Grassroots Railroad Sports?

There was a time you couldn't get a train to Miami...

Yes, Flagler was quite the crystal ball reader!   There was a documentary on his project, very interesting.

There was also a time that you could take a train to Key West, courtesy of Henry Flagler. It was relatively short-lived though, and became known as Flagler's Folly, contributing to the Florida East Coast's downfall. Flagler had the idea of building out to Key West so that they could funnel coal and supplies to the port to resupply ships headed from the Panama Canal or Cuba up the east coast. The Overseas Railroad, or Florida Overseas Railroad or the Overseas Extension, took seven years to complete, with construction being halted by hurricanes in 1906, 1909, and 1910, and cost over $50 million. The working conditions were also especially horrendous, claiming the lives of hundreds of workers, and prompting an investigation by the federal government, with the US Justice Department prosecuting the FEC under a federal slave-kidnapping law. 

By the time it was finished, steamship technology had progressed to the point where they had the range to pretty much bypass refueling at Key West, rendering the Overseas Railroad largely a moot point. It was also expensive to maintain, and traffic never materialized as hoped. Through the 1910s and 1920s, the FEC capitalized heavily on the Florida land boom, double-tracking their mainline and buying scads of new locomotives, only for the 1926 Miami Hurricane and 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane and the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to end the land boom and send the financially-overextended FEC spiralling into bankruptcy. In 1935 the Great Labor Day Hurricane wiped out the Overseas Railroad, and the FEC lacked the funds, and the will to rebuild it. The roadbed and remaining bridges south of Florida City were then sold to the state of Florida, which built the Overseas Highway to Key West, using much of the remaining railway infrastructure. A rebuilt Overseas Highway (US Route 1), taking an alignment that closely follows the Overseas Railroad's original routing, continues to provide the only highway link to Key West.

Last weekend, Reading & Northern had #2102 out for one of their Iron Horse Rambles. This one was also pretty noteworthy, because it was the Reading & Northern's 40th birthday party and Andy Muller's 80th birthday.

They also apparently had the F-Units up and running on Lehigh Gorge trains as well. 

I'm hoping to go down in October to see the #2102, among other things, running. Every Friday in October, Everett Railroad is running trips from Hollidaysburg, PA to Martinsburg, PA with their delightful little 2-6-0, #11, which is an engine I've only see once and only gotten a few photos of. Then on some weekends in October, R&N is running their fall trips from Reading to Jim Thorpe with #2102 on Saturday, and the F-units on Sunday. So the plan would be, drive down to Hollidaysburg/Altoon on Thursday, spend Friday chasing Everett #11, then head west to Reading that afternoon, and then spend Saturday and Sunday chasing the R&N, before heading home on Monday.

If you are going west from Everett to Reading you need a lot more time. If you go east it is only a few hours....

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Whoops, don't know how I screwed that up. Yes, I meant east. Of course, I could go west to Reading, Michigan, which is where I caught NKP #765 pounding past this huge grain elevator last summer on the old Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. Oddly, Reading, Pennsylvania is pronounced Redd-ing, but Reading, Michigan is pronounced as Reed-ing

The #11 at Everett is a pretty historically significant steam locomotive, in that it was the first tourist steam locomotive in the United States. In 1955, Dr. Stanley Groman purchased the tiny 2-6-0 from the Bath & Hammondsport, where it had been stored for the past 5 years after the B&H had been dieselized. Groman had purchased another operational steam locomotive, Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain 2-8-0 #38, a year earlier, but on arrival realized that it was too large to run on the 1.5 mile loop of track at his Rail City museum. Rail City, based in Sandy Pond, NY, was the very first steam-operating railroad museum in the United States, and the B&H #11 was their locomotive that they used. It ran there until 1974, when Rail City closed down from a combination of factors (construction of I-81 diverted people away, the fuel crises reduced the number of visitors and increased operating costs, Groman invested in a variety of non-core attractions), and it was then sold to Narragansett Pier Railroad, where it had originally operated from 1923 to 1937, with the intent to operate it in excursion service. That never materialized and it then was shipped in pieces to the Middletown & New Jersey, where there was also a stillborn plan to restore it and operate it. The owner of it passed away in 2004, and Alan Maples, president of the Everett, purchased it in 2006 and moved it to Western Maryland Scenic Railroad's Ridgeley shops for a major rebuild that took, on and off, about 9 years.

