Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

That's one hell of a tow rig!

They need one. She weighs about 200,000 pounds. It would've been far easier to transfer her by rail, but there is one teeny-tiny hang up with that idea- #201 is equipped with friction bearing trucks... which were banned from interchange service in the early '90s.

Arrival in Ely

Recon1342 said:

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

That's one hell of a tow rig!

They need one. She weighs about 200,000 pounds. It would've been far easier to transfer her by rail, but there is one teeny-tiny hang up with that idea- #201 is equipped with friction bearing trucks... which were banned from interchange service in the early '90s.

Arrival in Ely

Also no alignment control couplers. And the big one, Nevada Northern has no outside rail connection anymore.

 C&O 2-6-6-2 #1309 has been out doing some test runs on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad today. WMSR management is saying that it will be pulling their mid-December Polar Express trains. Fun fact: this is the first compound articulated to operate in the North American preservation era. Less fun fact: Running trains under the Polar Express banner requires paying some insane royalties (one person said their tourist line saw huge attendance at their first year of Polar Express events, but the royalties ate up almost all the profits, so the next year they called it North Pole Express and no one noticed)

I caught MA&N #2453 running Long Hood Forward through Rome on lunch today. This is crossing the shared-usage bridge on Railroad Street, towing about 12 covered hopper cars that were in storage down on the west end of Rome, and 4 coil cars that they picked up at Worthington Industries.

The weird thing about that bridge is that the structure must be different for the sides, because the automobile side of the bridge has a weight limit of 12 tons, while the railroad side is much higher. Also, it has a metal grate bridge deck, and there are clear marks in the decking where MA&N's snow plow derailed back in 1994 and crunched into the grating on the automobile side.

In reply to NickD :

Is there enough room for a car to pass while a train is on it?

I thought Black Hills Central #108 was an articulated compound also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9-gRB7dW48 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to NickD :

Is there enough room for a car to pass while a train is on it?

There actually is. When there is no train, it's a two-lane bridge. When the train is crossing, it functions as a one-lane bridge. A lot of people stop and wait though, probably due to nerves. I'm sure the MA&N crews are probably grateful for that too.

LS_BC8 said:

I thought Black Hills Central #108 was an articulated compound also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9-gRB7dW48 

I didn't even think about those, and must be nobody else is, because I saw that headline being thrown around several places. Either that, or they aren't counting those, since #1309 is a mainline engine and those 2-6-6-2Ts were logging engines.

Man, that #1309 is a fearsome-looking machine.

N&W Y6b #2198 exiting Elkhorn Tunnel with an unusally dirty stack. The N&W operating department certainly would have frowned at this fireman. When O. Winston Link was hired to photograph the N&W, their one big stipulation was he couldn't publish any photos of locomotives with black exhaust, or with the safety valves lifted. Both implied a fireman who was firing wastefully or inefficiently.

A quintessential N&W photograph: furiously laboring N&W Y6b with a clear stack and canteen car, perfectly groomed ballast, an endless string of hopper cars, and rugged mountain scenery.

Those two titans of N&W freight power, a Y6 compound and an A single-expansion, claw their way upgrade towards Blue Ridge, Virginia.

N&W 2-6-6-4 #1238 drifting downgrade. The fireman has just kicked the stoker on, judging by the exhaust going from white to black. The #1238 was part of the last batch of class As which were built with lightweight roller bearing connecting rods similar to the class Js.

One of the N&W's less well-known tonnage mmaulers, a class Z1b 2-6-6-2 rests at Roanoke in July of '54. Her days are numbered, as the Class Z1s were some of the first N&W steam power to go, along with the old 4-8-0s and the earlier Y 2-8-8-2s

Demonstrating her articulated construction, class A #1203 rolls through a crossover at the Columbus coal dock, canteen car in tow. The N&W knew that time spent stopping and starting a train contributed heavily to delays, and since they had reduced hot journal boxes to a record low, watering stops were the next target. So they began taking tenders from older Ys and Zs and converting them to auxiliary canteen cars, allowing them to reduce the numbers of stops and demolish intermediate water towers. But when the first diesels on the property ran right past every water tower and coal dock, the writing was on the wall.

A strange site, but apparently one that wasn't too uncommon, the Y6 helper on the head end of the train is running tender-first. The exact reason is unknown, but I've seen guesses that with how tight a schedule and little turnaround time the N&W operated on, there simply wasn't time to turn the engine.

The number series is a giveaway that this isn't one of the famed class J 4-8-4s, but an earlier class K 4-8-2. After the streamlined Js hit the rails, the N&W ran a number of the older Mountains through the Roanoke shops and gave them a similar makeover. The 100-series numbers, number of wheels, and the big Worthington feedwater heater hung on the fireman's side all distinguish these engines. In the twilight of her life, this once-proud passenger hauler has been reduced to a local freight run.

