Grassroots Railroad Sports?

After WWII, Clinchfield ended up with some (unwanted) 4-6-6-4 Challengers that had issues with their existing infrastructure. The Challengers were part of UP's 3900-series order and during WWII were diverted to the D&RGW, either at the urging of the War Production Board or the Rio Grande as a lease. After WWII ended, the D&RGW returned the sextet to the Union Pacific but a year later, in July of '47, the Union Pacific (or, technically, the Defense Plant Corporation) sold the set to the Clinchfield, which redesignated them as E-3s and renumbered them #670-#675. The Clinchfield really didn't want more steam locomotives, they really wanted EMD F3s, but with the economy and production the way they were, they got stuck with the Challengers. Making things worse was that the UP 4-6-6-4s weren't suited to the Clinchfield's terrain: they were designed for running long tains over mostly flat running, while the Clinchfield was all coal drags on windy mountain grades. On the first test run it was also discovered that there were some physical interference issues with the railroad too, when they smashed up the cab on one while going through a tunnel. Clinchfield ended up having to build a shoo-fly track to get some clearance. There had also been issues when it had been brought east: part of the move had been over the PRR, and the Pennsy had found that their water stands would not clear the rolled fairings on the top of the tender, so the PRR had to go and torch notches in the fairings to be able to water them. What was telling of PRR's changing mentality was that the PRR, which was the most test-happy railroad there was, didn't do any instrumented testing or studying of the Challengers while on their rails. They just assigned them to eastbound freights and got them off their rails.

The whole fitment issues with Challengers on the Clinchfield would be revisited in 1992, when UP #3985 came east and was disguised as Clinchfield #676 for the 50th anniversary of Clinchfield's Santa Train. CSX attempted to turn the locomotive on the old Clinchfield wye at Kingsport, but either the wye had been reconfigured or Clinchfield never turned their Challengers on it, because it derailed multiple times on the attempt before CSX gave up and just towed it north to Shelby. Later, during the Santa Train run, they clipped a running board on a coal car in a passing siding (Clinchfield had rebuilt their passing tracks after the steam era and changed the dimensions) and bent it up pretty bad, requiring the UP crew to hammer the daylights out of it to get it straight again.

There were also a number of purchases that were put off due to not being able to fit equipment.

The big one was the D&RGW narrow-gauge network. The D&RGW looked at numerous proposals for bigger locomotives to run on their narrow gauge networks, but was always stuck by the fact that there were tight clearances, as well as not wanting to go through and replace turntables and roundhouses or strengthen bridges. The D&RGW narrow gauge lines were always stuck in the weird situation of the D&RGW not wanting to invest or upgrade but being unable to standard gauge the lines or get permission from the ICC to abandon them. Some of the proposals:

At least two separate proposals were pitched for a narrow-gauge 4-8-2 by Baldwin. One used the same 44" driver as the K-28s, K-36s, and K-37s and was rated for 34,000lbs of tractive effort, which would have been a class M-34 under D&RGW class system. The other used a 48" driver, which was the same as the T-12 Ten-Wheelers, and was rated for 36,000lbs of tractive effort, which would have been an M-36. The two-axle lead trucks were likely an attempt to stabilize some of the yawing action that the Mikados had when run at "high" speeds, as was the 48" driver on the M-36. But that extra axle, and the taller drivers on the M-36, would have lengthened the wheelbase and required a shorter tender to fit turntables. The idea was binned, and D&RGW went with the 44" drivered K-36 Mikados instead.

They also pursued plans for three separate designs of 2-8-8-2 articulated locomotives. One is interesting in that, for the designated railroad, it has the Rio Grande Southern listed and the date is 1930. The RGS had operated as a subsidiary of the D&RGW from 1893 to 1929, at which point it went into receivership and the D&RGW lost control of it. It's weird that the Rio Grande Southern was entertaining the idea of a 2-8-8-2, or Alco was trying to pitch a 2-8-8-2 to the RGS, when it couldn't afford to operate a single steam locomotive and the entire railroad was in a state of disrepair and surviving nearly entirely on mail contracts being hauled by Galloping Geese. If you look at the one column, it says that axle loads and driver spacing were designed to match that of the K-27 "Mudhens" that the D&RGW assigned to the RGS. Still, the RGS often had to cut helpers into the middle of the trains, because the bridges couldn't handle doubleheaders, so I can't imagine they would have done well with a single 2-8-8-2. 

