Grassroots Railroad Sports?

NickD said:

Monon F3A #82A with train #6, the northbound Louisville-Chicago Thoroughbred, rolls down the middle of 5th Street in Lafayette, IN on June 7th, 1961.  The Lahr Hotel on the left actually had a Monon ticket agent and waiting room in the lobby.

I saw quite a few Amtrak trains stop here in the late-80's & 90's. 

Over the weekend, I went on a vacation with some of my friends to Tobyhanna, PA, which turned out to be a disappointing vacation for me personally but I won't get into that here. On Sunday morning, they were all heading back to NY, but I figured I would instead head over to Jim Thorpe and catch some action on the Reading & Northern running up through Lehigh Gorge. It was a good day since there was plenty of action up the old LV line through the Gorge. On top of the regular Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway trips running every hour to Penn Haven and back, there was the two bike trains running to White Haven and back, and there was also the morning Pittston-Jim Thorpe run and the evening Jim Thorpe-Pittston.

This is the early morning run from Pittston down into Jim Thorpe, behind GP38-2 #2011, which came to them as an ex-Southern/ex-Norfolk Southern high-hood unit that they cut down the hood on. Its dropping down through Oxbow Curve, which is the tightest curve on the line. It is traveling on the old Lehigh Valley line, while the trail that I took this from was the old CNJ line. The two lines pretty much mirrored each other from north of CP Coal all the way up through the valley to Scranton, and when the CNJ withdrew from Pennsylvania, the LV was handed the CNJ's Pennsylvania lines and abandoned this line between Glen Onoko and White Haven, resulting in it being turned into part of the Delaware & Lehigh Trail.

R&N GP38-2 #2013, another ex-Southern/ex-NS GP38-2 but this time equipped with one of NS's Admiral Cabs, leads the first Lehigh Gorge Scenic train north to Penn Haven. The GP38-2s have really taken the reins on passenger operations over the R&N. I actually rode in the cab of the #2013 last fall, when I came down to chase #425 and #2102 in November, and it's a really nice machine.

This is the morning bike train, drifting back down to Jim Thorpe from White Haven. Because there weren't turning facilities at White Haven, they were running push-pull, and even more ex-SOU/ex-NS GP38-2s were in service on this, with #2010 leading south and #2014 leading north. Like I said, the GP38-2s have rapidly become R&N's favored power for passenger usage, sadly bumping the old GP30-bodied GP39RNs. This is south of Hetchel's Curve and north of the rock cut at Glen Onoko, where the LV and CNJ trackage ran on the same level.

R&N #2014 in tow, in shiny fresh dark green and yellow paint. Behind it are the two gondolas that they use for hauling the bicycles in. The bike trains run 25 miles north to White Haven, with bikes and riders aboard, and then they unload the bikes and their riders there to ride back to Jim Thorpe. While it is a 25 mile ride, it is worth pointing out that it is almost entirely downhill from White Haven south to Jim Thorpe, so its not as grueling as it sounds. Or, you can buy a round trip ticket and just stay aboard the train.

R&N #2013 headed back north through the rock cut at Glen Onoko with an LGSR train. What surprised me about the LGSR service was that there was only one Coach Class standard coach. The rest of the train was the Crown Class The Pagoda heavyweight Pullman, the two Vista Class dome cars (one ex-ATSF full-length dome, one ex-Milwaukee Road SuperDome), the single Coach Class car, four Open Air Class open air cars, and the private party caboose.

R&N #2014 climbing up through the rock cut at Glen Onoko with the 12:30 bike train.

I then hiked down into Jim Thorpe (2.3 miles each way) and while coming through the yard, saw R&N #2011 sitting with the three cars it brought down from Pittston, ready to head north again when the time came.

R&N #2010 and #2014 drifting back through with the empty bike train.

While they weren't running, sadly, the F-Units were on display in Jim Thorpe in front of the old CNJ depot.

Since I had hiked about 6.5 miles at this point, my feet were getting tired. So I decided to ride a Lehigh Gorge train in a dome car. I've ridden it three times previously, each time in a different class, Locomotive Cab, Coach, and Open-Air,so I figured I'd try the dome. You were allowed to choose between either the ATSF dome or the Milwaukee Road SuperDome, and I chose the SuperDome. The car is nicely appointed inside (I didn't get any photos) and the view is great but on a warm sunny day, make sure to sit near the middle of the dome. The air-conditioning isn't so great at the ends. Also, the seats do not turn like in Coach Class, where you can walk the seat back over and face the other direction.

Then I hiked the 2.3 miles back up the D&L trail to where my car was parked and caught the #2011 growling up the grade through the rock cut at Glen Onoko with the train headed back to Pittston (sadly, I missed the North Reading Fast Freight by about twenty minutes). The bridge I took this from was the old CNJ bridge over the Lehigh River, now converted to a road and pedestrian bridge.

And then not long after, the #2013 went up through the rock cut with the last LGSR train of the day. Then I got in my car, and made the 3.5 hour drive home.

