A rare Southern Pacific Alco RS-32 sits hooked up to an Alco C628, while an EMD F7 fuels in the background.
A rare Southern Pacific Alco RS-32 sits hooked up to an Alco C628, while an EMD F7 fuels in the background.
Ok Nick. I know you are a fan of Alcos. I want to know more about the PA-2/PB-2 demonstrator that GE and Alco built (#8375 and #8375B) and eventually sold to the NYC.
The Wikipedia article says that PA-2/PB-2s were built from 1950-1953.
I came across a photo taken in 1951 of 8375 in Moscow, ID. It made me wonder where exactly this thing went on its demonstration tour before going to the New York Central. What can you dig up on the route it took, how many miles it traveled, how long the demo tour lasted? Here is the photo dated 1951 of the train parked in front of the UP-NP station that I have been building a model of.
I have another pic that is a close up of the engine and have confirmed it is 8375 and the text on the side is readable. "More Power to America Special".
This video says it's from 1960, but I'm pretty sure they mean 1950. It describes the train and the purpose. Doesn't give the details of exactly where it went. Sounds like a cool exhibit. Too bad it was all scrapped instead of preserved.
In reply to T.J. (Forum Supporter) :
Seems hard to find much on that exhibit. Mostly just says "countrywide". Also, from what one source says, it was not open to the public, only those in the power-generating/distributing industry. So it was more like a traveling trade show. It was not exclusively railroad-themed, its just that GE was working with Alco, so they used their locomotives and moved it by rail. Sounds like those PAs were not demonstrators in the usual sense, where they were loaned to various railroads to operate for a period of time. Instead, it sounds more like GE borrowed them, did the tour with them and then returned them to Alco, who used them to fill NYC's order.
Yeah, you are right in that they were not demonstrators in the usual manner.
It sure sounds like a tour that wouldn't have stopped in the little town of Moscow, ID. There is the University of Idaho there, but other than that it wasn't a large commercial center. Other than the university, the only real industry was agriculture and there was a good bit of logging off to the east. Based on the direction the train is sitting, it was traveling north from Lewiston, ID towards Spokane, WA. From there it would intersect the main east-west lines so it could go over to Seattle or head back east through Montana.
In reply to NickD :
I am in awe of your knowledge of all things rail related.
The Missouri Pacific had a small but good-looking fleet of Alco PAs. This is one far removed from its glory days on the Missouri Eagle, hauling freight instead.
In better days.
The Bratislav Bullet is getting restored in Prague.
In reply to 914Driver :
That is the most eastern-european looking object I've ever seen.
The New York, New Haven & Hartford's largest engines were there Class L 2-10-2 Santa Fes. They owned 50 of the me, built in 1918.
The #3205 is leaving Maybrook with 102 refrigerator cars.
These engines were kind of in a constant state of change, with the New Haven always adding or removing or moving things around. Like the #3200, below, which has it's air pumps on the pilot, unlike the #3216 above, which has them under the running boards.
The #3224 has the pilot mounted airpumps as well, along with a train stop control box on the running boards.
In this photo, the #3206 has both the usual Elesco Type A feedwater heater (the cylinder over the smokebox) but also a Type E (the box behind the stack)
Now in this photo, the Type E has been removed, but now it has Boxpok disc drive wheels instead of the spoked drive wheels.
The #3246 never had a feedwater heater, as shown near Hawleyville in 1940
But it did have a brakeman's compartment built into the tender
#3239 working hard near West Pawling, NY in 1938
Sadly, not only did all the New Haven Class Ls get cut up for scrap, but not a single New Haven locomotive of any size, configuration or age survived.
There is a good bit of NH equipment at the Danbury Railroad Museum.
In reply to 02Pilot :
Whoops, forgot a word in there. No New Haven steam locomotives of any configuration were saved, not even a lowly 0-6-0. I did hear that they held onto an I-5 "Shore Line" streamlined Hudson for something like 2 years after they were retired trying to donate it to a city or group or museum but no one would take it. Not sure how true that is or not, but I've heard of similar stories a number of times regarding different engines that are known to be true, so it wouldn't surprise me
The 10 New Haven I-5 "Shore Line" 4-6-4 Hudsons were the last steam locomotives that the New Haven ordered in '37.