Three years earlier, the D&RGW pursued the idea of a clean-sheet narrow gauge 2-8-8-2 for their main narrow gauge system. Under their naming system, this would have been an L-75 class. It would make sense that they were looking at bigger power, since a lot of their narrow-gauge trains of that era are shown with two Mikados on the front, a third shoving on the rear, and sometimes another cut in the middle. You were looking at pretty sizable crew reductions through using a 2-8-8-2.

There is also this version which has the heading of "Using Machinery of Two 113 Class Engs". The 113 Class was the standard-gauge C-28 Consolidations, which the D&RGW used as the parts donors to build the narrow-gauge K-37 Mikados. Apparently they had the idea of combining two C-28s to build a single narrow-gauge 2-8-8-2. Again, needing to install new turntables and roundhouses, overhaul bridges, and widen clearances prevented this idea from going anywhere. Consider that at this time, and even into modern day, Lobato Trestle on the San Juan Extension is too light to handle multiple K-36/K-37s, and the D&RGW/C&TS has to cut one engine off, run it over the trestle by itself, and then the second engine has to bring the train over itself. There's not a snowball's chance in hell a single 2-8-8-2 was going over that bridge without significant rebuilding.

Supposedly as late as 1940, the D&RGW was still entertaining the idea of articulated locomotives on the narrow-gauge lines. When the Sumpter Valley went out of business, they had the pair of ex-Uintah 2-6-6-2s (the sole articulated narrow-gauge locomotives built for US operation), and D&RGW was rumored to have taken a look at buying them, but decided to pass on the pair. They then went down to International Railways of Central America in Escuintla, Guatemala, where they ran into early 1960s before being parked. They were torn down for an overhaul sometime afterwards, but then the Guatemalan Civil War ripped through the area and the IRCA was abandoned and the pair scrapped.

The Rio Grande Southern was the sick man of Colorado. It started out plenty hopeful, but shortly into it's life it was crippled by the Panic of 1893 and never truly recovered.

The Rio Grande Southern, referred to locally as just "The Southern" ran from the Durango to Ridgway through the delightfully named Lizard Head Pass. It was built by Russian immigrant and Colorado toll road builder Otto Mear, the famed "Pathfinder of the San Juans", with the intent to transport immense amounts of silver mineral traffic that were being produced by the mining communities of Rico and Telluride.

The Denver & Rio Grande (which became the Denver & Rio Grande Western when it absorbed the Rio Grande Western) had built their narrow-gauge route from Denver in 1870, made its way to the Animas Valley from Alamosa and established the city of Durango in 1881, and then continued on to the town of Silverton in 1882. The D&RG would later build a route from Salida to Montrose, and then south to where they established the town of Ridgway (named after D&RG superintendent Robert M. Ridgway) and reached the mining town of Ouray in 1887. The D&RG had surveyed possible routes to access the town of Rico and connect the Ouray branch: one that branched off of the Silverton Branch at Hermosa and another route that Otto Mears' short-lived Silverton would eventually be constructed on. But as far as the D&RG was concerned, Red Mountain Pass was impenetrable by rail. It was Otto Mears who decided to take on the task of connecting the D&RG's rail lines that were separated north and south of the central San Juans. Mears had been on good terms with the D&RG from building the roadbed for their route to Gunnison over Guncha and Marshall Pass.

Mears' first attempt at doing just that was the Silverton Railroad, which went northwest of Silverton utilizing the survey done by the D&RG, mostly following the route of today's US 550 (also known as the Million Dollar Highway) over Red Mountain Pass. Mears managed to build the Silverton Railroad to Ironton, which made it within 8 miles of Ouray. However, the remaining stretch through the Uncompaghre Gorge to Ouray was considered too difficult, despite the efforts and engineering feats that had been already accomplished by Mears, such as the Chattanooga Loop, the Red Mountain Wye and the Corkscrew Gulch turntable/switchback, to get the Silverton Railroad to Ironton in the first place. An electrificed cog railway with a 7% grade was briefly considered, as well as a spiraling tunnel, but the two ideas never made it out of the hypothetical realm. The Silverton Railroad was able to profit from the also immense mineral traffic generating from the Red Mountain Mining District, but Meers was not happy about failing to reach his objective.

