Just remembered a story from the late 80s/early 90s from some fellow rail fans in the SW Ohio area. An excursion with N&W 611 had recently ended, and it was supposed to be pushed back home in front of a freight train. They were hanging out at a rural crossing waiting for it to show up, and it blasted by at speed, blowing smoke like it was pulling the entire train, and the diesels were just along for the ride. Wish I had made it out to see that.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Probably had one of the Claytor brothers at the throttle. Graham and Bob Claytor, who had at various times been presidents of Amtrak, Southern and Norfolk Southern, were known for taking the throttle on the #611 and putting on a show. I recall a story of them running #611 on an excursion on the ex-NKP mainline out of Buffalo, and they said the whole way out there, they had been passing Conrail TrailVan piggyback trains left and right like they were standing still. They got on the NKP and Graham Claytor had the throttle all the way out and was doing 80mph when all of a sudden someone got on the radio and said "Mr. Claytor, we just overshot the photo runby spot." He hauled it down from speed, then radioed in and got permission to make a 3 or 4 mile reverse shove back down a busy single-track mainline to do the photo runby.
Union Pacific used to assign the #844 and #3985 to freight trains whenever they had to do a ferry move. If the #3985 had to be in Denver for an excursion, and the passenger cars were already on site, then they would just find a freight headed from Cheyenne to Denver and put the #3985 on the front of it to get there. Or there was the time that #844 was headed back to Cheyenne, and they came upon a freight train that had stalled out due to a dead locomotive. They hooked #844 to the rear and used it as a helper to get them rolling again.
I saw a flyer on Facebook for this RDC charter trip on the Reading & Northern with rare mileage, photo runbys, and a visit to see CNJ #113. I'm strongly considering purchasing a ticket for this. Originally they were also advertising going to Good Springs but R&N said they didn't feel comfortable enough with the track condition to take passengers there.
A little Milwaukee Road #261 for page 261.
On home rails at Glencoe, Minnesota. The nice thing about the #261 is that it's usually pulling a full set of matched passenger cars, which is a real rarity. It's one of those things that bugs me, when you see a mix of passenger cars in different liveries, but that's often a consequence of having to lease cars or include private cars.
With an Amtrak "Pepsi Can" 8-32BWH tucked in behind the tender, #261 makes speed over the Canadian Pacific C&M Subdivision at Franklin, Wisconsin.
A 2013 Fall Colors Excursion on BNSF's Hinckley Subdivision at Brook Park, Minnesota.
While I wouldn't say that #261 is ugly, it's definitely a bit unusual, particularly in this configuration with the bell and Mars light both mounted off-center above the smokebox. You can also jsut barely see the end of an airhorn behind the bell. Milwaukee Road discovered that steam whistles became less audible at speeds above 55mph, and so they mounted air horns for extended high speed running. They also had two different whistles, one for low speed operation and one for high speed operation.
A stranger in a strange land, Milwaukee Road #261 pounds her way out of Scranton, Pennsylvania in October of 1995. The big Alco-built Northern was steamed east for the grand opening of Steamtown National Historic Site and hung around for a year, running trips up to Moscow. From what I've heard, some personality clashes between Friends of MILW 261 and the National Park Services have ensured that this is highly likely to happen again.
MILW #261 storming over the Poconos with a freight train. According to the photographer notes, after spending a day chasing one of the regular #261 trips out of Scranton, a group of photographers got wondering if maybe they could get the engine to haul some freight. Delaware-Lackawanna had 19 cars that were outbound from Scranton, and so, for a fee of $261 per person, 40 people got to watch the #261 work a freight train through the Poconos.
On the former Milwaukee Road mainline, now the Twin Cities & Western shortline, at Augusta, Minnesota in October of 2016. It could just as easily have been October of '46.
The Milwaukee Road S3 was kind of an interesting mutt, mechanically-speaking. It paired the running gear of a Rock Island R-67, the boiler of a Delaware & Hudson K-62, and the tender of a Union Pacific FEF-3. Then there was the unusual square smokebox door, really only seen on later New York Central designs, circulators instead of thermic syphons, an exhaust steam injector instead of a feedwater heater (often referred to as a "poor man's feedwater heater" in fact), roller bearings, special compensating lateral driving-box devices, and "precision firing equipment".
MILW #261 actually came up my way once, although I was only 3 years old when it happened, so suffice to say, I did not see it. While it was staying at Scranton, they ran a doubleheader trip with the #261 and NYS&W's newly acquired Chinese-built 2-8-2 up the ex-DL&W mainline from Scranton to Syracuse and back. I would hazard a guess that that was probably one of the last times a steam locomotive came to Syracuse. I don't think Walter Rich ran NYS&W #142 up there much, it mostly stayed down on the original NYS&W mainline in NJ.