The New Haven ran them pretty hard, with 8 of the 10 on-duty hauling their top passenger trains every day. The NH didn't quite get use of their full potential though, as track speed restrictions limited them. They also were found to have a vertical hammering issue where when they had high speed wheel slip, the driving wheels were found to actually come off the rails.
They stayed on the top trains until 1948, as the only passenger diesels the New Haven had were Alco DL109s, and they didn't have many. Not only that, but two DL109s did not accelerate as fast as an I5. But when the New Haven began to purchase Alco PAs en masse, which had the same horsepower as a DL109 but were considerably lighter, the writing was on the wall for the Shore Lines. By 1950 they were essentially retired, and by 1952 they were scrapped.
Also, I was mistaken, it was not an I-5 Shore Line that the New Haven tried to donate. It was actually a trio of J-1 Mikados. The New Haven had retained Mikados #3006, #3016 and #3020 as a steam generator for snow melters (used to clean snow and ice out of switches) at their Boston, Providence and New Haven terminals respectively. They were in usage as late as 1956 but hung around until 1958, when Hollywood came calling. The #3016 was then cleaned up, and disguised as fictional Eastern & Portland #97 for the film It Happened To Jane. Afterwards it was relettered for New Haven and the head of PR, Bob McKernan, offered her and her sisters to both Essex and New Haven, CT, as well as the owner of the Danbury Fair, Joe Leahy, and both Connecticut trolley museums. All of them refused to take one of the engines, so they were sent south to PA to be cut up. Sometime afterwards, Joe Leahy had second thoughts (by this point those were the last New Haven steam engines) and called back up, and there were frantic long distance calls before it was learned that the #3016 was partially cut up, and the #3006 and #3020 were completely gone.
Nick, how about a post on the C&O 2716? I saw it in a Delay In Block youtube video this morning being moved across Kentuicky by an old F7. Looked like it was cosmetically restored and on its way to being brought back to operational.
In 1943, the Chesapeake & Ohio placed an order for 90 identical K-4 2-8-4 locomotives. The C&O, Pere Marquette and Nickel Plate were all under the ownership of the Van Sweringen Brothers, and while the Nickel Plate and Pere Marquette locomotives were built by Lima and mechanically near-identical, the C&O ordered theirs from both Alco and Lima and theirs were also a fair bit heavier (460,000lbs vs 443,000lbs). Interestingly, the C&O absorbed the Pere Marquette in 1947, and the PM's N-1 and N-2 class Berkshires would end up working alongside the C&O K-4s. Also, C&O tended to be like the NYC and give classes their own name befitting the region they operated in, so they were called a Kanawha. And cosmetically, the C&O engines were much different from the similar NKP and PM engines, with a number plate in the center of the smokebox door, and the headlight on the pilot.
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The #2716 was one of the engines built by Alco, which makes it a bit unique to begin with. After 13 years of service, the C&O began to dieselize, and the #2716 and her sisters were out on the curb. To their credit, the C&O preserved a whopping 13 Kanawhas, although now only 12 exist (one was given to Buffalo, NY where it sat on display, before being cut up for scrap years later after heavy vandalism). In 1959, the locomotive was donated to Kentucky Railway Museum for display.
Twenty years later, the Clinchfield was trying to run a steam program in the vein of Southern and Norfolk & Western. The problem was, they were trying to make due with Clinchfield #1, an ancient 4-6-0. It was too old and too light to make for a good mainline excursion locomotive.
After a failed attempt at securing Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis #576, the Clinchfield decided in on the #2716. Interestingly, after the #2716 was leased, the city of Nashville changed their mind and offered the #576 back up but the Clinchfield was already decided. It was leased, taken apart for restoration and was partway through, when the Clinchfield's general manager was ousted for misappropriation of funds and the #2716 was sent back to the museum with an uncertain future.