On the subject of R&N GP38-2s, they also unveiled their 40th Anniversary unit, #2023 (formerly R&N #2016). I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of the livery but, hey, they could have just done nothing to acknowledge it.

There's been a big hubbub surrounding the announcement that Reading #2100, the other Reading T-1 being restored to operation, is going to be converted back to burning oil. Back in 1998, the #2100, never as active or as famous as her sisters #2101 and #2102, had been purchased by Thomas Payne and moved to the old New York Central shops in St. Thomas, Ontario, with the eventual intent of running it on his Central Western Railroad. According to Ross Rowland, who had once owned the #2100, he called Payne when he learned that he had bought the #2100, congratulating him on the purchase. During the conversation, he mentioned that he intended to convert #2100 to burn oil, and Rowland said he offered to introduce him to Robert Franzen, the then-CMO at the Grand Canyon Railroad who has just converted a locomotive or two to run on oil, thinking that Franzen could offer some expertise. Payne's reply was "I know exactly what to do and don't need any advice".

The resulting conversion was a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption that was hacked together and never functioned properly. The locomotive never received a proper deep fire pan with the burner under the throat sheet aimed to the rear. Instead, they just laid steel plates laid over the grates, and installed a burner in the fire door aimed at the flue sheet. It was impossible to get a clean stack out of it (losing one advantage of oil-fired locomotives), it struggled to maintain boiler pressure, and it heated very unevenly and damaged parts of the firebox. It ended up being moved west to Tacoma, where it ran on the Golden Pacific Railroad's Tacoma Sightseer service (with hideous red-painted running boards, secondary headlight and ditch lights) out of Tacoma's Freighthouse Square to Fredrickson, Washington over the old Milwaukee Road. It was one of those blink-and-you-missed-it operations, closed down very quickly due to low ridership numbers, but the #2100 never ran right while it was there.

When Golden Pacific shut down, it sat out there for a long time, then was brought east by American Steam Railroad Preservation Association to Cleveland, Ohio to be restored to operation in 2016. Early on, the plan was to revert it back to being coal-fired, since the old oil-firing system was complete junk and there were some concerns on whether the Wooten firebox on a T-1 could properly be configured to burn oil. They had removed the oil bunker insert from the tender, reclaimed the stoker equipment from the museum in Canada where the oil conversion was done, put in an order for brand new grate castings, and had some work done on the stoker motor.

Then the other day, they made the announcement that they were pivoting back to burning oil in the #2100, with FMW Solutions being called upon to develop a proper oil-burning setup. A lot of people are pissed off that they're going to burn oil in it, but there's really no other choice especially if the locomotive's operating locations may change frequently, which at the moment the #2100 doesn't have a place to operate set in stone. The combined costs of proper grade and properly-sized coal, getting it loaded into the tender, and getting rid of the ashes properly add up to being very expensive and logistical nightmares. Meanwhile, oil is easily available, easier to transport, a breeze to load, and there are no ashes to dispose of. It's also cleaner out of the stack, no cinders and very little smoke if properly fired, and operations have also used bio-diesel or used vegetable oil, which makes it a bit environmentally friendlier.

We're already starting to see a lot of traditionally coal-fired locomotives start to be swapped over to oil

Everett Railroad 2-6-0 #11 was converted to oil two years ago. Despite being located in Pennsylvania coal country, Alan Maples cited cost and difficulty sourcing properly-sized coal for the locomotive. They'd done some testing for a company developing a bio-coal made from torrefied wood mass, but apparently that didn't pan out. Funny detail there is that the #11 was built by Alco for a Cuban sugar plantation as an oil-fired engine, then it was never delivered and was converted to coal-fired before being sold to the Bath & Hammondsport, and when FMW Solutions converted it back to oil-fired, they used the original Alco blueprints.

The entire D&RGW narrow-gauge fleet of engines at Cumbres & Toltec and Durango & Silverton are being converted to oil-fired, one by one. The big thing there is wildfire prevention. After D&S started that big wildfire in Durango five or so years ago, they were facing having to park the steam locomotives any time there was a slight risk of fire. Now, with them oil-fired, they can run them in all but the most severe dry spells.

Milwaukee Road #261 is also undergoing a study for an oil-burning conversion. There is an actual historical precedent for this, since Milwaukee Road converted some of their S-2s to run on oil during a coal miner strike during the Korean War. Again, cost and logistics were the major factor for this. While the #261 is currently affixed to one operating location, the installation of PTC is hoped to open up opportunities to get her out and about more.

Chesapeake & Ohio #2716 has also been stated to be converted to oil once it is up and running, a thought that surely sends shivers down the spines of C&O diehards (the C&O lived off of coal traffic). Kentucky Steam Heritage really doesn't have anywhere to run the #2716 at the moment, so the plan is to tour here around, and that's a lot easier when you burn coal. For example, her first home will be at Railroad Museum of New England, which does not, and never has, had their own operational steam locomotive, meaning they lack ash pits and a coal tipple or burro crane. Having the #2716 be oil fired means they just have to get an oil tank truck drive out to the yard, toss a hose up into the oil bunker and fill it.