Once it was apparent to Mears that the Silverton Railroad wouldn't be able to access Ouray, he considered a railroad route heading west of Durango. It would head north following Lost Creek and the Dolores River, accessing the mining community of Rico, then over Lizard Head Pass, following the San Miguel River up to the Dallas Divide, and then into the town of Ridgway. This route would essentially bypass the issues that kept the Silverton Railroad from completing the line from Ouray and the need for various switchbacks and wyes that had been required to traverse Red Mountain Pass. In 1889, he incorporated the Rio Grande Southern, the third of his railroads, alongside the Silverton Railroad and the Silverton Northern Railroad. Construction began that year from both ends of the railroad at Ridgway and Durango. By the end of 1890, before the line was complete, the RGS was already servicing mining companies in Telluride and west of Durango. The line was completed on 12 December 1891, where the two construction teams met south of Rico.

Fully open for business, the RGS was booming. It almost immediately paid off it's construction costs and was wildly profitable for the company and investors, as well as offering higher than the average pay for RGS employees. The RGS's opening was also a boon for the Denver & Rio Grande, since there was now a rail connection between Ouray and Silverton, although one couldn't call it a direct connection. Despite being only a dozen or so miles apart by air, the two towns were hundreds of miles apart by rail, even using the RGS around the west side of the San Juans.

Then, the Panic of 1893 struck. While there are believed to be numerous causes of the financial crash, in Colorado it was tied to the abrupt collapse of the silver industry after two decades of explosive growth. The Panic rattled apart Otto Mears' growing narrow gauge empire, damaging the finances to an extent that the Rio Grand Southern, the Silverton, and the Silverton Northern never truly recovered from. Mears filed for voluntary receivership of the RGS, and the Denver & Rio Grande stepped in and took control of the RGS. Now they had the connection between Ouray and Silverton that they had wanted but hadn't thought possible, and they hadn't even had to construct it. By 1895 the receivership had ended, but Edward Jeffery, president of the D&RG, was appointed president of the RGS as well, still ensuring the D&RG's control of the line. 

The RGS went through rugged terrain and fought pitched battles with Mother Nature, making it an expensive railroad to operate. The railroad's route followed the Dolores River, which tended to flood many times during the railroad's lifetime. Many bridges and trestles would be washed out when rivers flooded over, adding more unnecessary costs to railroad maintenance and closures, and rock slides and mud slides were a constant menace. Most of the terrain it went through experienced tons of snow in winter and occasional rock and mudslides in summer. The RGS was able to order two new rotary snow plows before the Panic of 1893 and later on built three flangers, but depending on how bad the snow got, it often caused closures, and the cost to operate trains with their plow equipment was too much for the railroad during specific times as they required two to four locomotives to push them.

The still-ailing RGS was hit hard again during the Great Depression, going into receivership in 1929, at which point the D&RGW lost control of it. They still continued to interchange trains and lease them equipment though. The Great Depression affected it to the point where they couldn't afford to operate one single steam locomotive, between paying for fuel, paying the engineer and fireman to operate the locomotive, etc. However, they still had the responsibility to ship US Mail. That could have been the end of the line for the RGS, but Chief Mechanic Jack Odenbaugh thought otherwise. In 1931 he devised a way to construct railbuses using secondhand Buicks and Pierce Arrows, building the fleet of Galloping Geese.  These motor cars indeed were successful and handled daily services until 1940 when the RGS could afford to run regular freight trains again. Even after that, the Geese completely replaced revenue-generating passenger trains until abandonment, since almost all passenger coaches the RGS owned at the time had been put into MOW service.