A Z1b and a Y6 get some attention between assignments at the Shaffer's Crossing pits.

The N&W had never really gone in on switcher engines, preferring to use their old class M 4-8-0s for yard work. But, in 1949, the C&O sold off a bunch of like-new 0-8-0s, which had just been constructed in 1948. The N&W purchased them and began retiring the 4-8-0s en masse, while building duplicates of the C&O 0-8-0s. The #232 here was part of a group turned out in '53, the last engines built at Roanoke

Streamlined K2a Mountain #127 rolling through Roanoke. The big Worthington BL feedwater slung under the running board with a sheetmetal shroud is a big giveaway that this is not a J at a glance. 

NickD said:

Canadian Pacific D-10 4-6-0 #453 being moved by the MA&N to the Rome Locomotive Works in the winter of '89. That was a pretty tragic story. O. Winston Link had purchased the #453 from Canadian Pacific in 1960 and had it moved down to Elizabethport, NJ. He'd have rather had an N&W engine, I'm sure, but there were none to be had and there was plenty of Canadian steam still around in 1960. It was moved around from there to Sparrows Point, MD and then to Newfoundland, NJ in 1974. In 1989 he had it sent north to here in Rome to be restored at Rome Locomotive Works, which was running a locomotive overhaul shop out of the old Pettibone Crane factory. It was actually towed up the mainline from Elizabethport, NJ to here in Rome, which is something that is now unthinkable. I'm sure if you asked CSX nowadays to move a derelict steam locomotive over the mainline, your ears would ring for the next year from the resounding "No" they'd give you.

I'm not sure if the plan was a cosmetic or an operational restoration, but things went to hell. O. Winston Link's (second, much younger) wife was found to be having an affair with owner of Rome Locomotive Works, RLW's owner was trying to scam Link out of a bunch of his money, the wife was trying to have Link declared "mentally unwell" so she could take full control of his estate, and there were allegations that she had locked him in the basement of the house and wasn't allowing him out of the house or allowing visitors. Rome Locomotive Works went out of business, the #453 was thrown back together with a lot of parts missing, it was given a quickie paint job and put on display at a siding on the NYS&W's Utica Division where it sat for years. A couple years back it was bought by a private owner and spirited away to Virginia and hasn't been seen since. O. Winston Link also owned an N&W caboose, which is on display in Roanoke, and the ex-Rutland combine up to Croghan, NY.

Having followed this thread for quite a while, I think one of the more resounding take aways is that the historic railway community is kinda chock full o' crazy...

Sidewayze said:

NickD said:

Canadian Pacific D-10 4-6-0 #453 being moved by the MA&N to the Rome Locomotive Works in the winter of '89. That was a pretty tragic story. O. Winston Link had purchased the #453 from Canadian Pacific in 1960 and had it moved down to Elizabethport, NJ. He'd have rather had an N&W engine, I'm sure, but there were none to be had and there was plenty of Canadian steam still around in 1960. It was moved around from there to Sparrows Point, MD and then to Newfoundland, NJ in 1974. In 1989 he had it sent north to here in Rome to be restored at Rome Locomotive Works, which was running a locomotive overhaul shop out of the old Pettibone Crane factory. It was actually towed up the mainline from Elizabethport, NJ to here in Rome, which is something that is now unthinkable. I'm sure if you asked CSX nowadays to move a derelict steam locomotive over the mainline, your ears would ring for the next year from the resounding "No" they'd give you.

I'm not sure if the plan was a cosmetic or an operational restoration, but things went to hell. O. Winston Link's (second, much younger) wife was found to be having an affair with owner of Rome Locomotive Works, RLW's owner was trying to scam Link out of a bunch of his money, the wife was trying to have Link declared "mentally unwell" so she could take full control of his estate, and there were allegations that she had locked him in the basement of the house and wasn't allowing him out of the house or allowing visitors. Rome Locomotive Works went out of business, the #453 was thrown back together with a lot of parts missing, it was given a quickie paint job and put on display at a siding on the NYS&W's Utica Division where it sat for years. A couple years back it was bought by a private owner and spirited away to Virginia and hasn't been seen since. O. Winston Link also owned an N&W caboose, which is on display in Roanoke, and the ex-Rutland combine up to Croghan, NY.

Having followed this thread for quite a while, I think one of the more resounding take aways is that the historic railway community is kinda chock full o' crazy...

Yeah. There are a few names that always draw groans or controversies when mentioned: Dick Jensen, Don Lind, Bob Diamond, Fred Kepner, James Riffin (holy E36 M3, there's a read, what a lunatic)

These pics just got posted in IT the FB group this morning. Apparently the Illinois Terminal had some steam power on their roster, as well as a couple electric freight locomotives I don't recognize. 
 

0-8-0

2-8-2

2-6-0

This one was labeled as a Class-D

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

I like that 2-6-0 a lot. It's a chunky little thing.