While the U33Bs wore the Reading livery used on the GP39-2s, the U23Bs wore the earlier yellow and green livery. A pair of them, fresh out of the paint shop, are dragging empty coal cars up out of the Conrail yard at Reading, preparing to take them to collieries for loading.
Two of the U23Bs kick up the leaves somewhere north of Schuylkill Haven on their way to Tremont with an excursion.
Those GEs look pretty nice in green and yellow. I really miss the color and variety before all the mergers into mega RRs.
AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:Those GEs look pretty nice in green and yellow. I really miss the color and variety before all the mergers into mega RRs.
You & me both.
Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) said:Those GEs look pretty nice in green and yellow. I really miss the color and variety before all the mergers into mega RRs.
You & me both.
And then on the shortline side of things, you have Genesee & Wyoming buying up every shortline they can get their hands on, purging the roster of anything unique, and then slapping their orange, yellow & black livery on it. G&W is nicknamed "the Orange Plague" for that reason.
U23B #2397 at Locust Summit with an excursion. Milepost 131 is where the Reading & Northern interchanges with the Shamokin Valley Railroad, which is operated by the North Shore Railroad Company at the behest of SEDA-COG JRA, which stands for Susquehanna Economic Development Agency-Council of Government, Joint Rail Authority. Yeah, helluva mouthful. Andy Muller has made several attempts to acquire the Shamokin Valley in the past few years, which would extend the R&N's reach from Mount Carmel all the way up to Sunbury and Northumberland. It would give R&N a new Class I interchange partner, Canadian Pacific, at Northumberland, as well as another Norfolk Southern connection at Northumberland. SEDA-COG JRA supposedly completely ignored R&N as an operator for the line when they were trying find one, and R&N has been fighting that ever since, and trying to get control of the Shamokin Valley Railroad, but has been stymied in their attempts. Not sure what SEDA-COG JRA's beef with the R&N is, since they've proven they can revitalize lines and stimulate economic development along the rails, but R&N and North Shore do maintain a friendly business relationship even so, with North Shore equipment often being brought down to the R&N's Port Clinton shops for wheel truing and major work.
For a while, there was another 4-8-4 on R&N property. After CSX and NJTransit stopped allowing steam excursions, Ross Rowland's C&O #614 found herself out of a job. It was stored in NJ for a while, and then was eventually moved to Port Clinton and stored there for a while. At that point in time, R&N had stopped all steam excursions, with #425 parked in 1996 and not returning until 2008, and #2102 being dormant from 1991 until 2022. Andy Muller is rumored to have expressed interest in buying #614 when Ross Rowland put it up for auction but Rowland seemingly wanted too much money for it, since no one met reserve. The #614 eventually left the property to be overhauled for the Greenbrier Presidential Express, which was ultimately stillborn, and now sits on display in Virginia.
The J-3a "Greenbrier" is a really impressive machine, and one which has never really seen it's full potential explored. Delivered late in the steam era by Lima, these were a truly modern engine, with one-piece cast frames with integral cylinders, roller bearings everywhere, lightweight rods, trailing truck boosters, 255psi boilers, the works. They were late to the show, never truly got a chance to show what they were made of, and then retired after short lives. The #614 was revived in the '80s, ran sporadically, but put on some good shows, and then was retired in 1999. Ross Rowland, who has wheeled NKP Berkshires, Reading T1s and CPR G5 Pacifics and other steam greats, has said that #614 was the best engine he's ever run.
It's a pity that she couldn't have found a permanent operational home at the R&N, because it would have given her a place to really stretch her legs, but maybe one day it'll run again.
In reply to NickD :
I remember back when courts busted up monopolies, but now I think they are desirable from a big govt point of view. I'm not sure it serves the people or local communities as well.
And does that make WATCO the Black Plague? Will there be a WATCO / Genoese and Wyoming merger someday?
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
I admittedly have seen less of WATCO than G&W. It seems like G&W is everywhere nowadays. They even are overseas, they have a couple railroads in Australia and I think one or two in the UK as well. I'm still pretty peeved about what G&W did to Tioga Central: that was a neat operation in PA with an all-Alco roster, RS-1s, S-2s, a D&H RS-3u, in a Lehigh Valley-inspired livery, that ran passenger excursions and handled freight service. G&W took it over, scrapped almost all the Alcos, begrudgingly ran excursions and then closed the whole operation down permanently last year.
So, on the subject of 4-8-4s, Reading & Northern, and the state of Pennsylvania, I have a wild plan for Memorial Day weekend.
