An FL9 in scabrous New Haven paint with PC logos leads a string of elderly but clean EMU cars east through Mamaroneck, New York. The EMU cars have their pantographs up to run interior lighting. The rusty spot below the numberboards was common on the New Haven FL9s. When brakemen were guiding the engineers on a coupling, once the locomotive was coupled, they would rap on that spot with a hammer to let the engineer know he was hooked up, causing the paint to crack and flake off.
The newest of the New Haven's electric power, the EP-5 "Jets" were capable of running on both third-rail and overhead catenary. The powerful passenger motors had lots of promise but were always plagued by overheating and fires. When McGinnis tried to de-electrify as much of the New Haven, he retired all the older passenger and freight motors, but held onto the EP-5s. During the Penn Central era, they were bumped down to commuter runs between Grand Central Terminal and New Haven. In 1973, they lost even that job when one of them caught fire in the Park Avenue Tunnel and the MTA banned the EP-5s from New York City as a result.
The Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington posted a video on Facebook the other day of Bridgton & Saco River 2-4-4T #7 being moved around the WW&F's Sheepscot yard under it's own power. They're doing the Steam & Sleighs to SeaLyon Farm event the next three weekends, which is the event I went to last year up there, and this year they will be using both WW&F #9 and B&SR #7 for the trains. I'd love to see both of them operating, especially with there being plenty of snow, but not really a good time financially. Hopefully they do the Summer Picnic this year, where they get all the engines together and have them running. WW&F also said that they expect/hope to have WW&F #10 up and running with it's new boiler this summer.
If there is one retired excursion engine I wish I could have seen operate, it was Texas & Pacific 2-10-4 #610. Part of the class of locomotives that was the progenitor of the Texas name assignment to the 2-10-4, the #610 was a fairly brief blip on the radar and was retired over a decade before I was even born, only operating from '75-'81. But what an outrageous machine she was during those years, the only example of Lima's final step in the Super Power evolution to ever operate in the post-steam era.
Lima Locomotive Works had been developing their Super Power concept with the first stage being a modified Mikado for the New York Central, that was then followed up with the very first Berkshire for Boston & Albany. In 1925, Missouri Pacific's independently operated subsidiary, Texas & Pacific, needed bigger motive power and Lima took their ground-breaking 2-8-4 Berkshire and lengthened it by an extra driving axle to create a 2-10-4. Since Texas & Pacific was the first purchaser of these engines, the 2-10-4 wheel arrangement was named the Texas type. T&P ordered 10 of them (#600-#609) in 1925, followed by another 60 of them (#610-669) in 1927. They were oil-burners, with 63" spoked drivers, the oddball Lima articulated trailing truck, Alco power reverse gear, two thermic syphons, and Baker valve gear. They were distinctly T&P in appearance with the flanged smokestack, big Elesco feedwater heater slung out over the smokebox, and shielded air pumps on the front deck. They generated 92,590lbs of tractive effort while being much faster than the typical 2-10-2 or 2-6-6-2 of the preceding drag freight era, and garnered a 33% increase in speed pulling 44% more tonnage while burning 42% less fuel. After retirement in the very early '50s, T&P donated two of the I-1 Texas types, one to Fort Worth (#610) and the other to Dallas (#638). The #638 was vandalized and scrapped in short order, while the #610 was later moved to the Will Rogers Memorial Center for display.
Throughout the early '70s, the group maintaining the #610 began performing a mechanical restoration on the big Texas in hopes of operating it, although they had no concrete plans of where they were going to run it and funding was limited. When the American Freedom Train was being planned in celebration of America's bicentennial, the #610 was briefly looked at, since it had the horsepower to go pretty much anywhere and T&P had been known to operate them in passenger service. It was ultimately passed on, since there were concerns about extended high-speed operation with 63" drivers, as well as the size of the engine, and they ultimately settled on Southern Pacific #4449. There was still a push to allow #610 to haul the Texas leg of the AFT, and Don Ball Jr., who was on the AFT committee, and who had voiced regret on never seeing the T&P Texases in operation in several of his books, ended up going to bat and securing funding for the #610 to be returned to operation to haul the Texas portion of the AFT, with a deadline of only 9 months. The ever-controversial but mechanically-gifted Dick Jensen also traveled down to Texas to lend a hand on getting the #610 running. Most of the work was focused on the boiler, with the running gear largely untouched, and the #610 made it's first break-in runs on the Fort Worth & Denver just two days before the AFT was to arrive. Don Ball Jr. admitted that he overstepped his official powers in securing funding for the #610, and that he was mostly invested for his own personal reasons, but he also said he never had greater satisfaction than when he got to see the #610 operating for the first time.
After the AFT was over, the #610 was in a weird spot. While it had performed excellently on the American Freedom Train, the running gear, which was largely untouched, had wear and tear that needed to be addressed. Also, there was still no solid place to operate it, since most Class Is weren't enthused about setting loose a 63" drivered engine on their mainlines, and it was also too large to be operated on most shortlines or tourist lines. Enter Southern Railroad. Southern Railroad's collection of steam engines that they were using for their corporate excursion program were becoming increasingly reliant on doubleheading or diesel assistance, since Southern Railway had always been conservative in their steam locomotive purchases. After getting a taste of the Southern Pacific #4449 during it's visit to Southern rails on the AFT, the decision was made to go get their hands on a Super Power locomotive. The #610 needed a place to run and it needed mechanical work that Southern's shops were well-equipped to handle, and while it had to have hurt to spend all that time and money restoring a locomotive only for it to be shipped out of the state, the only other option was to park it. So, the #610 headed east to Irondale where it underwent an overhaul of the running gear at Southern's steam shops by skilled master mechanic Bill Burdie, as well as being given a very slight makeover to make it Southern #610, a glimpse at an alternate universe where Southern went and bought Lima Super Power.
