Grassroots Railroad Sports?

1 of 14 Class 4-8-4 built at Roanoke, Va. 1941 - 1950.

Also in Roanoke.

Next to my driveway.

914Driver said:

1 of 14 Class 4-8-4 built at Roanoke, Va. 1941 - 1950.

Hey, I'm familiar with that engine

The thing I've always found odd about #611 is that, for as advanced and finely-honed a machine as it was, it still uses traditional spoked drive wheels. Seems like they would have taken advantage of the greater strength and better balancing offered by disc drivers, like General Steel Casting "Boxpok" drivers, which had become pretty common place on high end mainline locomotives by the '40s. Or even just a disc driver on the main driver (where the piston rods attach) as was commonly done by railroads on major rebuilds.

#611's spoked drive wheels

General Steel Casting "Boxpoks", which was a contraction of "box" and "spoke"

Scullin disc drivers. Very stylish, Frisco and New York Central were big proponents of Scullin drivers. Cotton Belt had some old teakettle Ten-Wheelers with Scullin drivers, whichw as a weird sight. Scullin drivers were a bit of a flash in the pan though. Their popularity took a hit when in 1939, eighteen of the twenty-two reported drive wheel failures were of the Scullin type.

Baldwin actually made their own disc drivers, which looked similar to a Boxpok but were identified by the raised lip around the openings and the inset portion between holes. Some of them were made with a strengthening rib as well, like the front driver on Santa Fe #3463

There were also a type called a Universal disc driver, manufactured by Locomotive Furnished Metals. These had a more triangular-shaped hole with a raised lip around the opening. These were one of the more rare types and were not installed from the manufacturer, but were instead installed as a retrofit to older power. ATSF installed a lot of these on older Pacifics when they were overhauled.

On the subject of N&W #611, the state of Virginia is seeking state status for the owners of #611, Virginia Museum of Transportation. It's a bit too early to make a call one way or another, but the first impression is that they would be trading autonomy for funding. While the extra $2 million per year sounds nice now, what happens when VMT is reliant on state funds and the state 10 years from now decides to massively reduce VMT funding? What makes it really odd is that the state proposed this with what seems like zero input from VMT themselves. 

The state senator putting forth the proposal said that if the museum comes under the purview of the commonwealth, it might be able to work out deals to use state-owned tracks between Clifton Forge and Dowell for excursions, which would be nice to give #611 a place to stretch her legs. The problem is If VMT becomes a state agency, that doesn’t automatically give them the right to send the #611 romping around on state owned track all willy-nilly.  The state owns the tracks, but they don't operate the tracks and it has to be written into the operator’s contract with the state considering who can do what, when and where. Most operators aren't gonna like it for reasons ranging from safety to scheduling to manpower, especially when that operator just happens to be CSX. Not sure how well versed the senator putting forward this proposal is in matters of railroading, but it's not just a case of "The state owns the tracks, the museum is a state agency, we can run on those rails."

An article did mention that VMT says as long as the #611 is operational and the VMT lacks rails to run it on, there are no plans for its return to Roanoke until railroad tracks are again available in the region. According to one person, the #611 crew actually did approach Reading & Northern about running #611 over R&N rails, since Reading is only an hour from Strasburg, where #611 currently is. R&N's response was that they wanted a pretty hefty percentages of their profits to run the #611 over the rails, and when the #611 crew made a fuss over it, Andy Muller's response was to the effect of "I own the rails and I already have my own steam locomotives, you need me."

N&W #606 at Bluefield, WV with the westbound Cavalier. From this angle, you can see just how big those counterweights had to be to balance a 70" driver for 110mph operation. The N&W also had to install lateral buffer devices on the lead and trailing truck to keep down the dynamic augment at high speeds, which made them hard on pilot wheels and track. Any time a J Class went in for overhaul, the pilot wheels were replaced with brand-new ones, and the takeoffs were machined and installed on older power like the E class Pacifics, M class Mollies, and K class Mountains. 

Today in history, after ten years of negotiations, Pennsylvania Railroad acquires the New York Central, becoming Penn Central, the largest railroad in the country and the sixth largest company in the USA. Within two years it would file for the largest bankruptcy in US history.

Oh how proud and triumphant they sound in this video. In reality, no one at PRR or NYC felt this confident, and over at the New Haven, which was thrown into the mess by the ICC a year later, they called it a rape.

A Penn Central GP30 and GP9, both with the relatively rare two-toned logo head westward at Mayville, PA. while an eastbound freight crosses the Rockville Bridge overhead. Supposedly the reason for the death of the two-toned logo was not a cost-savings measure, but that employees who came from the New York Central complained that it gave the impression that Pennsylvania Railroad had "won". While Penn Central was the result of the PRR buying out the NYC, that was a stipulation to the merger mandated by the ICC, and the New York Central was, of the two, in much better physical and financial condition.

The EMD SD45s were the last new locomotives received by the Pennsylvania Railroad, but they weren't the last new locomotives ordered by the Pennsy. That honor fell to an order of GE U33Cs. But, by the time GE began construction of them, the Penn Central merger had gone through, and so they were instead delivered in Penn Central bankruptcy black, making them the last locomotives ordered by the PRR and the first locomotives delivered in PC colors. One of them is paired up with an ex-PRR SD35 with the two-tone Penn Central "mating worms".