Unfortunately it appears that the Alco era on the Minnesota Commercial Railroad is coming to a close. Recently, they announced they were placing their two rare Alco RS-27s, #316 and #318, and their MLW RS-18u, #83, into storage. This leaves MLW RS-23 #80 as the sole active Alco/MLW product still operating on their property. Along with the RS-27s and RS-18u, there is also an M420W and an M636 in storage, and last year they sold off their two ex-Green Bay & Westerns C424 off, one to the Wisconsin Great Northern and one to the Adirondack Railroad. The Minnesota Commercial was at one time an Alco haven, but in recent years, General Electric locomotives have become the preferred motive power for the short line.  

Another big of Alco-related news is that Western New York & Pennsylvania is selling four of their ex-CP/Quebec Cartier Mining/NYS&W MLW M636s to Genesee Valley Transportation to use on their Delaware-Lackawanna operation. The WNY&P was also once an Alco stronghold but a couple years back bought some GE AC6000Ws, rebuilt to 4400hp specs by GE, to replace all the big 6-axle Alco/MLW products that they had. The big MLWs have been in storage since then, but recently, WNY&P announced they were donating their MLW C630 for preservation-related purposes, followed by this sale of four of the M636s to GVT/D-L. GVT has said that the four will not be put in service immediately; three will be put through the Van Storch shops, while the fourth will be retained for parts.

Western New York & Pennsylvania’s roster of four-motor Alco road-switchers appears safe for now, continuing to serve in local and mainline service over the railroad. WNY&P subsidiaries Bath & Hammondsport and Livonia, Avon & Lakeville also rely on all-Alco/MLW fleets. But, WNY&P did sell off their Alco RS-3u to Arcade & Attica this year, which may be the prelude to retirement of the four axle machines. The future is decidedly less upbeat for the remaining three big MLWs stored on WNYP.  An M630 and two M636s are reported as being unlikely to run again. 

Minnesota Commercial also had the last surviving ex-ATSF SF30C, #50, and the only ex-ATSF SF30B, #42. They donated the SF30C to the Arizona State Railroad Museum last year. The SF30C was a rebuild program launched by ATSF to get more life out of their GE U36Cs and included downrating the prime mover from 3,600 hp to 3,100 hp, upgrading and relocating the electrical cabinet, installation of the GE Sentry System wheel slip control, muffling of the exhaust system, the addition of dual-fuel fillers to accommodate differing ATSF and Southern Pacific systems in advance of their ill-fated merger attempt, and replacement of the short hood and modifications to the long hood.

The SF30B on the other hand, began life as a U23B and saw it's horespower uprated from 2300 to 3000 hp, as the Cleburne Shops installed a General Electric 7FDL-12F30UX prime mover. The electric systems were modified to Dash 7 standards, and Sentry Wheel Slip capability was added. The original 3,250 gallon fuel tank was kept, however overall capacity was reduced to 2,900 gallons, as a section was used  as a retention compartment/tank. The SF30B is still running on the Minnesota Commercial and hopefully will also be preserved when it's retired.

It was recently announced that 5 Budd RDCs will be moving from the Hobo Railroad, in Lincoln, NH, down to the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum in Lenox, Massaschusetts. The Budd RDCs are privately owned by Jim Gagliardi and the Budd RDC Foundation, and will be leased to the Berkshire Scenic for an unknown amount of time. Included in the five are one conventional New Haven RDC-1 (#41), one of the RDC-2s that was converted to a food service car for B&O's Baltimore-Pittsburgh Daylight Speedliner service (#1960), and both of the power cars and one of the coaches from New Haven's unusual Roger Williams streamlined RDC trainset. The operating RDCs, NH #41 and B&O #1960, will go to the Lenox location of BSRM's operations to run with the operating RDC-1 that they already have, New Haven #42, while the Roger Williams cars will go to BSRM's Adams, Massaschusetts location for display with the rest of their collection.