The RGS finally threw in the towel and filed with the ICC for abandonment on April 24th, 1952, after 60 years of operation. The RGS had lost the US Postal Service contract to ship mail after failing to clear snow to deliver during the winter of 1951–2. This contract was the very last profitable aspect of the RGS, and without it, the RGS was sunk. Scrapping operations started after the request for abandonment was approved in April and was completed by March 21st, 1953. Remaining operational equipment such as RGS C-17 Consolidation #42 on the south end of the line and leased D&RGW #461 on the north end, as well as various Geese, were used to salvage the rails and other parts of the railroad that were removed. By that point, the D&RGW was rapidly abandoning or regauging the narrow gauge network and no longer needed the connection that the RGS offered. Otto Mears himself had died in 1931, the Silverton Railroad had been abandoned or dismantled in 1926, and the Silverton Northern had been abandoned and scrapped in 1942, meaning the RGS was the last piece of Mear's little empire.

Two K-27s with a freight train at Ridgway, Colorado. The lead engine is D&RGW/RGS #461, which stayed on the RGS right up until the end, while the second engine was D&RGW/RGS #452. The many wooden trestles along the lines required the K-27s to be operated in this spaced-out manor, with a lead engine, several cars, and then the second engine. This ensured that bridges didn't bear the weight of both engines simultaneously. The K-27s were regularly used on the RGS, due to their lighter weight and the fact that they had become superfluous over on the D&RGW from the arrival of the bigger and more powerful K-36s and K-37s.

RGS #461 at Placerville, Colorado in the final winter of operation.

The #455 had been traded to the RGS by the D&RGW in 1939, only to be wrecked in 1943. It was rebuilt in 1947 using parts from a standard gauge locomotive, and operated until the end of the RGS, then was scrapped in 1953.

Rio Grande Southern 4-6-0 #20 near Porter, Colorado with a stock train. The #20 was not a D&RGW locomotive, but instead was purchased in 1915 from the Florence & Cripple Creek after the F&CC closed up shop. The #20 was saved by the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club when it was retired by the RGS in 1951 and was donated to the Colorado Railroad Museum. Over the course of 14 years, it was restored to operation by Strasburg Rail Road's shops, who said that the years of ownership by the RGS certainly showed in it's condition. The preliminary hydrostatic test on the boiler was aborted when the boiler began to deform because the boiler sheets were worn so thin. The rod bearings had completely worn through and into the rods and were ovaled out. The pilot had several large dents in it from encounters with rockslides. They ended up building a new boiler and rods and setting aside the old parts as display pieces to demonstrate the condition of equipment on the RGS.

RGS #461 and another K-27 at the iced-up water tower at Brown, Colorado.

RGS #455 crossing a wooden trestle at Franklin Junction in June of '42.

Rio Grande Southern C-17 Consolidation #42 somewhere between Porter and Franklin Junction with a work train that is pulling up the rails post-abandonment. The #42, originally D&RG #420, fortunately escaped the scrapping and after moving around between various locations, ultimately ended up at the Durango & Silverton and is displayed at their museum.

RGS #461 taking on water at the Brown, Colorado water tower. Wooden water towers were phased out by most railroads due to their propensity to leak in cold or dry conditions, but they hung around on most of the narrow gauge lines due to lack of money, or will, to replace them. I've seen a photo of one on the SP narrow gauge line, out in the desert, where the water tower was a micro-oasis, surrounded by grass and moss, the only signs of life in desolate territory.

D&RGW/RGS #461 headed south out of Fall Creek, Colorado with a stock car train. The K-27 Mikados were dubbed "Mudhens", although the exact origin of the nickname seems to have been lost. One theory is that their short squat proportions and oscillating gait as they waddled down the rails looked like a hen running. Another was that someone declared the K-27s "as ugly as a muddy hen". And at least one more states that their frequent derailments and encounters with mudslides left them perpetually covered in mud.

Rio Grande Southern 2-8-0 #74 with a Rocky Mountain Railroad Club excursion. The #74 had been built for the Colorado & Northwestern, then was sold to the Colorado & Southern, and then finally came to the Rio Grande Southern in 1948, likely one of the last motive power acquisitions by the RGS. It survived the end of the RGS in 1951 and was donated to the city of Boulder, Colorado and put on display there, then was later moved to the Colorado Railroad Museum.

