This is a Rail Rider. Easy to build your own out of muffler tubing, but you HAVE TO USE COMPOSITE WHEELS. They get cranky when you trip the switches. Ours had a 7hp Honda engine with pedals as backup. Fun camping up north, basket full of stuff, chain saw for dead falls and of course the .45 cal bear repellant.
914Driver said:Probably no takers her, but ....
NMNA - 1934 MT-19 Fairmont Speedster. Find a group of like minded folks and some abandoned track, all set. I find followers of these more RR Engineer wannabees and are quite serious, unlike the people I met with a Rail Cart.
I've heard that speeder car owners can be oddly snooty about the provenance of your speeder car. I'm not sure what the factor is, but they will possibly look down on you depending on the railroad it originated from. Worth pointing out, despite the Reading lettering, it has Union Pacific stampings.
Yesterday was #2102's day out. Unfortunately it was a gray rainy day, but the #2102 still put on a good show. Unlike #425, they had the Fast Freight SD50s in chase as protection power, instead of cut into the consist.
This was the Cross Keys Road crossing in Reading. Unlike #425, which wears random whistles, #2102 seems to only wear the freight hooter, which it is blowing here, and the passenger 6-chime.
Getting moving again at Port Clinton with thunderous stack talk.
Leaning into the curve at Zehners
Climbing up off Hometown Bridge. There was plenty of wheelslip when getting started.
Rolling through Nesquehoning. After East Mahanoy Junction, it's pretty much downhill through to Jim Thorpe.
And the SD50s following through afterwards.
Rather than go down into Jim Thorpe and pay to park, I went up to Glen Onoko to watch the Lehigh Gorge Scenic trains go through the rock cut there.
I still had to drive home, so I opted not to chase #2102 back to Port Clinton, since that would be another 3 hours and ultimately end up an hour farther from home. But I did decide to at least catch it going up through Nesquehoning Tunnel.
While waiting, NRFF came south behind an ex-B&O/CSX SD50-2 (CSX downrated their SD50s to SD40-spec, calling them an SD50-2 afterwards), two SD40-2s and an MP15DC
At 3:20ish, the RDCs came racing through Nesquehoning Tunnel, headed back to Pottsville. The fog lent a ghostly aspect.
And then, 15 minutes later, and with a lot of wheelslip, #2102 came roaring through, shouting to the heavens.
In reply to NickD :
You're a 914 owner at a Porsche meeting. Meh, no ulcers here.
So, this is pretty amazing. A week after Norfolk & Western #475's encounter with an excavator, the Strasburg shop crew has replaced the smokebox front with a new one that they made, brazed the shattered smokebox door back together, and already have her back in service.
Also, this weekend, the Woodstown Central Railroad began operation. This is SMS Rail Service's new passenger excursion operation, running over 16 miles of trackage from Swedesboro, NJ to Salem, NJ. For their opening event, SMS Rail Service used one of their famous Baldwin S-12 switchers towing a caboose, but they have passenger cars on site that they are refurbishing, and once their restoration of ex-USATC 0-6-0 #9 is complete, they will be running steam on the line as well. This is one of very few places you can ride behind an operating Baldwin diesel, which is fitting, since the rails are ex-Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, which utilized Baldwin AS-16s in passenger service well into the '60s.
I have always heard that Strasburg had developed a pretty impressive shop but that repair confirms it!
In reply to TheMagicRatchet :
The Strasburg mechanical department is the gold standard. Pretty much every major restoration that has occurred in the past couple decades Strasburg has been involved in in some capacity, whether it's been worked on in their facilities or they've turned out parts for it. R&N #425, Reading #2102, C&O #1309, NC&StL #576, N&W #611, B&M #3713, Valley Railroad #97, Rio Grande Southern #20, they've had a hand in them all in some capacity. I've toured their shop, back around 2005 and again in 2019, and it's impressive.
In 2019, they had just completed a massive expansion and already had the shop to full capacity with machinery and projects. I know they did say the downside was that they are so busy with customer work, they scarcely have time to work on their own stuff. That's why #31 (CN #7312) has been apart for over a decade.
