Y'all probably already know about this, but it popped up in suggested reading for me:
Largest Railway Museum
Y'all probably already know about this, but it popped up in suggested reading for me:
Largest Railway Museum
I mentioned that Springfield Terminal #1 went to the Claremont & Concord Railroad, which was a bizarre little operation. It traced it's heritage back to 1848, with the Concord & Claremont Railroad, which would undergo a series of mergers that resulted in numerous name changes before becoming the Concord & Claremont again. Then, in 1887, it was snapped up by Boston & Maine, becoming the Claremont Branch of the B&M. In 1954, the B&M wished to divest itself of the Claremont Branch, and it was sold to Samuel Pinsly, founder of Pinsly Railroad Company, along with the electrified interurban Claremont Railway & Lighting Co. line from Claremont to West Claremont and Claremont Junction. Pinsly retired the electric freight motors, and operated his new railroad, named the Claremont & Concord (confused yet?), using several GE 44-tonners and 70-tonners.
GE 44 Tonner #18 enters Claremont Yard to pick up cars, brought up from Claremont Jct. by the Newport Job . Freight engine footboards, and riding them, were not yet banned by the ICC, and so the brakeman is out on the front footboards of the #18.
Claremont & Concord 70-tonner #9 ambles along the Sugar River east out of Claremont.
C&C #9 grabbing freight cars out of Claremont Yard and then heading off to Newport. Because the trackage within Claremont was all ex-interurban from the Claremont Railway & Lighting Co., all of that work had to be handled by the 44-tonners, with their shorter wheelbases, due to the radical curvature and grades.
44-Tonner #31 rolling along the formerly electrified Claremont Railway & Lighting Co tracks at West Claremont with a single Southern boxcar.
In typical New England fashion, C&C #31 pokes out of the covered railroad bridge at Chandler's Mills Station. At 227 feet long, this was the longest covered railroad bridge, and it still stands today, although the rails are now gone. In fact, this photo is of the very last train to cross it, in August of 1978. The C&C was abandoning the 11 miles from Newport to Claremont, and this was the track removal train, slowly working it's way back to Claremont as the tracks were removed.
C&C #31 grabs a Canadian National boxcar from a paper mill that it served in Concord. The #31 had originally begun it's life with the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western as their #52
Headed down to the B&M interchange at Claremont Junction with the same boxcar as above. Although the C&C began operating with 57 miles of trackage in 1954, it very quickly made a series of abandonments, that resulted in it being just 6 miles of tracks in and around Claremont by 1977.
Remember that "radical curvature and grades" from the ex-trolley line within Claremont that I mentioned? Well, here some of it is, as C&C 44-tonner #18 backs a boxcar down into Coy Paper Mill in Claremont.
And even wilder. No, that boxcar has not derailed and headed off across the road, that's just how the tracks are routed.
And here, both #31 and #18 are teaming up to muscle a single boxcar up and out of Claremont Paper in West Claremont. I bet they kept those brakes in tip-top condition
Eventually even this was abandoned in 1988, and the C&C, then renamed to Claremont-Concord Railroad (why they kept the Concord in the name when it hadn't gone to Concord since 1960, who knows) operated just two miles of tracks between Claremont Junction and Claremont. The old GEs were put out to pasture in the '90s and replaced with an Alco S4, which was then replaced with an ex-Conrail GP9 in the 2000s. These days, the last remaining two miles are operated by Genesee & Wyoming's New England Central Railroad.
Strasburg Rail Road #33, formerly PRR #9331, picks up PRR #4935 from two Amtrak "pumpkin" Maintenance of Way GP7Us at Leaman Place. The #4935 was the original heritage unit, restored to PRR colors in 1977 and completely overhauled, and run until 1980. In 1983, it was donated to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania and SRC #33 had the honors of towing it back to Strasburg. The #33 was used on the freight-hauling side of the SRC, and was eventually returned to it's PRR colors and number, but was retired in fairly recent years. The problem with #33/#9331 was that, having only 360hp, it wasn't able to keep up with the growth of the freight side of Strasburg's operations. The other issue was that the Caterpillar D-17000 engines have a flawed cylinder head design, prone to cracking into a water jacket near the valve seats, and Strasburg had exhausted their supply of used cylinder heads keeping it running. Strasburg chose to replace it with an ex-NYC SW8, and the #33/#9331 was sold to the Walkersville Southern.