A photo that historically wouldn't have been that out of the question. Milwaukee Road #261 and Soo 4-6-2 #2719 simmer side by side, while a Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Geep shifts cars in the background. At the time of this photo, #261 was fresh off a four year overhaul and Soo #2719 was just about to go out of service. The #2719 has been cold for a decade now, although in 2019 the Eau Claire City Council voted to sell the locomotive back to the Lake Superior Railroad Museum for $8, with the hope that the museum will return it back to service.
The #261 on the BNSF's Hinckley Subdivision at Askov, Minnesota in May of 2013. Askov is apparently the former "Rutabaga Capitol of the World" and was a hub of rutabaga cultivation until A. Henriksen's rutabaga warehouse operation burned in the 1970s. The city of Askov is currently home of the annual Askov Fair and Rutabaga Festival, held during the fourth weekend of August. Thrilling.
On September 15th, 2007, the #261 also ran a doubleheader with Canadian Pacific's corporate steam locomotive, unstreamlined Royal Hudson #2816, from Minneapolis to La Crosse and back. Perhaps a revisiting of this trip isn't that far out of the question anymore, with Keith Creel recently announcing that CPR is restoring #2816 to operation.
Reading & Northern released a press release detailing their 2022, and it was another record-breaker for them.
Revenue freight traffic rose by over 4,000 carloads, an increased of 15.4%, which is especially impressive when the overall North American railroad volume showed a 1.5% decrease. A big part of that drive was anthracite traffic, which was up by 40% (2,624 carloads) due to the Russian-Ukrainian War. Russia and the eastern portion of Ukraine were major international suppliers of anthracite, and without those sources the world looked to Pennsylvania anthracite. While anthracite isn't used in home heating or power generation as widespread as it used to be, it is still heavily used in steel-making to provide the carbon content. There are two new steel mills opening in Texas and Ontario, and R&N is predicting another double-digit rise in anthracite traffic in 2023. To handle the jump in export business, R&N and Norfolk Southern (NS) worked together to move the business in manifest service, instead of traditional unit train service. This shift allowed more regular shipments to the export terminal and eliminated the need for NS to provide power and crews to move unit trains. RBMN was able to make this alternate transportation plan work because it had purchased 550+ rapid discharge cars for the export market.
As the Russian invasion caused havoc in the international anthracite market, it also caused wild swings in the energy market. As a result, the demand for domestic sources of energy also increased, which in turn led to an increased demand for Marcellus Shale gas. R&N spent $1,000,000 to construct a new facility in Tunkhannock for handling Marcellus Shale terminal in 2021, which was a timely decision. Over the course of the year more and more drilling companies decided to try the facility, which is run by Texas Sands. Customers were impressed with the superior service, free local storage and excellent location and by the end of the year, R&N had handled over 2,000 carloads of new business and expects to triple that volume in 2023
The R&N passenger department also took a huge leap as they transported over 250,000 riders for the first time in its history, an increase of more than 10%, including a recrod-breaking weekend where Lehigh Gorge Scenic moved more than 7800 people in two days. Under the direction of General Manager Matt Fisher, R&N added more train trips, more equipment, and more origin locations. In 2023, they have announced further expansion of R&N Passenger service as Jim Thorpe trains are now operated year-round. Later this year, R&N will be starting the long-rumored excursion service from the Wilkes Barre/Scranton area out of Pittston. There are also three additional Budd RDCs coming on line, and they have purchased additional coaches.
NickD said:I saw a flyer on Facebook for this RDC charter trip on the Reading & Northern with rare mileage, photo runbys, and a visit to see CNJ #113. I'm strongly considering purchasing a ticket for this. Originally they were also advertising going to Good Springs but R&N said they didn't feel comfortable enough with the track condition to take passengers there.
Other than a few dead Fiats in my buddy's back yard there isn't much to see in Good Springs. Pretty good place to miss. Car road is terrrible there too.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
I think most of the interest in going to Good Spring was just that they don't ever run regular passenger service up the line, not the destination of Good Spring itself. They ran a charter trip to Tremont last year, and it had been decades since a passenger train had gone there. Going beyond that would be very rare mileage for passengers (they have a pretty regular freight service out of Good Spring). Most of their passenger service runs from Reading or Tamaqua to Jim Thorpe, although they also run RDCs from Tamaqua to Pottsville and Pottsville to Jim Thorpe. About a year and half ago, I was lucky enough to ride a charter trip that split west from the mainline at East Mahanoy Junction and went to Girardville, and that was a pretty rare move as well. I know when Andy Muller started growing the R&N, he had said that the goal was passenger trains to Mt Carmel/Locust Summit, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. I know that once you get west of Mahanoy City, the tracks start to get pretty rough there, so they would have to do a complete overhaul of that line to run regular service on it.
Dirt the Railway Cat out to Nevada Northern has sadly passed away. RIP Dirt.
I'll admit, I had hoped to get to see the famous Dirt if I go to the Nevada Northern this year. Dirt was arguably more famous than the NN itself, earning lots of mainstream press and even having his own Instagram page. The magazine also capitalized on it, offering Dirt merchandise, and they said they had people drive to Ely who weren't even really railfans in hopes of spotting the famous railway cat.
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