I imagine the quick turnaround on #475 was out of necessity. They have their holiday trains coming up, the #89 is borderline too light, the #90 runs out of boiler time fairly soon, and the #31 is still in pieces. That leaves them dangerously power short. The other factor is that #475's damage was actually relatively light. The boom was the only major impact, so there was no pilot beam or cylinder saddle or coupler pocket damage. It also didn't hit the front flue sheet, and oddly the #475 doesn't have a petticoat pipe in the smoke box to get damaged. According to Kelly Anderson, the N&W built the Ms without a petticoat pipe, then added one later, along with a Master Mechanic self-cleaning front end. When restoring the #475, Linn Moedinger was curious how well it has functioned in the original configuration, and so they restored it to as-built, without the petticoat. Kelly Anderson says the #475 is actually the best steaming engine they have, despite that.
Also, I hear part of the rush to get #475 back in service is that there is a Pete Lerro photo charter in the very near future that promised both #475 and #611. That's also why #475 has had it's normal boiler tube pilot replaced with footboards as well. By the time that N&W #611 was built, all of the 4-8-0s still in operation were working in yard service and had been fitted wth footboards for the brakeman to ride. They also removed the Southern Pacific 6-chime it has been wearing recently, and put the correct N&W hooter whistle on it.
The current regular operating appearance of #475 is a weird cross-section of eras. The boiler tube pilot is representative of the early as-built configuration, but the centered headlight is representative of the late configuration. Honestly, I prefer the early configuration with the headlight on top of the smokebox and the boiler tube pilot.
A pretty amusing photo of N&W #475 during the midst of her restoration in the 1990s. Apparently the Strasburg mechanical department got sick of answering the question of when it would be done. It was actually another 2 years after this photo was taken that the #475 finally became operational. By the account of Strasburg employees, the #475 was in absolutely terrible condition when they began working on it, requiring serious attention to every component. Even more shocking is that the other locomotive they looked at, an ex-Roberval & Sanguenay 2-8-0 that had been last used by the Crab Orchard & Egyptian, was somehow in even worse condition.
N&W #475 is actually the oldest active locomotive on the Strasburg, but is ironically the newest arrival on the property. Strasburg #31/Canadian National #7312 was acquired in 1960 when steam returned to the Strasburg for the first time in decades, followe by Reading #1187 in 1962, then PRR #1223 was leased from the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1965, #90 was purchased from the Great Western of Colorado in 1967, Canadian National #89 was purchased from Steamtown USA in 1972, and finally PRR #7002 was leased from the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in 1982. When PRR #1223 and #7002 were sent back to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in 1989, Strasburg Rail Road went searching for replacement power and purchased the #475 from the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad in 1991, eventually putting it back in service in 1993. The #475 was built by Baldwin in 1906, while the #31 was built in 1908, the #89 was built in 1910, and the #90 was built in 1924. The #1187, #1223, and #7002 were all order, but none of them are on the roster anymore. It's also crazy to consider that there hasn't been a new steam locomotive added to the Strasburg roster in almost 30 years, other than the lease of N&W #611.
In profile, the #475 is a little strange. Above the running boards, it looks like an older 4-6-0 or 2-8-0 with a wagon top boiler. Then, you look down and see the stubby little drivers and start counting wheels and it's a 4-8-0. The 4-8-0 was never a particularly popular wheel arrangement in the US and doesn't even have an agreed-upon nickname for the arrangement. Southern Pacific called theirs a "Twelve-Wheeler", CNJ called their chunky Camelback 4-8-0s a "Mastodon", and N&W referred to theirs as "Mollies". I remember as a kid, taking the shop tour and walking up to it and counting the wheels and being baffled, because I'd never even heard of a 4-8-0. And then there's the fact that the firebox continues all the way to the back of the cab, forcing the fireman to stand on the tender deck and pitch across into the firebox, while the engineer is wedged in alongside the firebox. I heard one Strasburg engineer describe the #475's cab as "hotter than a rattlesnake's ass"
A photo charter of #475 pulling a chartered mixed train, which is very representative of the typical usage of the N&W's 4-8-0s.
Hey, look, two N&W 4-8-0s in steam! Actually, it's a clever photoshop. A couple years back, they did the #475 up as famed Abingdon Branch resident N&W #382, subject of O. Winston Link photos, with a reproduction number plate, stack flange, and solid pilot. This photo is a composite done at the Strasburg shops at night. They took a photo of "#382" in the foreground, then swapped it back to it's #475 guise and moved it to a different track, then put the two photos together. The lack of shadows cast on the #475 in the background are a bit of a giveaway. Still pretty cool.
Hauling a photo charter mixed train in the #382 guise.
A similar photo but with #475 in it's late appearance, with footboards and centered headlamp.
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