The Roger Williams RDC set was born of the New Haven's late-'50s fascination with experimental lightweight trainsets under Patrick B. McGinnis' presidency. Arguably the most successful of the various experiments, the Roger Williams, named after the founder of the Rhode Island colony, was a 6-car set of Budd RDCs. At each end was a control car with a streamlined cab added that was not unlike the styling on the Baldwin RP-210s and Fairbanks-Morse P-12-42s that New Haven was concurrently experimenting with on the Dan'l Webster and the John Quincy Adams, respectively. The four middle cars had power plants but lacked their own control stands, since they were intended to be run as a set and it freed up room for more seats. This made them somewhat similar to the RDC-9s that B&M purchased, but while the RDC-9s only had a single engine rated at 300hp powering one axle on one truck  (versus twin 275hp engines for RDC-1/2/3/4s), the Roger Williams center cars retained twin power plants and powered the inboard axle on each truck.

In addition to the streamlined cabs, each RDC car had their engines uprated from 275hp to 300hp, giving each car an extra 50hp compared to a conventional RDC-1/2/3/4. This was to give them faster acceleration away from stops and keep a tighter schedule, resulting in them being nicknamed "Hot Rods" by New Haven crews, who also liked them because the cabs gave them better protection in a collision versus the regular flat-nosed RDCs. Since they also had to operate into Grand Central Terminal without the use of diesel propulsion, Budd managed to package a third-rail shoe on the outside of each truck and a traction motor on the outboard, typically-unpowered axle. That meant that while powered by the diesel engines they had a 1A-A1 wheel arrangement, while on electric power they had an A1-1A wheel arrangement. There were also some other minor differences, like the square windows and the interior appointments.

The Roger Williams was mechanically a success. It was as reliable and easy to work on as a conventional RDC (certainly better than the Maybach-powered Baldwin RP-210s), it had better performance than a conventional RDC, the crews liked them because they were safer, and they had the ride quality of an RDC, which is pretty good from my experience and leagues better than the lightweight articulated trainsets that New Haven was experimenting with. But the New Haven itself was financially spiraling under McGinnis' (mis)management and it's customer base was being eroded, which meant that selling out a 6-car set of RDCs was rare. Instead, New Haven split the set up, pairing the center cars up with other conventional RDCs to use as basically a B-unit, and running the cab cars with just one or two other cars. A couple of the center cars were sold off to MARC, while the cab cars and the remainder of the center cars were passed down to Penn Central and then Amtrak. Amazingly, both the cab cars and one of the middle cars survived and were purchased by Jim Gagliardi and the Budd RDC Foundation, and they have been shepherded around between various display sites, including Danbury Railway Museum, Hobo Railroad, and now Berkshire Scenic. From what I understand, the Roger Williams cars are mechanically operational and have been mostly restored but aren't used often.

One of the Roger Williams lead cars and center cars having been split off from the rest of the set in the Amtrak era.

One of the cab cars, with the nose still in Penn Central black, but with the Amtrak logo applied across the front. It also oddly has a set of "ghetto grilles" across the engineer's windshield but not the other.

The same ex-Roger Williams cab car, now in Amtrak Phase II paint.

Amtrak ex-Roger Williams cab car #27 at the New Haven, CT motor storage yard alongside of ex-Pennsy GG1s, this time in Amtrak Phase 1 livery.

The #27, stored at New Haven yard with two regular RDCs (note that they lack the unique windows of the Roger Williams cars and they have headlights, which the center cars wouldn't have had because they lacked control stands) with a caboose in between them. That also looks like it might be an ex-PC "Dewitt Geep" RS-3m on the next track over, along with a few more RDCs and some run down coaches.

I have to wonder if the movement of the privately-owned RDCs from Hobo Railroad down to Berkshire Scenic has anything to do with the fact that Hobo Railroad, and it's associated sister railroad Winnipesaukee Scenic Railroad, were just sold to Patriot Rail. The two railroads operate over 54 miles of ex-B&M trackage and were owned by the family. Less than a week after the announcement that the RDCs were leaving Hobo Railroad's property, they announced that Patriot Rail, an operation that owns a number of shortlines across the country, had purchased the two railroads.