I'm sure it took all of the #33's horsepower to drag the #4935 up to Strasburg.
A little more from my dad's collection of photos. Durango and Silverton in August of 1988. I think engine 497 is no longer with them, traded off to another railroad.
It was a really neat trip, but I think if I did it again, I'd ride the train one way, then take the bus back to Durango. 15 MPH and a lot of swaying. I noticed they only used two railroad spikes per tie, and just alternated their orientation from one railroad tie to the next.
In reply to eastsideTim :
I had bought plane tickets and train tickets and hotel reservations in the fall of 2019 to go out there in May of 2020. The plan was to fly to Albuquerque, drive north to Antonito, then ride the Cumbres & Toltec, then drive to Durango and ride the Durango & Silverton. As you can guess, Covid mangled those plans and then there had been some other issues at Durango & Silverton that had prevented me from rescheduling it. One of these days though...
Yeah, the low speeds and stability are the side effect of narrow gauge stuff. It can negotiate sharper curves and manage steeper grades, but it's slow-going. The Maine 2-foot gauge stuff actually has the rail joints aligned, because with it's narrow gauge having them staggered would actually set up a resonance that would derail them, and that is a rough ride. It's kind of like riding on a wooden roller coaster.
The #497 is indeed no longer with the Durango & Silverton. It had issues with the trailing truck negotiating some of the sharp curves (an issue that Durango & Silverton mistakenly believe was an issue with all of the K-37 490-series locomotives) and they traded it off to Cumbres & Toltec in 1991 for K-36 #482, which hadn't operated since 1970. Durango & Silverton also, somewhat foolishly, traded off almost all of the K-37s that they had, believing they all had the same issue as the #497, only for it to be later determined that the #497's trailing truck had a mechanical defect that caused it to function poorly. The #497 ran until 2001 and then was retired and parked in the roundhouse at Chama, NM. Cumbres & Toltec announced last year that they were beginning an examination of both the #497 and the #492, which has sat outside and cannibalized for parts since the '60s, with the intent of returning one of them to operation.
In reply to NickD :
Sorry to hear about the bad timing. I'm trying to remember if I've ridden narrow gauge anywhere else to compare with D&S, but I think every other excursion I have been on is standard gauge.
In reply to eastsideTim :
The only narrow gauge I've ridden was the Maine two-footers up in Alna. I obviously hope to reschedule my trip to Colorado one day, and I'm thinking that in the very near future East Broad Top in Rockhill Furnace, PA ought to have 2-8-2 #16 fired up (they're being kind of secretive on the status).
The one-way trip is the only way to see the entirety of the Cumbres & Toltec. They run roundtrip train trips from Chama to Osier and from Antonito to Osier, but the only way to make the whole trip was to ride a bus from Antonito to Chama and then ride the train back to Antonito, or to ride a bus from Chama to Antonito and then take the train back. I was going to take the bus to Chama, because the line is mostly uphill in the direction of Antonito, and I wanted to listen to the locomotives work upgrade.
Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:Y'all probably already know about this, but it popped up in suggested reading for me:
Largest Railway Museum
One of those bucket list locations for me. On the subject of IRM, if anyone is in the area and wants to attend a special event, on January 21st they will be having a commemorative event for the 60th anniversary of the abandonment of the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee. From the event site:
The following cars are expected to operate:
On display will be:
The Electroliner may operate briefly, but this is not guaranteed at this point in time. It will otherwise be on the display at the 50th Ave 'L' station.
Someone said that when they did a similar event in 1993, they were told by the shop crew not to count on it happening again, due to the amount of effort it took from volunteers and the wear and tear it placed on equipment. It's been thirty years since then, so it's definitely a rare occasion.
