Grassroots Railroad Sports?

More cabooses (cabeese?)

A GE 45-tonner in bicentennial paint

An ex-NYC snow plow

The crown jewel of the museum's collection: NKP Berkshire #757. Originally it was supposed to to Bellevue, but the city couldn't get the money and display location together in time. So instead it was donated to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, where it was sadly viewed as an outsider piece (for all the good things the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania does, they sometimes forget that they aren't the Museum of the Pennsylvania Railroad) and neglected, earning it the nickname of "the Forgotten Berkshire." Five years ago, the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum cut a deal to take #757 off the RRMoPA and maybe be it back to where it belonged, and they've performed a very nice cosmetic restoration to it.

NickD said:

One of the B&O's unique wagontop cabooses

I don't believe I've ever seen one of these before. What an odd design. 

Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:

NickD said:

One of the B&O's unique wagontop cabooses

I don't believe I've ever seen one of these before. What an odd design. 

B&O built them themselves. They were a modular design that used U-shaped sheets of steel bolted together. They were cheap to build, easy to build, easy to repair, stronger, and less prone to leaks (no wall-to-roof joints or cupola to seal). They also built a boxcars and covered hoppers with the same design.

A B&O "Big Six" shoving on a wagontop cabooses at Sand Patch. I like the brakeman nonchalantly staring forward. I'd be nervously glancing back at the snorting helper trying to shove it's way through me.

NickD said:

The Nickel Plate's dynamometer car. I'm not sure how many dynamometer cars still exist, but I know it's not many. This is a really rare piece 

How does this work? Does it measure pull force and they load up a long line behind it? I ask because the trailer type dynos I have seen use the tires resistance on the ground and I wouldn't think they could do it like that. 
awesome series of photos on this trip! Thanks for sharing. 

NY Nick said:

NickD said:

The Nickel Plate's dynamometer car. I'm not sure how many dynamometer cars still exist, but I know it's not many. This is a really rare piece 

How does this work? Does it measure pull force and they load up a long line behind it? I ask because the trailer type dynos I have seen use the tires resistance on the ground and I wouldn't think they could do it like that. 
awesome series of photos on this trip! Thanks for sharing. 

Yeah, they would put the dynamometer car behind the locomotive and then a set amount of weight behind the dynamometer car and measure the pull on the drawbar. They could also use it to test a particular rail route to rate it for tonnage based on a run with a dynamometer car and recording the effect of the grades and curvature on the capacity and resulting power requirements for that line. That being said, horsepower ratings on a steam locomotive are a very nebulous thing, it just doesn't really apply well as a measurable statistic, and so you ended up with drawbar horsepower, cylinder horsepower and calculated horsepower. Tractive effort, which was a calculation based on cylinder size, boiler pressure, driver diameter, and weight on drivers was used more often.

In reply to NickD :

Thanks!

Nokian tyres resurrected an older locomotive to move tires from it's production facility:

https://www.nokiantires.com/company/news-article/restored-locomotive-to-help-nokian-tyres-dayton-factory-handle-rising-volume-of-raw-materials/

So, today was the chase of NKP #765 from Edon, Ohio to Hillsdale, Michigan and back over the Indiana Northeastern Railroad. The east-west portion of the trip, from Edon to Stuebenville, Indiana is the former Wabash 4th district, while the north-south portion, from Stuebenville to Hillsdale, is over the former New York Central subsidiary Lake Shore & Michigan Southern.

A Superpower sunrise. #765 is prepped for the day in front of the massive Edon Cooperative grain silo.

I was surprised to see that Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society has their own police that travel with them. There were also Edon police there as well. They weren't hardasses or being killjoys, but still just very different from R&N.

There was also a speeder car get-together going on, so when I got to Hammond, Indiana they were waiting in a siding for #765 to go by so that they could continue east.

Steam was great on the Nickel Plate, er, Wabash

Passing the former NYC/LS&MS freight house in Lake Pleasant, Indiana. I was amazed by the amount of depots and freight houses that were still extant on the line.

Climbing a grade at Angola

Despite coming from a fairly agrarian region, the amount and size of grain elevators in this region is still astonishing

NKP #765 arriving in Hillsdale alongside Little River Railroad 110, the smallest standard gauge Pacific ever built.

Isn't she just adorable?

Little River Railroad #1, their H.K. Porter 0-4-0 saddletanker of unknown age and provenance. They were having #1 pull the train out of Hillsdale and then #110 was bringing it back, in a unique all-steam push-pull operation.

I was a bit surprised to see that the converted troop sleeper behind #1 was still on Allied Full Cushion trucks 

NKP #765 heading south through Reading, Michigan. A weird fact: while Reading, PA is pronounced like Red-ing, Reading, Michigan is pronounced like Red-ing.