By 1980, Southern's well-established steam program was in dire need of some different motive power. They had retired Consolidations #630 and #722 (too old and too slow), as well as Royal Hudson #2839 (too out of place geologically), the T&P #610 was starting to wear out, the #4501 was a bit too light and was a slower freight locomotive (as well as developing a cracked front flue sheet), and Savannah & Atlanta #750 was a light Pacific. Southern needed something with power and speed, but Southern hadn't preserved any of their big dual-purpose 4-8-2 Mountains. So, they leased the partially-restored #2716 from the Kentucky Railway Museum.
But C&O (now Chessie) was a big competitor to the Southern, so they couldn't be using a competitor's engine to do PR work for their railroad. So, the Southern had the #2716 done up as if Southern had purchased 2-8-4 Berkshires. They painted the cab roof red, graphited the smokebox, added gold pinstriping, moved the headlamp up to the smokebox door, as well as a brass eagle on top of the headlight and brass flag holders
Its amazing how much a simple makeover changed the appearance. It is a bit odd that C&O allowed this to happen, as Chessie was a major competitor of Southern. Southern had already faced one lawsuit earlier in their steam program when they had tried to restore Atlanta & West Point heavy Pacific #290 and doll it up as a Southern Ps-4 Crescent, as A&WP was not enthused with the idea of their engine doing PR work for a competitor. The engine did test runs in 1980 and then entered service, being exactly what Southern needed.
But in 1982, an inexperienced fireman improperly fired the engine and cracked the firebox, which was still original to the engine. This resulted in the #2716 being taken out of service and the Southern borrowing fellow Van Sweringen Berkshire Nickel Plate #765 to fill in. Attempts to weld up the cracked firebox failed and then when Southern and Norfolk & Western the decision was made to downsize the program under Norfolk Southern. The 3 engines being operated would be N&W #611, N&W #1218 and Southern #4501. The #2716 hung around the Irondale shops until 1985.
Then in 1994, after Norfolk Southern ended their steam program, the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society (owner/operators of NKP #765) moved the #2716 up to their facilities. They repaired the firebox, restored it to it's original C&O appearance and operated it for about a year. At this point, NKP #765 was in the midst of a complete overhaul, as all the excursions had racked up serious mileage. C&O #2716 was also due for it's FRA-mandated flue replacement. They had to make a financial decision to work on one engine, and the #765 was their original engine, so they decided to park the C&O #2716, which then went back to Kentucky in 2001.
The #2716 was left as a major static exhibit for years, even being dolled up as an L&N "Big Emma" Berkshire #1992 in 2016 (no Big Emmas were preserved) before the Kentucky Steam Heritage Center was formed and announced they were going to restore the #2716 to operation. They even made the announcement on February 7th (2/7/16) There were doubts originally, as #2716 was reportedly in disastrous mechanical condition (The KSHC discovered that to be not true) and that it was going to have to be moved over CSX rails, with CSX being notoriously unfriendly to steam, passenger and vintage equipment. But interestingly, CSX offered to help move it to the old Louisville & Nashville yard in Ravenna, KY, towing it behind their Clinchfield #800 F7 heritage unit. It seems like CSX might possibly be getting ready to change their attitude, perhaps realizing they could use some positive PR, as they have also been helping out with Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis #576's restoration as well.
Now word on when the restoration will be done, as it will require a full inspect. Wisely there was a contract in the lease where they had to set aside funds to reassemble the locomotive before beginning work, so that if a full restoration becomes impossible, it doesn't end up as a pile of parts spread across Ravenna. Also, no one is entirely sure where it will operate, although some speculate that maybe CSX might play nice as it gets closer to completion. Hopefully, third time is the charm for this engine, which has suffered two relatively troubled and brief excursion careers.
The KSHC has also acquired two further steam engines since then. First, they took in disassembled Nickel Plate Mikado #587, which fled Indiana in pieces after the Indiana Transportation Museum got evicted from their location. The plan is to store it until the ITM can either afford to have them restore it, or can afford to move it back to their new location.
Also RJ Corman's #2008, a Chinese QJ 2-10-2 nicknamed Old Smokey, will be donated for display purposes. If the KHSC ever gets operations up and going, the #2008 is supposedly in excellent mechanical condition (for starters, it was built in 1986, so it has much less wear and tear) and just needs FRA-mandated flue replacement
In reply to NickD :
I knew you'd come up with more interesting background than the KY Steam webpage has. Thanks.
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