The first trip with #610 had some teething troubles with an overheated pilot truck bearing, which turned out to be a result of when they turned the driving wheels down to true them up, it placed 5 tons more load on the pilot truck. After that the #610 established itself as a capable engine and a huge upgrade over the #4501. On an early trip out of Cincinnatti on the "Rathole Division", #610 took 18 loaded passenger cars up and over the Erlanger Grade with a few notches still left on both the reverser and the throttle, causing Bill Purdie to remark "She's got plenty of strong in her". In comparison, #4501 had required diesel assistance to get over Erlanger and only had 12 loaded cars behind her. Also, while the Texas types were supposedly rough riders, both Jim Boyd and Dick Yager wrote that they rode aboard the #610 at 60mph and while it definitely had a bit of a gait to it, it certainly wasn't a bucking bronco.
T&P #610 and Southern #4501 doubleheading on a trip over the N&W between Roanoke and Bluefield. I wonder how much of the black smoke from #610 is due to the Southern crews being used to coal-fired engines, and how much of it was due to the railfan preference of that era for photos of locomotives boiling black smoke from the stack. From the '40s through the '80s, railfans always wanted photos of steam locomotives with really dirty stacks, for some reason. Many books recount photographers of the era tipping the crew to pour on the oil or coal when they went by for photos. Thankfully this trend has died out. When I was at Strasburg this summer and was waiting to catch #611 running light back to the yard, the one guy was saying "I hope the guy firing tonight knows what the berkeley he's doing. The guy last weekend had it pouring smoke out, looked like E36 M3."
On a roll through Old Fort, North Carolina in 1977.
The #610 picking them up and putting them down at Doraville, GA, just north of Atlanta. While the 63" drivers led many to believe that the #610 was a 40mph machine, she could, and often did, pound along at 60mph.
A study of the ponderous running gear aboard the #610. Look at the size and thickness of those counterweights! As delivered from Lima, the locomotives suffered from balancing issues that were endemic to most of the short-drivered 2-10-4s, the Central Vermont's 60" drivered examples being the absolute worst. Texas & Pacific and Lima ended up making a number of changes, including a Baldwin disc driver on the main drive axle, cross-counterweighting the engines, hollow crossheads on the valve gear, lightweight connecting rods, and numerous other tweaks, resulting in a machine that was 60mph-capable when asked. During WWII, as things heated up on the Pacific, the T&P I-1s were frequently found thrashing away on the head end of troop trains. After WWII, a number of the I-1s were further improved with roller bearings on all the axles, and having the rear of the frames cut off and replaced with new segments to replace that curious Lima articulating trailing truck with a more conventional Commonwealth Delta swinging trailing truck.
Loping through Newport, TN in 1977. Remember, at this point, UP #3985 wouldn't be operating for another 3 years, so an operating 2-10-4 was quite the celebrity.
The legendary Southern Railway steam program master mechanic Bill Purdie at the controls. The numbers at the bottom of the cab are a breakdown of basic info and were common across many railroads: I-1A refers to the class, 63 is the driver size, 29/32 is the cylinder dimensions of 29"x32", and 84.6 is the overall wheelbase in feet.
The sleepy town of Orange, Virginia gets a morning wakeup call from T&P #610
Darkening the sky and shaking the earth. The engineer has the reverser hooked up in the "company notch" and is making time on a trip to Sheffield, Alabama.
Sadly, the #610's time with Southern came to an end in 1981. Southern wanted motive power that could keep pace with passenger trains to avoid traffic foul-ups, and asking 79mph out of the #610 was out of the question. The prolonged 60mph running had also beat the hell out of the running gear on the #610 and it was due for a serious overhaul. Southern had just restored C&O 2-8-4 #2716 to service (which would be even more of a flash in the pan, operating for only a year) and the Norfolk Southern merger was just a year away, which would bring freshly restored N&W #611 into the fold, and so the #610 was viewed as superfluous. Southern #4501 couldn't operate at 79mph either, but it was at least a go-anywhere engine, which couldn't be said of the big Texan. So #610 was shipped west to Palestine, Texas where it remains a display piece at Texas State Railroad, although a bit of a recluse as it is tucked inside their shops and only moved outside for special events. With the current climate and the sheer size and weight of #610, the odds of her ever operating again are extremely slim.
We had a big snowstorm Thursday and I was hoping to chase Adirondack's Cabin Fever Limited and see them smashing some snow banks and running extra horsepower on the front. Well, Saturday they took their "new" M420W out for a test run with the RS-18u #1835 up to Remsen and back, which also functioned as a plow special. Gotta love that Alco raspy clatter.
Funny that the C420 had the long low nose, while the M420W has a very stubby noise.
While I wouldn't get to see any snowplowing, I still went out and chased the Adirondack's run to Remsen and back today. I wanted to avoid going to the same couple locations I always go to (Holland Patent depot and Sand Road) and I think they came out great
Headed north through Holland Patent with #1835 running LHF.
Headed north through Barneveld.
Having conquered Remsen Hill, they make the Plank Road crossing.
I don't know why but this photo just exudes power to me.
Growling into Remsen. There's a couple grade crossings and they run in between buildings, so the crew crawls in slow and pretty much ties the horn cord down. They also have to delicately balance spotting the cars at the depot but not leave them fouling the crossing.
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