Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

Recon1342 said:

On the subject of UP's big 9000s, Howard Fogg recorded one in 1954. The link will take you to an MP3 sound file of that recording. They really were a unique sounding locomotive, with an odd, syncopated exhaust pulse.

Howard Fogg UP recording

It sounds like it's staggering home drunk. 

I did stumble across this remark about that recording: "If you've heard Howard Fogg's recordings of 9009 on his great album "The Big Steam" and think thats what a 4-12-2 regularly sounded like please consider it as virtually totally unrepresentative of their sound. When Howard made his recording, the #9009 was horribly out of time. When badly out of dimension, engines can begin working against themselves and #9009 was probably beating itself to death." Likely shop crews had been skipping maintenance on the inner cylinder gear, since by '54 the 9000s were pretty long in the tooth.

They added "When released from shops with running gear trammed "to dimension" and valves set correctly, a 9000 had a very even 1-2-3, 4-5-6 beat," but due to the shorter and straighter exhaust tract on the center cylinder, it ended up more like 1-2-3, 4-5-6.

Photos from yesterday's Easter trains on the Adirondack Railroad. Unfortunately it was cold and rainy. Also, my parents had taken my nephew on the Friday train and said my father said that they were running in push-pull configuration, with F7A #1508 on one end and RS-18u #1835 on the other, but yesterday it was just #1835 and they were running it around the train.

Happy Easter!

NickD said:

The 27.9-mile section of track between North Creek and Tahawus, NY, formerly of the D&H Adirondack Division and even more recently the Saratoga & North Creek, was sold at auction last week. The line was purchased by a newly-founded company, Doc N Duchess Rails LLC, which is owned by a New Mexico couple, John and Carol McClean-Wright. They are planning to reactivate the line and are hoping to be able to extract military-grade titanium ore from mine tailings that are on-site at the old Tahawus Mine, which was last active in 1989. If they pull it off, it's a win-win-win situation: the area gets more jobs, it's a source of titanium, and it will reduce the veritable mountains of mine tailings at Tahawus

Well, now this has hit a snag. In a phone interview, McLean-Wright said Doc N Duchess put up the required $35,000 deposit to participate in the auction, but was not informed that further funds would be required prior to the May 6 closing. But she was notified that the company would have to put up $250,000, and later $500,000, to keep the bid viable. That was a problem, she said, because the Doc N Duchess investors are in Europe, and large financial transfers are under added scrutiny due to Russia’s war with Ukraine, and the desire to keep oligarchs from moving their assets. She said Doc N Duchess officials were aware that financial transitions were being held up and for that reason asked that the closing date be set toward the end of the 90-day term within which the full amount must be paid.

So now the trustee is moving on to negotiating with the second highest bidder, who wants to run rail-bikes over the line instead of freight. McLean-Wright is still fighting the whole thing,  saying that they actually wanted to move freight over the line and mine resources that the US needs. And the NY DEC is pushing the STB to declare the line abandon so that they can take ownership, rip up the rails and build yet another trail. 

Union Pacific FEF-3 #836 crosses the CB&Q diamond at Grand Island, Nebraska.

Taken in November of '58, Union Pacific #823 looks pretty good considering the late date.

An early photo of FEF-1 #810 at Topeka, KS in almost as-built condition, aside from the added Mars light over the headlight. The FEF-1s only had a single smokestack, 3" shorter drivers, no smoke deflectors, and a more conventional 6-axle tender. The smoke deflectors were added by UP later, the FEF-2s and FEF-3s had 80" drivers, the twin smokestacks didn't show up until the FEF-3s, and the FEF-2s and FEF-3s were delivered with Centipede tenders instead of the two-truck tenders. Someone said that Steve Lee got sick of rerailing #844's tender during reverse moves and always wanted to install one of the FEF-1 two-truck tenders that were still kicking around at Cheyenne after being used as GTEL tenders. 

The first Northern on the UP roster, #800 somewhere in Keith County, Nebraska with the smoke deflectors already added.

A very early photo of #805. The Mars light hasn't been added over the headlamp and the pilot deck hasn't been closed in.

A lot of the tourist lines are celebrating the TSA no longer enforcing the mask mandate. Dodging any discussion of the effectiveness or politics, the big thing is just that a lot of tourist railroads felt it was hurting ridership that people could literally go partake in any other recreational activity of equal or greater risk, like say sitting in a movie theater for three hours, and not wear a mask, but they couldn't ride a train. At least one person claimed that at their ticket window they saw a fair amount of people turn away after finding out they would be required to wear a mask. The problem was, the rule was a blanket rule and didn't take into account that there is a big difference between a 10 hour ride on a sealed Amfleet and a 45 minute ride on an open air coach.