Reading & Northern ran their Reading to Jim Thorpe (symbols OSJT/JTSO) trips yesterday for Fastnacht, which is a Pennsylvania-Dutch tradition similar to Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras, which are feasts to use up the lard, sugar, butter, eggs and other rich foods in a house before the austere diet of Lent begins. The trips are similar to their regular OSJT trips, with a three hour layover in Jim Thorpe, but they serve fastnacht one board, with is also a pastry kinda similar to a paczki, except fastnachts are made with potato dough and shaped into a triangle or square, while paczki are made from yeasted dough and are round in shape. They had a pair of GP38-2s, #2010 and #2011, which are ex-Southern/ex-Norfolk Southern that R&N chopped the noses on in their Port Clinton shops.

Apparently the trip went well, until on the return trip when they struck a Buick Encore that tried to beat the crossing. Reports are that no one on either the train or in the car was hurt, but it held things up for 2 hours. EMD GP38-2: 1 Buick Encore: 0.

From what I heard, when R&N went on their latest power-buying spree from NS, they purchased equipment based on the condition, but now in retrospect, they regret not instead buying as many locomotives with NS's Admiral Cab as they could instead. They ended up with three Admiral Cab-equipped locomotives, two GP38-2s and an SD40-2s, and they really like them. I've ridden in the SD40-2, #3059, and one of the GP38-2s, #2013, and they're clean, quiet, comfortable and, although I fortunately didn't have to experience this part, safe in a collision.

What's an Admiral Cab? The Admiral Cab is a cab designed and installed at NS's Altoona facilities on older Spartan cab EMDs that retains the basic look and feel of a standard EMD cab, the exceptions being sharper angles, angled center windows, raised numberboard section, and under-floor air conditioning. The most important difference isn't visible from the outside. The nose portion of the Admiral cab is made of one inch thick steel vs. the quarter inch steel of the original EMD cab. This increase in thickness creates a safer environment for the crew in the event of a collision. The Admiral Cab weighs 12,500 lbs compared to the 3,500 lbs of an EMD cab and comes delivered to Juniata in one piece. Unlike a traditional cab, the front windows slope inward from the top down, intended to cut glare, similar to windshields on Navy vessels. The design idea came from retired Admiral Paul Reason, who serves on NS' board of directors, hence the name "Admiral Cab".

One of the most-missed R&N diesels was #425. At the time, R&N/Lehigh Gorge Scenic was still using the blue-painted passenger cars to match the #425, with the color chosen as a reference to the Reading Crusader (not the CNJ Blue Comet, as is commonly thought) and so they took one of their SD50s, painted it in a blue and gray livery, added Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway logos, and renumbered it to #426. Neat-looking locomotive.

Sadly, they later renumbered it to #5033 and put it in grey, green and yellow. Last I heard, it was out of service and stored up in the dead line at Penobscot. As R&N is bringing more of the ex-NS SD40s online, the SD50s are slowly being filtered out, although I imagine the Fast Freight twins, #5018 and #5019, will hang around for a while

Reading & Northern's two ex-Erie-Lackawanna SD45-2s, #3600 and #3601, on a fantrip in 1999. Conrail put the pair up for sail in 1998 after they had suffered mechanical failure, and the R&N purchased the big 3600hp V20 bruisers and got them running again. They were relatively short-lived machines, with both being gone off the roster by 2004. The #3601 was involved in an accident where it hit a parked coal train, and R&N disliked the fuel-guzzling nature of the two enough that they got rid of #3600 at the same time. They were scrapped in Pittston around 2004/2005.

An odd couple, 20th Anniversary SD38 #2003 (ex-DT&I/GTW) and SD45R #3200 (ex-SP) at NS's Reading Yard in 2004. The two of them would end up on the Port Clinton dead line a couple years after this photo. While the SD38 would make a return several years later, albeit in regular R&N livery without the silver trucks or 20th anniversary logo, the #3200 would stay there until being scrapped in 2011. The #3200 was not numbered in the 3600-series number block, like the two SD45-2s, because when it had been rebuilt by SP as an SD45R, SP changed the governors in them to rerate them to 3200hp. According to one person on Facebook, it was a failed turbocharger that resulted in the #3200's retirement.