Between the 26th and 29th, Norfolk & Western #611 will be operating at Strasburg Rail Road. These are the final trips it is running in Pennsylvania, at least for this year, and no one really knows what the future holds for it. It's returning to Virginia, and there's hopes that it's going to run on the Buckingham Branch Railroad, but there exists a very really fear that it's going back to Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke just to sit and collect dust. If I want to see it operating, this is a surefire time to catch it.
On May 6th, East Broad Top begins regular operations with steam power. I missed out on seeing it operate back when it was originally running, I don't want to miss it again, and it's only a two hour drive from Strasburg to Orbisonia, and they'll be running that weekend.
On May 28th, Reading & Northern is running it's very first Pittston to Jim Thorpe excursion, and to commemorate the event, they're going to be using the F-units, which I have not had the fortune to see in operation.
So, the plan is looking like:
It is the best of plans, it is the worst of plans. It might actually make more sense to swap Friday and Saturday from a driving perspective, head all the way south west and stay in Orbisonia on Thursday night, then work my way back east and north. The only thing is, Strasburg might be more of a madhouse on Saturday rather than Friday (I saw a quote once that was "I love the hobby, I just can't stand 90% of the other people that do it." And in the scheme of time, the whole trip is only nine minutes longer to go Rome-Strasburg-Orbisonia-Pittston-Rome than it is to go Rome-Orbisonia-Strasburg-Pittston-Rome, although the distance increases by 34 miles.
C&O #614 grinding her way up B&O's famed Sand Patch Grade with the Chessie Safety Express. After Reading #2101 had finished up with American Freedom Train duties, Ross Rowland hammered out a deal with Chessie Systems for the #2101, in Chessie Systems livery, to haul steam excursions over their rails in honor of the B&O's 150th anniversary. These Chessie Steam Specials were a huge success and ran in '77 and '78, and was being readied for a 1979 season when it was damaged in a roundhouse fire at Silver Grove, Kentucky. Engines have come back from roundhouse fires before, but Chessie Systems had some safety and liability concerns over operating an engine subjected to unknown levels of heat at track speeds with the general public riding behind it. Rowland said that #2101 had had some bearing concerns when running at higher speeds for extended periods of time (those early T-1s were all friction bearings) and so he decided he didn't want to deal with that anymore. Chessie Systems agreed to a deal to swap #2101, which would be repainted into it's AFT livery, with C&O #614, which was on display at their B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. Chessie Systems got an engine they felt more safe with and which was of Chessie Systems ancestry, and Ross Rowland got an engine that was pretty much on par with a T-1 in terms of performance but had roller bearings on the rods and axles.
Again, working her way up Sand Patch, this higher angle shows off a unique modification that Rowland had performed on the #614, born of his experience with mainline steam excursions. He had found that while water was easy to get, pretty much any fire hydrant or fire department tank truck could resupply a steam engine or you could run auxiliary tenders and pump the water forward, coal was much more difficult. All the coaling towers were defunct, it was getting rare for a railroad to still have a clamshell bucket still hanging around that could load the tender, and finding coal that was of high enough quality and properly sized could be difficult. You also can't "pump" coal forward from an auxiliary tender. So, his crew and him cut the tender innards apart, drastically enlarged the coal bunker, and just made sure to always tow an auxiliary water tender, or sometimes two, behind the #614.
C&O #614 winds through the eastern Pennsylvania countryside at Meyersdale, PA, with a 16-car Chessie Safety Special on September 13th, 1981. No, this wasn't taken with an early drone prototype, but from the abandoned Western Maryland Salisbury Viaduct, which had been converted to a walking trail in 1975.
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C&O #614 arriving in Somerset, PA with a Chessie Safety Express after having run north from Cumberland, Maryland. The Greenbriers, which was C&O's name for a 4-8-4 wheel arrangement, were pretty odd in how late they were ordered (1947), especially considering that they were intended as pure passenger power, C&O was never a big passenger hauler, and C&O had just finished rebuilding five Pacifics into streamlined Hudsons the year before, and also simultaneously placed an order with Lima for five brand-new 4-6-4s (with Franklin poppet valve valve gear!). The five J-3a Greenbriers were based off an earlier design of which the C&O had ordered five (class J-3) of in 1935 and another two (Class J-3b) in 1942. Also a little strange was that the Worthington feedwater heater installed in the first two batches was replaced by a Hancock Type TA-1 exhaust steam injector. Such devices were commonly known as a "poor man's feedwater heater" and the C&O was hardly poor in 1948. The fairly unusual Hancock Type TA-1 was replaced before retirement on all the J-3as, likely because of rarity and lack of service parts, and they had a regular Nathan non-lifting injector installed in it's place.