I will say that of the various railroads I rode over the past two years, really only two of them enforced the mask rule: one was the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington, and that was because Maine was very serious about Covid, and the other was Adirondack, and that was because it was during the really bad infection spike right after Christmas. Every other one I rode on, and I won't throw out names, really didn't even mention it.

I am curious to see if Steamtown opens up the museum or runs any trains this year now. They have not operated any trains and have closed off most of the museum (you can take a quick walk through the roundhouse and that's it) since 2020 when the virus hit. While other National Historical Sites, and even the trolley museum that shares the property with Steamtown, have reopened, Steamtown has remained in it's weird quasi-closed status. Baldwin #26 has sat cold for two years, chewing up boiler time after it took them 16 years to return it to service. One person has posited that Steamtown is using the pandemic as an excuse to convert to an entirely static museum, with part of his argument being that last September they made a weird announcement that due to a mechanical failure on the #26 it would not be ready for the '22 season, and he was saying that it an excuse because it was more politically expedient to withdraw #26 from service for a supposed mechanical issue than to just say that they didn't want to be an operating museum any more. The same person also pointed to the Lehigh & Wyoming Valley NRHS members who were working on B&M #3713's operational restoration being shut out of the shop since last May, due to a contract between the NRHS and National Park Services that was due for re-drafting and was taking longer than expected, and the fact that Steamtown's own shop staff were instead working on all sorts of cosmetic restorations, instead of working on the #3713 in the NRHS members absence. He also made the point that even if Steamtown does want to continue operating equipment, since they still have the Nickel Plate Geep and the "DL&W" EMD F3As, they might not be able to anymore, just because a number of their operating crews have either retired or quit and gone to places that are actually operating in the past two years. I think this year will really be telling for what the future of Steamtown is.

NickD said:

I honestly did not expect to hear this:

https://spotlightnews.com/towns/bethlehem/2021/12/20/the-wind-has-to-wait-for-history-historic-trains-have-to-move-before-wind-tower-factory-in-glenmont-can-break-ground-video/?fbclid=IwAR29HycY-7eNL0kiKlh0sapnQf2grvV64kRP0WrR0458S9gGJNjIoU7IdIQ

The first New York Central S-Motor and the sole surviving NYC T-Motor, both stored on a spur down near Albany, have apparently gained a new lease on life, along with the Alco RS-3 and GE U25B stored there. For years, there has been much wringing of hands over what was going to happen to these historically priceless pieces, and the general consensus was that there was basically no other fate in store for them other than being scrapped.

The two electrics and the two diesels had been purchased by the Mohawk & Hudson chapter of the NRHS and had been placed in a couple different locations as cosmetically-restored display pieces, and were supposedly still capable of operation with the right infrastructure. They then eventually all moved to the D&H's Colonie Shops, only to be basically evicted when Guilford Rail Systems bought up the D&H and became concerned over a couple vandalism incidents. The four locomotives and five passenger cars, including two 2 ex-D&RGW, ex-D&H lightweight Pullman-Standard 1950 diner with very unusual center kitchens that had ran on the Prospector while in Rio Grande service. They were then moved to a spur on Beacon Island between the Port of Albany and the power plant at Glenmont.

They've been stuck there ever since, because one end of the spur they were parked on was fenced off for the Niagara Mohawk coal-fired power plant at Glenmont, while the other end had a bridge that was embargoed and later removed. The Glenmont power plant was not receptive to taking down the fence and moving the equipment out through their property, and the land around the rail was a swamp in the middle of a forest, so dismantling them, craning them onto flatbeds and trucking them out was not really an option either. Over the years, the equipment passed hands, first to Berkshire Scenic, and then to Danbury Railway Museum, but there never seemed to be a future for the stuff.

Well, now a windmill factory is being built on the property that the equipment is stored at and it needs to be moved out of the way. The good news is, because they are going to be building in there, they are filling the land to build a road to move construction and materials in and out. The move is going to be complicated though. They can't be moved from where they are by rail, because of the end of the spur being removed at the power plant and the bridge being out at the other end. They can't be loaded onto a flatcar and moved by rail on a flatcar to Danbury because they will be too tall for the bridges. And they can't be trucked into Danbury, because it is in the center of town and no trucks over 40 feet long can make it there, but there is rail access to Danbury.

So, they are going to be disassemble them where they are and then truck them to the Port Of Albany. There is a drop pit there, so they will go through the wheels and axles to make sure everything rolls and is safe to move, then continue trucking them to the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum in Lenox. There they will be reassembled on the rails and then moved by the Houstatonic Railroad to Danbury.