There's also the odd red GP30/GP39RNs. R&N bought four GP30 rebuilds off of BNSF, which were ATSF GP30s that ATSF rebuilt in-house into what they called a GP30u (at the same time they were also rebuilding GP35s into GP35us). They had Dash 2 electrical gear to ditch the weirdo setups that the GP30s (and GP35s) came with from the factory, including the sixteen-step transition process, as well as installing 645 power packs and standardizing them all at 2500hp (normal for a GP35, a 250hp upgrade for a GP30). Basically, when ATSF was done, they were a GP30/GP35 on the outside only. On the other side of the merger, BN also had units rebuilt by EMD, VMV (Paducah) and Morrison-Knudsen, so you had GP39E, GP39V, and GP39M depending on who did the rebuild. Not all of them came from BN predecessor roads either, BN went out and was buying GP30s and GP35s from other railroads to use as cores. The most amusing include EMD rebuilds of a batch of former Southern units - they retained the GP30 long hood, but got an entire new GP35-style cab and short hood with low nose. After the BNSF merger, all of the units, GP30us, GP35us, GP39Es, GP39Vs and GP39Ms, were all reclassified as GP39Rs, regardless of the base unit or who rebuilt them. I have no clue why BN/BNSF settled on GP39, since EMD built a GP39 and it was a 2250hp unit with a turbocharged V12, while all the GP39Rs used a 2500hp turbocharged V16.

BNSF began retiring them, largely due to age but also due to the non-standard carbodies on the GP30-based units, and Larry's Truck & Electric grabbed up a bunch of them to sell or lease, and R&N bought five of them from LTE. Since it's the R&N, they renamed them to GP39RNs, and because they are rated at 2500hp, R&N assigned them to the 2500-series number block. R&N decided to assign two of them to permanent service on the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway and painted the #2534 and #2535 in a maroon and yellow livery to match the passenger cars. They ended up being short-lived in that service, because a couple years later, they started regularly and openly offering cab rides on the LGS to the public and they wanted units with safe, clean, quiet, comfortable cabs, not grubby old rebuilds of 60 year old units, and so they assigned the two new Admiral Cab GP38-2s, #2013 and #2014, to LGS (with Admiral Cab-equipped SD40-2 #3059 filling in when one of the Geeps isn't available). They were also going to be used for Office Car Specials, but then R&N went and bought the ex-NS F-units, leaving the #2534 and #2535 all dressed up with nowhere to go. These days, people hunt out the GP39RNs as a whole (I know they're my favorite diesels on the R&N), but the two maroons ones are especially sought after and just this week, there was a bunch of hubbub because the two had been handling PIME (Pittston-Mehoopany) together.

R&N #5018, the first of the SD50 "Fast Freight Twins", was originally painted in a red and gray livery in 2020. I actually saw it in this color scheme on display at Jim Thorpe, during my first encounter with Jim Thorpe and the R&N. Not long after being painted in this livery, they swapped the red and the black for the #5018, and painted #5019 in the new black and gray livery. 

I was working today in a very old warehouse when the floor started shaking.

The Florida Gulf and Atlantic LLC railroad still runs daily through Havana Florida taking chemicals to plants on the way to the big town of Attapulgus Georgia.

Interesting fact the mile marker near here is 66.   ???   Well in WWII this line ran all the way down to Camp Gordon Johnson down on the panhandle coast near Lanark Village, looking out towards Dog Island..   It was the only link other than dirt roads to that camp for supplies and troops in the 1940s. Camp Gordon Johnson OBTW is where they trained troops for coastal assaults in preparation for D Day.    The tracks from Tallahassee to Lanark have long ago been removed, but the link from Tallahassee to Attapulgus remains.  It is in sad shape as the trains (usually about 20 tank cars) only roll about 25 mph.   In the picture you can see the siding to this warehouse is shot.

FG&A owns all the track from Baldwin FL (just west of JAX) to Pensacola.  (430 miles of track)  So many daily freights are still running on fairly high speed tracks east and west.   The city of Tallahassee is constantly hoping for a return of AMtrack from JAX to NOLA, probably will never happen.

The little system doesn't seem to have any interest in dressing up their engines in fancy livery.  LOL

Notice, up here in North Florida we actually have trees that lose their leaves in the winter.  Feb 28 = 85 degrees.