The J-3as, #610-#614, were excellent performers but pretty short-lived. Passenger rail traffic had hit record highs in 1944, but had fallen by 50% by 1948, and the C&O had even canceled their planned Chessie luxury streamliner, even though they had taken delivery of the M-1 coal-fired turbines and the entire fleet of lightweight passenger cars. At just four years old, the J-3as were placed in storage in 1952, but the #610 and #614 got a temporary reprieve. In 1955, there was a big traffic surge and the C&O found themselves short of power, so they dragged #610 and #614 out of storage, fired them up and put them to work in freight service, where they also performed pretty admirably. But, at the same time, the C&O was leasing some Berkshires and 4-8-4s from the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac, and one of the RF&P Berkshires they were leasing was also numbered #614. Rather than renumber an engine that they didn't own, the C&O chiseled away part of the number plate and painted over the cab numbers to make #614 into C&O #611 (the original C&O #611 was not reactivated) and it ran for a year as C&O #611. By 1956, the C&O had enough diesel power, so they returned the leased RF&P power and permanently retired #610 and #611/#614.
#614 crossing the famed Thomas Viaduct in Relay, Maryland.
NickD said:So, on the subject of 4-8-4s, Reading & Northern, and the state of Pennsylvania, I have a wild plan for Memorial Day weekend.
Between the 26th and 29th, Norfolk & Western #611 will be operating at Strasburg Rail Road. These are the final trips it is running in Pennsylvania, at least for this year, and no one really knows what the future holds for it. It's returning to Virginia, and there's hopes that it's going to run on the Buckingham Branch Railroad, but there exists a very really fear that it's going back to Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roanoke just to sit and collect dust. If I want to see it operating, this is a surefire time to catch it.
On May 6th, East Broad Top begins regular operations with steam power. I missed out on seeing it operate back when it was originally running, I don't want to miss it again, and it's only a two hour drive from Strasburg to Orbisonia, and they'll be running that weekend.
On May 28th, Reading & Northern is running it's very first Pittston to Jim Thorpe excursion, and to commemorate the event, they're going to be using the F-units, which I have not had the fortune to see in operation.
So, the plan is looking like:
- Thursday afternoon, drive down to Strasburg and spend the night.
- Friday, spend the day photographing N&W #611, and whatever else is running (likely N&W #475), all day, then drive to Orbisonia that night
- Saturday, ride the East Broad Top and photograph it, then drive north to Pittston and spend the night.
- Sunday, chase the Pittston-Jim Thorpe excursion and head home that evening.
It is the best of plans, it is the worst of plans. It might actually make more sense to swap Friday and Saturday from a driving perspective, head all the way south west and stay in Orbisonia on Thursday night, then work my way back east and north. The only thing is, Strasburg might be more of a madhouse on Saturday rather than Friday (I saw a quote once that was "I love the hobby, I just can't stand 90% of the other people that do it." And in the scheme of time, the whole trip is only nine minutes longer to go Rome-Strasburg-Orbisonia-Pittston-Rome than it is to go Rome-Orbisonia-Strasburg-Pittston-Rome, although the distance increases by 34 miles.
Well, none of you talked me out of this damnfool plan, so now I've gone and gotten tickets and hotel reservations. I'm doing the Rome-Orbisonia-Strasburg-Rome routing, which ends up basically being a giant rectangle across the middle of PA.
"NKP #190", the ex-ATSF/D&H Alco PA that was mostly restored by Doyle McCormack, is on the move from Oregon to Scranton, PA. Neat to see that there is an ATSF Warbonnet unit in the lead, since once upon a time, that Alco also wore the ATSF Warbonnet livery, and then a D&H blue variation on the same livery. It's been many, many years since an Alco PA traversed the countryside on it's own wheels, although the #190 is not under its own power. On arrival at Scranton, new owners Delaware-Lackawanna will begin working on making it a fully operational machine again. It has a prime mover, generator, and traction motors and the sheetmetal work and paint is all done. From what I've read, it needs the high- and low-voltage systems completely rewired. Sadly, Delaware-Lackawanna has said that the #190 will not be used for public excursions. It will be used on Office Car Specials, shipper specials and employee appreciation specials, but for now, the dream of being able to ride behind an Alco PA remains just that: a dream. There is the other repatriated Alco PA, ATSF #59, undergoing operational restoration, but it is much farther behind in terms of completion.