Sadly, an ex-LV/Conrail GE U23B is rumored to be biting the dust. Formerly Lehigh Valley #503, then Conrail #2779, it was operating for Vulcan Materials at Annapolis Junction still in Conrail Blue. According to an employee, the #2779 had been running quite well, had fairly decent wheels on it courtesy of a B23-7 truck swap a few years ago, and they had just got some of the exterior running lights and front number board lights working again right before Christmas. Then during the recent storm, the engine block heater lost power during the Friday windstorm and the engine froze during the frigid Temps of Saturday and Sunday, causing heavy damage to the front end housing, turbocharger, expansion tank, oil cooler, and intercoolers. Word from the Vulcan foreman is that the locomotive will NOT be repaired and is awaiting disposition from the corporate offices. It will either be shipped back to the quarry at Hanover or scrapped on site at Annapolis Junction. All the parts, aside from the oil cooler, are readily available, and the oil cooler could likely be sourced through a dismantler like Larry's Truck & Electric, but GE parts are hideously expensive, since GE would not license aftermarket manufacturers to offer parts. Up until about a decade ago, there were still quite a few of the ex-LV U23Bs in operation, but they've been rapidly vanishing ever since. It'd be nice to see one of the LV U23Bs escape the torch, since U23Bs aren't highly represented in preservation, and the U23Bs were the final new locomotives purchased by the Lehigh Valley.
Nick, have we discussed the Crab Orchard & Egyptian RR? I was surprised to learn they operated steam up until 1986, were within a couple hours of my home, yet I'd never heard of them.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
That was a really weird one. They started out running on leased Illinois Central Gulf trackage running passenger excursions with an ex-St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern 2-4-2T that they converted to a tender engine by stripping off the saddle tanks and buying a tender off ICG for (fun fact: the 2-4-2 wheel arrangement is technically called a "Columbia" but no one actually uses the name).
Two years later, they also bought an ex-Roberval & Saguenay 2-8-0, #17, that was stored in Vermont and had it shipped to Illinois to begin an overhaul. But before it was up and running, a fire broke out that wiped out the CO&E's offices, the depot, and two of their three passenger cars in 1978. They eventually got the #17 running, but passenger operations on the CO&E were done in by the loss of the passenger cars.
In 1979, ICG decided they no longer wanted to own and operate the trackage that the CO&E was operating over, and so they sold off the trackage to the CO&E. Passenger service may have been dead and buried, but the CO&E had inherited the freight customers that ICG had had on the line, and so they became a common carrier that just happened to have two operational steam locomotives. The CO&E actually thrived as a freight hauler, particularly in the intermodal segment, eventually owning 200 flatcars and 600 trailers wearing the CO&E logo. They also acquired a tiny Davenport 35-ton switcher for working the yard.
In 1985, the #5, which was undersized and underpowered for hauling freight, was sold off to the new St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern heritage railroad. Shortly afterwards, a pair of ex-Missouri Pacific SW1200s were leased from Precision National and arrived on the property. The arrival of the SW1200s signalled the beginning of the end of the steam era on the CO&E. The #17 was going to be due for an overhaul, and the railroad had already planned to retire it, rather than go through the inspection and overhaul procedure. It was retired early when the dry pipe collapsed on September 6th, 1986. Five months later it was sold and moved to the property of the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, and a third ex-MoPac SW1200 arrived on the property.
Today, the CO&E has kind of faded into the background as just another short line. The steam locomotives are gone, the Davenport 35-tonner was sold off in 1995, intermodal service was phased out in 1986, and their entire fleet of freight cars were sold off to independent lease companies. The CO&E continues to operate, and has grown in length and remains fairly successful, but it's just not as interesting as it once was.
The #5 has been out of service on the St. Louis, Iron Range & Southern after failing an inspection in 1999. In 2021 though, the railroad announced that they were beginning an inspection process on the locomotive to see if it was feasible to return to operation. The #17 is still on display at Boone & Scenic Valley. After losing PRR #1223 and PRR #7002, Strasburg Railroad did look at the #17 as a possible replacement but ultimately settled on N&W #475, which was also at the B&SV. According to former Strasburg Chief Mechanical Officer Kelly Anderson, while the #475 was in horrid shape and needed every last nut, bolt and washer replaced, CO&E #17 was actually in even worse condition somehow.
In reply to NickD :
What's strange to me is I'd swear I've read about that scrapyard near Chicago being the last to use steam into the late-70's but obviously this place was using them way later.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
North West Steel & Wire was the scrapyard that ran ex-GTW 0-8-0s until 1980. Crab Orchard & Egyptian is just such a weird one because it started out as a steam-powered tourist line in 1973, then transitioned to common carrier in 1979. I guess it just gets overlooked due to relative obscurity and the fact that there's a bit of an asterisk next to the name. NWS&W operated steam from inception until 1980, while CO&E was late to the party.
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