Fun GRM fact posted below the picture....

So here's a fun fact for GRMers.  What this train is hauling out of Attapulgus GA is attapulgus clay... known to most of us as kitty-litter or Oil-Dri.     So every time you spill some oil on the shop floor and do the "oil dri shuffle" to clean it up, that  oil-dri got to you via this slow moving train through Havana Florida.   

A trip up Eagle Mountain.  In a primitive sort of build.

Reading & Northern announced that the first trip from Pittston down to Jim Thorpe will be on May 27th and they will be using the F-Units for power.

They include the option for Standard Coach ($49 round-trip from Pittston, Penobscot, or White Haven) or Crown Class Coach ($55 round-trip, available at Pittston only). Tickets go on sale today.

https://www.timesleader.com/news/1601274/f-units-to-pull-first-pittston-jim-thorpe-train-tickets-go-on-sale-march-1?fbclid=IwAR1PkYOR7e5L4z7ECGaGV4FWMhlbDbirCTxqd0CkaWy9znrpUNwauhQnBVI

Hnnnng, Pittston is only three hours away and that's a holiday weekend. I'll have to think on it.

I did laugh at how someone was crabbing about how "Why are they going Pittston to Jim Thorpe? All their trains go to Jim Thorpe. Why not go from Jim Thorpe to Pittston for a change?" and basically everyone's response was "Because there's actually things to do in Jim Thorpe. A trip to Pittston would end up with everyone just standing around the station for three hours."

The new Rock Island, the Mississippi-based shortline reincarnation, has been making big waves over the past couple weeks.

The first was the announcement that the CEO of the Rock Island, Robert Riley, was named as the new Chief Operating Officer and Chief Mechanical Officer at the Louisiana Steam Train Association. His main priority is returning of SP/T&NO 2-8-2 #745 to operation. Riley said he is looking forward not only to working on the 2-8-2, but on finding a new permanent home where it and other LASTA equipment can operate. The #745 is one of a handful of SP/T&NO 2-8-2s that were fabricated in the T&NO's own shops in New Orleans using spare parts and the sole survivor of those, as well as being the only operating steam locomotive in Louisiana. Though Rock Island is currently strictly a freight railroad, Riley had long hoped to be able to provide excursion opportunities and has been acquiring equipment toward that end, including the five-bedroom Pullman buffet-lounge observation car Royal Street, built in 1950 for the Louisville & Nashville, which is Amtrak-certified and now available for charter. Rock Island operations include the Gulf & Ship Island shortline in Gulfport and the 85-mile Mississippi Delta, a former Illinois Central line through the Delta region with a yard in Clarksdale and a CN connection in Swan Lake.  Riley remained non-committal when asked if 745 might ever make the trip over the 81-mile length of the Mississippi Delta line now operated by Rock Island.

Then yesterday they announced that Rock Island Rail is taking over the Midland Railway Historical Association, which ran a tourist line out of Baldwin City, Kansas. It's being sold the Rock Island Rail's newly formed subsidiary, the Ottawa Northern Railway. The Midland Railway Historical Society is in complete collapse, being in the middle of a series of lawsuits, with one of their upper managers is being charged with felony fraud, and there have been no trains since last year, with the Kansas Belle dinner train (separate entity) saying on their website that they have shut down as of last November. Riley says the plan is to revive the tourist/dinner train operations, while also starting freight-hauling operations. Some of the equipment at the museum was privately owned and will be, or has already left, but other equipment will change hands to the Ottawa Northern. Facebook comments had Riley particularly pleased with the acquisition of the ex-MKT RS-3m, which was repowered in-house by EMD. "It isn’t going anywhere. Ask Andrew Johnson I’ve been chasing that unit for a number of years. I told him one day I’d end up with it as a joke. Guess the joke got really funny today. Probably one of the most unique motors in the fleet. Tried to get the one we had at Pioneer but it was stripped. A buddy bought it and scrapped it. The new radiators did however go to repair a museum locomotive in Oklahoma. The Katy motors I believe were built for them by the Penn Central so it is just like the Dewitt Geep we had at Pioneer. It and the #5 will stay Katy."