It's funny just how small an Alco PA looks compared to modern freight power. In old period photos of Alco PAs, they always seemed to loom large, with that long squared-off nose. But some of that was just styling and the air that they gave off, because the Alco PA was actually smaller than even it's contemporary competitor, the EMD E7. While the EMD E7 was 72 feet in length, the Alco PA was 65 feet, 8 inches in length. The main reason for that difference in size was the powerplant setup: EMD was still using supercharged two-stroke diesels, which maxed out at 1500-1800hp with 16 cylinders. To get the 2000hp that EMD felt was appropriate, they were having to use two 1000hp V12s with a generator for each engine. Alco meanwhile was building turbocharged 4-stroke diesels and got 2000hp out of them, and even went as high as 2250hp in the PA-2 and DL-700 and 2400hp in the DL-700a (RSD-7). In addition to eight less cylinders, they also only needed one main generator. This resulted in the Alco PA actually weighing less than its competition, accelerating faster, and, in a rare occurence, costing less (Alco bought all it's electrical gear from GE, which typically forced a higher sticker price on Alcos, but in this case, using one less generator made it cheaper than an E-unit). It didn't matter though: EMD sold 510 E7s between 1945 and 1949 and another 496 E8s between 1949 and the end of 1953, while Alco sold just 297 PA-1s/PB-1s/PA-2s/PB-2s over the same period.
The other repatriated Alco PA, ATSF #59, at the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas. Just four years after it was sent south to Mexico, and just 7 years after it's major overhaul and upgrade to a PA-4u, it was nearly destroyed in a wreck. Both sides of the locomotive, as well as the entire roof, were smashed in when it derailed and was rolled. By the time it was repatriated to the US in 2011, it had been reduced to a gutted hull, missing the trucks, engine, generator, pretty much everything inside the body and the side panels of the body work. Originally the Smithsonian intended to restore and display it, but then they decided to throw in the towel and it ended up at the Museum of the American Railroad, where they have been chipping away at it. They secured the engine, generator, traction motors and cabinet from a Bombardier HR412 to power it, Doyle McCormack found three sets of trucks off of F-M Erie-Built B-Units to replace those missing on ATSF #59 and "NKP #190", and they've fixed the hardest part of the roof (over the windshield) by grafting on a new roof section from an MLW FPA-4 parts donor that Cuyahoga Valley Scenic was scrapping. They're chipping away at it, but they've got a loooooong way to go. The rest of the roof is still trashed, there's rust everywhere, and the structure on the sides is still pretty stove in from the accident. If it was anything but an Alco PA, it would have been scrapped a long time ago. At one point they had a line on a 244 V16, believed to have come from a PRR Alco PA-1 and possibly the last one in existence, that had been converted to a stationary generator and was for sale on eBay of all places, and they hoped to restore it to as-built configuration using that. Sadly, it was one of those cases where the owner wanted his money now and wanted the engine moved even sooner, and would not give them time to figure the logistics of extricating it from the building it was in and shipping it to Texas. It was ultimately scrapped, and with it, the 244 V16 likely went extinct.
ATSF #59/D&H #16, just four years after going south of the border.
Trains are like sex, I'm no authority but I know what I like. =~ )
Mooka train station & museum - - Japan.
NickD said:ATSF #59/D&H #16, just four years after going south of the border.
A photo of the two Alco PAs that were shipped back to the US after they arrived by flat car. You can see how much rougher #16 is, with all the collision damage, but #18 is not much better. They were pretty much stripped to bare shells, and that was not done for ease of shipping. You can also see in the above photos how, on the ATSF Alco PAs, it wasn't actually silver paint on the sides, but stainless-steel side paneling. I know that Doyle McCormack chose to restore #18 as NKP #190 because he grew up in Conneaut, OH, his father was an NKP hogger, and he had ridden in the real NKP #190 as a child, but I also have to wonder if part of it was because he didn't want to fool around with getting all new stainless-steel side panels made. When he was converting it to NKP-spec, that also meant chopping off the number housing over the windshield and the small side numberboards, and installing the big dorky angled numberboards that NKP used. He did sent the roof and side numberboards to the group in Texas for use on ATSF #59, because theirs were absolutely smashed in the derailment that took #16 out of service.
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