For years this stuff has wasted away at the hands of the elements and vandals and pretty much was determined that there was no other fate for it than being scrapped. It's all pretty historically important stuff, being the very first electric locomotive, the only surviving T-Motor and a fairly rare U-boat. The RS-3 is the least rare piece, and even those don't grow on trees anymore.

Update on this: according to the Danbury Railway Museum, the RS-3 and the U25B are toast. The RS-3 is in such bad shape and there are enough preserved examples that they said that it was written off pretty early in the evaluation process. The U25B, due to it's rarity and the fact that it operated in Danbury under Conrail, received much more consideration and they spent time securing the locomotive and testing the air brakes while waiting for an estimate to move it, only for the cost to move it being very high. They said that they "Our museum's primary focus was always and is currently to rescue the two one-of-a-kind electric locomotives from Beacon Island."

Of course, you can't talk about Union Pacific 4-8-4s without mentioning the #844. The #844 was not only Union Pacific's last Northern that they received, it was also the last new steam locomotive of any class that they received. There was development on a further upgraded "Super 800" FEF-4, but it was too late in the game and never materialized. #844 also stands out as being the only steam locomotive in North America to never be retired. Taken out of regular train-hauling service in 1958, it was then reconfigured for snow-melting duty around Cheyenne, along with Challenger #3977. They added a pair of nozzles down on the pilot that were used to blast high-temp, high-pressure steam into the switch points to melt snow and ice out. The idea never really panned out, because once they blasted melted the snow and ice, and often the ballast, it refroze once they moved the locomotive away, often worse than before. After a year or two of rather unsatisfactory performance in this manner, it was put back into the deadlines and was due to be scrapped by the end of 1960, only for UP president Arthur E. Stoddard to pull it back out of storage and return in to service. By that point, GP30s had begun arriving on company property and were filling up the 800-series number spots that the FEFs once occupied, so #844 was renumbered to #8444. It wasn't until GP30 #844 was retired in 1989, that FEF-3 #844 regained it's original number

I love this video of #844 on a tear with a Lionel Collectors Club excursion. This was near the very end of Steve Lee's tenure as the head of the steam program. Steve Lee was not shy about using the throttle on #844 and #3985, for better or worse. 

An interesting video of when, while returning to Cheyenne from an hour excursion, #844 came up on a freight train that was stalled. The decision was made to couple #844 to the rear of the freight and assist it up the grade.

UP #8444 at Denver on the head end of the San Francisco Zephyr. In the early days of Amtrak, when UP needed to ferry move the #8444 to Denver and back, they would often attach it to the head end of an Amtrak train.

UP #8444 and #3985 returning to Cheyenne over SP's Donner Pass after attending Railfair '81 in Sacramento.

UP #8444 on a trip out of Las Vegas. I wonder why there's a centerbeam flat car between the auxiliary tender and the baggage car

#8444 and #3985 on Donner Pass on their way to RailFair '81. There's that excessive smoke trend that I'm glad died out, although someone also noted that to move over SP rails, it had to have SP engine crews at the controls, so unfamiliarity might have something to do with it also. Also interesting at this point was that #3985 was oil-fired and #8444 was coal-fired. It wasn't until 1990 that they converted #8444 to oil-fired.

#8444 and #3985 exiting a snow shed on Donner Pass.

The usurper, GP30 #844, meets the usurped, FEF-3 #8444, at Denver, Colorado. The #8444 was headed home from the 1982 NRHS convention, while the #844 was assigned to local switching at Denver.

In reply to NickD :

I can't imagine booking my Amtrak tickets only to see #8444 pull up to the platform!

Thanks to RevRico, the lanterns showed up today. The Traffic Gard needs a bit of work, but is in overall good condition. The Dressel is a bit dirty, and has definitely seen some use. Stamped for PRR, and the globe is etched with the PRR logo as well. Looking forward to getting them cleaned up!

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, a neat bonus. Definitely a relic of a different time too. I can't imagine that happening today, making a ferry move of a steam locomotive by just tacking it onto an Amtrak consist. I'm honestly shocked that Amtrak still allows people to hook up private cars to their train. Steve Lee and gang also used to get #3985 where it needed to be by occasionally assigning it to freight trains that were headed in the right direction. Things were definitely different with Steve Lee at the helm, there was a lot of real craziness back then. Things are a little more corporate and sanitized in the Ed Dickens era. No offense to Mr. Dickens, he does a great job after the initial teething pains from when he started. I'd like to see them assign #4014 to a freight over Sherman Hill, even if it was just a publicity stunt.

In reply to NickD :

I recall reading something about Amtrak actively cultivating the private rail car hauling side of the business. I'm guessing it's quite profitable, and Amtrak being Amtrak, anything profitable is good.