $6 million of taxpayer money at work. Or not.
"Instead of 'our railways' it seemed to me that they were far more likely to become nobody's railways under nationalization. They would fall into neglect and decay just because they had become political pawns about which nobody felt responsible and nobody cared."
-L.T.C. Rolt, "Landscape With Figures"
B&M #3713 as she's looked for quite a few years, and will likely continue to look. Granted, I just mentioned Southern #722, which spent 18 or so years scattered about the Tennessee hillsides, so it's not hopeless, but I expect you would need a change of ownership, either of the locomotive or of Steamtown itself, to get B&M #3713 up and running in a realistic timeframe.
UP 5511 will move before 3713. How long did Pennsy 1361 sit at Steamtown before it escaped?
LS_BC8 said:UP 5511 will move before 3713. How long did Pennsy 1361 sit at Steamtown before it escaped?
To be fair to Steamtown, the PRR #1361 boondoggle really wasn't their fault. They were just providing a shop space for it to be worked on, and occasionally lending their shop staff to handle. The shots were being called by two different groups, Railroader's Memorial Museum and University of Scranton, with the state of PA also involved, as they were providing funding for the whole thing. Richard Geist was the assemblyman pushing the whole restoration and he ended up losing his reelection bid over it, since he had funneled so much state money into the restoration and ended up with nothing.
The big problem there was #1361 was pretty worn out when she was retired, the original 1985 restoration had been a complete hack job, and then while doing the second restoration, they were assuming what had worked for Altoona back in 1918 would still fly by modern standards. They went through and spent a fortune on overhauling the firebox to original specification only to learn that the design had been marginal back when it had been introduced, had been updated in the '30s to meet new ICC regulations, and then backdated to the original 1918 design during WWII for the sake of speed, cost, and material savings. The design also had absolutely zero tolerance for erosion of firebox sheets: it barely squeaked by when they were at new thickness, and PRR just replaced the entire firebox and firebox wrapper every time they did a major overhaul. The 1918 design didn't meet the updated 1930s regulations, and it sure as hell didn't meet the modern FRA regulations.
Sadly, Steamtown did the same damn thing with B&M #3713, and I believe it was near simultaneously. They were replacing any of the firebox sheeting that was below 80% original thickness and got it all done, had all the staybolts in, and an FRA inspector came out and started crunching numbers and explained that the B&M design, under the new FRA factor of safety, didn't pass unless the sheets were near new. So then they had to cut out the entire firebox, junk all of the brand-new staybolts, and then have an entire new firebox built for it.
If they ever get the #3713 running again, I remain a little concerned about how well it's going to fare running their excursions. The grade leaving Scranton for Moscow or Tobyhanna faces a 1.8% grade for 13 miles. Steamtown sold off their CPR G5 Pacifics, #1246, #1278 and #1293, because they lacked the pulling power to handle the grade, and those had 70" drivers. Boston & Maine #3713 has 80" drivers, meaning she really needs to have a roll on to use that 40,918lbs of tractive effort that she makes. It was built with a trailing truck booster engine, which can bump the tractive effort up to 52,800lb, but I'm not sure that they're planning to make the booster operational. CNR 2-8-2 #3254 generated 53,115lbs, but that was at a lower speed thanks to the 63" drivers. That being said, if they get her running, she is a gorgeous machine.
One of the big issues that Steamtown has with motive power is that they have some odd requirements, and the overlap of those fall in a spot where the collection really doesn't have much coverage.
They have the stiff grade coming out of Scranton to go, well, pretty much anywhere. It rules out any of the low tractive effort engines, like Canadian Pacific 4-4-4 #2929 (high speed express engine with minimal tractive effort) or any of the really old teakettles, like the AC&Y 4-6-0, Brooks-Scanlon Co. 2-6-2, or the Norwood & St. Lawrence 2-6-0.
They need something with decent range, which eliminates any of the small industrial engines they have, like the E.J Lavino 0-6-0 saddletanker, the New Haven Trap Rock 0-4-0T, or the Groveton Paper Co. 2-4-2T. Those would also be incredibly slow. The Canadian National 4-6-4T commuter tank would be able to handle track speed and the 63" drivers means it has reasonable tractive effort, but the range would also be borderline.
They've also stated that, since they lack turning facilities at any of the further destinations, they would really like something with a rear trailing truck. It helps the engine track better when running tender first, it's easier on the drive wheel flanges, and it's less abusive to the head end crew. That rules out engines that would other wise have the power and the range, like Maine Central 2-8-0 #519, Lowville & Beaver River 2-8-0 #1923 (also, I've heard that one is in disastrous condition), Illinois Central 2-8-0 #790 or Rahway Valley 2-8-0 #15.
Well, CPR 4-6-2 #2317 and CNR 2-8-2s #3254 and #3377 all have decent power and range, as well as trailing trucks, and the #2317 and #3254 are proven capable of handling those trips. The #3254 has some pretty irreparable damage from a severe smash-up in her original life that was always problematic, but #3377 is reportedly in good shape and is the same class. The issue: they're Canadian. That was always a huge gripe, that Steamtown received $6 million dollars from the American federal government but was running Canadian steam.
So, what has power, range, a trailing truck and is American? You're left with Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 #4012, Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 #759, Grand Trunk Western 4-8-2 #6039, Reading Company 4-8-4 #2124 and Boston & Maine #3713. The #4012 isn't even remotely feasible to operate, just based off of size and weight, and it'd cost a fortune to return to operation and operate. NKP #759 is in excellent mechanical shape and certainly has the power, but it barely fits the turntable and roundhouse, the NKP #765 folks say that #765 struggled to negotiate the curves and switches of the ready track, and Steamtown has said they don't want to operate a Van Sweringen Berkshire when there is already another two running. Reading #2124 is even larger and wouldn't fit the roundhouse or turntable at all, and they have a Reading T-1 practically running out of their backyard these days. And GTW #6039 looks great, would be unique in that there aren't any operating Mountains in the US, has the power and speed, and would fit the existing infrastructure, but it reportedly has scoured cylinders that would make it hideously expensive to return to operation.
So really, despite B&M #3713 being a less than ideal choice for their terrain, it's the best choice.
It sounds like the extremely remote and fascinating Beech Mountain Railroad's days are numbered. Using trackage from an 1890s logging railroad, the Beach Mountain RR runs from the CSX interchange at Alexander, WV to a point south of Star Bridge known as Beech Run Junction in Randolph County, a distance of 10 miles. There it services the Carter-Roag coal mine, the sole customer on the line. There's been talk of Carter-Roag chasing increasingly smaller veins of coal and spending more and more money on removing impurities from the coal, and it seems the mine has finally played out. Carter-Roag has announced a complete shutdown of the mine later this year, and since it's the only customer of Beech Mountain RR, the Beech Mountain is likely also done. The BMRR does head off through some really remote territory, and follows the Left Fork of the Buckhannon River, which could make for a neat scenic railroad, but I think it's likely too remote (Alexander, WV isn't even a town, it's an unicorporated township) to survive.
Aside from how remote it is, the Beech Mountain is unique for it's roster, an EMD SW7, an Alco S-2 and an Alco S-4, and it's "submersible bridges". Frequent flooding of the Buckhannon River caused the Beech Mountain to have to rebuild it's bridges with the same frequency, so someone came up with concrete bridges with sloped sides that can be submerged without damage when the river floods.
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