One that's flown under the radar is PRR #5550, the new-build T1 under construction. Again, that'll likely peeve PRR purists, since the PRR was a huge coal-hauler and never owned any oil-fired steam locomotives (which caused logistics issues when they leased ATSF 5011-class 2-10-4s). But, the #5550 isn't even an exact replica of a T-1 at this point, like how the frame is being constructed in multi-piece fabricated weldments, rather than a one-piece casting. And the #5550 will likely be traveling around a bit, since it's being built by a group that doesn't own any trackage themselves.

These aren't necessarily even issues that have developed recently. Back in 1995, when Milwaukee Road #261 came east for the Steamtown National Historic Site grand opening, they had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get coal supplies pre-staged along the route to Pennsylvania for the trip there.

And even further back, during the 1976 American Freedom Train's leg throughout the Northeastern US, to fuel Reading #2101, Ross Rowland used 7 captive service gondolas that rotated between the coal mine and one of our upcoming service/display sites. They also arranged for railroad-supplied burro cranes to be on-site to to load the coal into her tender, and raked the ashes level onto the ballast. The coal they were ordering was also ordered from a very specific mine's specific seam of coal for their locomotives, at something like five to ten times the going price for more readily available coal. Part of the reason they chose SP #4449 for the AFT, over the original plan to use NKP #755 and #763, was because she was oil-fired. And then they discovered that she wouldn't fit the clearances on a number of lines in the Northeast.

Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis J-2 4-8-4 #576 has passed a major milestone in it's return to operation, with the boiler being reunited with the running gear. The estimated completion of it's restoration is either late 2024 or early 2025.

NC&StL #576 in it's as-delivered appearance. The first ten locomotives of the J3 class (#570-#579) were built with the full diameter conical smokebox cover, Commonwealth cast pilots with drop couplers, and large yellow-painted running board skirts, which earned them the nickname of "Yellowjackets". The later ten, #580-#589, had a smaller conical smokebox cover that was just the diameter of the smokebox door, a Ross-Meehan cast pilot with a fixed coupler, and lacked the running board skirts. Just the edges of the running boards were painted yellow, earning them the nicknames of "Stripes". All of them featured the trademark NC&StL red-painted flanged smokestack, closed-in pilot containing the air compressors and radiators, and Boxpok drivers. As WWII progressed, the extra adornments on the "Yellowjackets" impeded on maintenance and NC&StL removed those little flourishes, making them the same as the later engines. NC&StL #576 was preserved in the later configuration, and is being restored to that appearance as well, since that is the appearance that most people are more familiar with.

One of the other early J3s, #577, after it had been converted to a "Stripe", which is how the #576 will look once restored. Note the smaller conical section on the smokebox and the lack of running board skirts, as well as the simpler pilot. Those Ross-Meehan pilots were very popular with southern railroads, since they were manufactured in Birmingham, Alabama (GM&O/R&N #425 actually has a Ross-Meehan cast pilot). Still a terrific looking locomotive, with an extremely clean profile. Note the lack of pretty much anything on the outside of the boiler jacketing and the perfectly straight running boards, with nothing hanging under them.

In reply to NickD :

I definitely like the smell of a coal-fired locomotive & will miss it, but since oil-firing will allow more steam locomotives to remain and/or be put back into service I'm all in favor of it!

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

Pretty much how I feel. If the choice is between only oil-burning steam locomotives or no steam locomotives at all, I'll settle for oil-burning. And coal-fired isn't necessarily all great. When I took that trip behind NKP #765 last year and rode in the baggage car, it was basically 3 hours of being in a sandblasting cabinet each way with the amount of cinders I was getting hit by.

In reply to NickD :

The reading paint scheme is similar to the green and yellow the MKT used for a while.  

An NC&StL J3 in an odd transitory state that suggests that conversion from "Yellowjacket" to "Stripe" didn't happen all at once. It's lost the Commonwealth cast drop-coupler pilot and the running board skirts, but it still retains the full-diameter smokebox cover. Its interesting that the smokebox cover wasn't the first thing to go, since that hampered maintenance and servicing more than the other parts. Also, the fact that it's hauling a manifest freight is not some sign of late career demotion; the J3s, despite their semi-streamlining, were always intended as dual-purpose locomotives. NC&StL had actually desired to have them fully streamlined by Alco, in a manner similar to an N&W J, but they had to get approval from parent company L&N for the funds to purchase the J3s. When L&N saw the price tag, they promptly told the NC&StL that they either needed to trim back on the streamlining, or purchase the locomotives unstreamlined and perform the streamlining themselves at their shops. NC&StL had already once tried their hands at streamlining a pair of Pacifics, and the results had been undesirable, so they decided to just trim back the frills some.

Edit: even stranger, on zooming in, this appears to be #581, which means it wouldn't have been built with the full-diameter smokebox cover, or the running board skirts and Commonwealth pilot. How this ended up with that smokebox shroud is really strange.

NC&StL #574 sitting in front of the Hotel Patten in Chattanooga sometime in '43.