New York Central was the sole purchaser of Lima-Hamilton's 1200hp road switcher model, buying 16 of them. In 1957, New York Central rebuilt a pair of them, removing the obsolete Hamilton engines with 1200hp EMD 567 V12s. The pair of them, #8062 and #8063, survived into the Penn Central era, being renumbered again in '72 when Penn Central's GP38-2s began to arrive on the property and fill up the 8000-series number block. The #8063 is shown at the 30th Street yard in Philadelphia in 1969, already wearing PC livery.

A C636 and an SD45 shove hard on the back of a freight at Horseshoe Curve. The C636s were the only new Alcos purchased by Penn Central, while the SD45s were the last new locomotives that the Pennsylvania took delivery of before the merger. Both models had their reliability issues and were maligned at the time. Alcos were typically preferred for Horseshoe Curve helper duty, due to their higher tractive effort and the fact that the GE traction motors held up better at full output at low speeds. Don Ball wrote about during his visit to Horseshoe, the helper crews said EMDs would burn up the traction motors when run at full output at speeds below 10mph, while Alcos were good to 6mph, and that a number of EMD traction motors were burned up by the Alco helper engines slogging along at 6mph on the back of the train.

An unusual pair-up of an Alco RS-3 and an EMD GP9B serving as the hump yard switcher at the ex-New Haven Cedar Hill Yard in New Haven, CT. According to the photographer, not long after the photo was taken, a PRR Alco RSD-15 was sent up to take over the hump yard duties.

In 1970, PC purchased a bunch of retired EMD F7s off of the D&RGW to use as trade-in material to EMD for new GP38-2s. On arrival, four of them were found to be in better shape than most of PC's own F7s, so they instead slapped the mating worms on the nose and sides of them and put them into service, still wearing the D&RGW yellow, silver and black colors.

Within weeks of the Penn Central's takeover of the New Haven, the dual-mode FL9s began being siphoned off to replace ex-New York Central electrics on the third rail electrified territory of the Harlem Division, eliminating the engine change at Croton-Harmon. To fill in the gaps for the Boston-New Haven passenger runs over the New Haven, Penn Central instead sent PRR E8s north to take over these runs. Covered wagons in PRR, New Haven, and PC colors are congregated at the Dover Street Yard in Boston on February of 1970

An ex-New Haven Alco S2 does it's best impression of a Fourth of July sparkler as it idles at Atlantic Avenue on Boston. The trackage is actually the freight-only subsidiary of the New Haven, the Union Freight Railroad, which connected railroads on the north and south sides of Boston. Almost the entire length of the UFRR was along Atlantic Avenue and Commercial Street. Not long after this photo was taken, the connection with the New Haven was severed, and within a year the Union Freight Railroad ceased to exist, bringing 98 years of operation to a close.

A pair of ex-New Haven Alco C425s, one still in New Haven colors and the other in PC black, bracket an ex-New York Central GE U30B at Providence, Rhode Island. Farther back, and dead-in-tow, are an RS-3 and an end-cab switcher.

Commuters board a Boston-bound passenger train at Wellesley, Massachussets. The freshly-painted RS-3 and coaches convey a sense of optimism that was not felt at the Penniless Central's headquarters in Philadelphia.

A little fact for Groundhog's Day: in the movie Groundhog's Day there's the scene where Bill Murray drives down the railroad tracks and nearly gets hit by a train. Despite being set in Punxsutawney, PA, the locomotive that nearly hits them is oddly a high-hood EMD in Burlington Northern green and white. That unit was ex-CB&Q/exx-BN/exxx-Maryland Midland EMD SD24 #6244.

After being retired by Maryland Midland, it was traded in to GE and languishing in Erie until it was purchased and moved to Union, Illinois. More specifically it was moved to Illinois Railway Museum, and that was where the scene was filmed. In fact if you look closely during the scene, you can see the headlight reflecting off the trolley wire overhead. The #6244 is still at IRM but has since been restored to it's original CB&Q number and Chinese red and gray livery. Quite a looker too.

Any idea what happened to 8062 and 8063?

Lou Manglass

In reply to TheMagicRatchet :

Scrapped circa 1974 after being renumbered to #8398 and #8399. Possibly as a roster rationalization move, with Conveyance Day getting closer, or maybe due to failures in the Westinghouse electrical gear, which parts hadn't been available for since '56.

A pretty textbook example of Penn Central and passenger trains on the dawn of Amtrak. Penn Central #4073, an ex-NYC E8 still in the gray "cigar band" livery with a single snack bar coach leaving Chicago and heading to Detroit. The ICC wouldn't readily allow railroads to withdraw unprofitable or unfrequented operations, leaving single car trains with a couple people aboard that bled railroads dry. The crew aboard the #4073 probably could have shut down one of the prime movers and saved some fuel on the trip. Of course, being the dark days of PC, probably one of the engines didn't operate at all.

Looking similar but actually quite different in purpose is this operation that was informally known as "The Jitney." It was an employee accommodation train that ferried railroad employees the four miles between the New Haven, CT passenger station and Cedar Hill Yard. By this late date, it was one of only a handful of employee accommodation trains left in the US, including a shuttle run between the Quad Cities area and the Silvis shops on the Rock Island and a single MP54 EMU car that ferried Washington Terminal employees over to the terminal. Also noteworthy is the old Osgood-Bradley coach that is still in the original Pullman green with deluxe gold lettering, somehow having dodged the black and orange paint of the McGinnis era and the peagreen Penn Central colors.

An ex-PRR GG1 still in Tuscan Red with the single gold stripe, an ex-New Haven EP-5 "Jet" electric in PC black, and ex-New Haven FL9s in the McGinnis orange, black and white, all congregate at New Haven, CT.