The very similar-looking Fairbanks-Morse P-12-42 "Speed Merchant" that New Haven used on the Talgo lightweight articulated trainset for their John Quincy Adams. The P-12-42 was the last gasp of Fairbanks-Morse to try and crack the passenger locomotive market. It bore some mechanical similarities to the equally ill-fated Baldwin RP-210 used with the Pullman lightweight articulated trainsets on the New York Central's Xplorer and New Haven's Dan'l Webster. used a B-2 wheel arrangement, was Head End Power capable and was produced in dual-mode configuration for the New Haven. Unlike the RP-210's Maybach V12, Mekhydro hydraulic drive and separate HEP generator though, the "Speed Merchant" used a Fairbanks-Morse 1200hp 8-cylinder opposed-piston engine, Westinghouse generator and traction motors, and had the HEP configured to run off the prime mover. Similar to the later GE U34CHs and EMD F40PHs, the prime mover would run at a fixed speed when providing HEP, and traction generator output was altered by varying the main generator field excitation. Two P-12-42s were to be assigned to a train, with one at either end running in push-pull configuration.

Fairbanks-Morse hoped that lightweight trainsets being perceived as the future would translate to huge sales of the "Speed Merchant" and get them back in the locomotive-building game, but ultimately only sold four, two each to the Boston & Maine and the New Haven, both of which were controlled by Patrick B. McGinnis. The big issue was that Fairbanks-Morse had been financially weakened by a big proxy fight (the same proxy fight had cost them a big 50-75 unit order of Train Masters from Illinois Central) and couldn't offer financing, while New Haven and many other railroads were financially weakened by the general state of railroading and couldn't afford to buy outright. Also not helping was that pretty much all of the lightweight trainsets turned out to be outright disappointments. New Haven instead turned to EMD for 50 EMD FL9s to haul conventional coaches, rather than buy more P-12-42s or Baldwin RP-210s and both Fairbanks-Morse and Baldwin left the locomotive market. B&M's two P-12-42s ran until 1964 before being scrapped, while New Haven sold their for Talgo trainsets for service in Spain in 1962, and their locomotives sat unused afterwards, until being scrapped in 1971

The Boston & Maine's P-12-42 and Talgo set at Boston sometime between 1958 and 1964. McGinnis was ousted from the New Haven in 1956, and immediately went over to the Boston & Maine, which was followed shortly by the B&M doing a bold corporate rebrand, in terms of appearance, and the purchase of two "Speed Merchants" and Talgo sets. At least on the New Haven, there had been other Fairbanks-Morse equipment, but the P-12-42s were the sole F-M locomotives on the B&M, which likely contributed to their short lives.

At the behest of Patrick B. McGinnis, the New Haven also got in on the Baldwin RP-210/Pullman Standard "Train X" experimental trainset that C&O and New York Central tinkered with as well, naming the train the Dan'l Webster. "Train X" had gotten it's start at the C&O as the brainchild of Robert R. Young, who saw that passenger trains were inefficient, out-of-date, and unprofitable, and wanted to find away to revolutionize them. The Pullman Standard all-aluminum, semi-permanently coupled, articulated trainsets were constructed and saw some testing on the C&O, where even with the C&O's well-maintained infrastructure and welded rail the ride quality was found to be extremely poor. All throughout this era there was this odd tendency for these experimental lightweight trainsets to be touted as having a better ride quality as an inherent result of their light weight, which was found time and time again to be not true. Even GM did it while marketing the Aerotrain, while at the same time marketing that Buicks and Cadillacs rode better than the competition because they were heavier than the competition. When Robert R. Young left the C&O to try and save the New York Central, "Train X" followed him over their, eventually becoming the ill-fated Xplorer.

Pullman Standard and Baldwin, who embedded themselves in the program to provide a similarly revolutionary power car, also went and marketed the idea to the New Haven, which was watching their passenger ridership vanish and hoped that an advanced train would lure customers out of their automobiles and back aboard New Haven trains. New Haven purchased a set, which consisted of nine cars and two Baldwin RP-210 locomotives, with one at each end (NYC would order theirs with just a single power car, which resulted in a sluggish, underpowered set and placed more strain on the RP-210's hydraulic drive). Similar to the P-12-42, the RP-210 was low-slung, had a 2-B wheel arrangement and was HEP capable, but it used a German Maybach V-12, because there was no way you could fit an old boat anchor De La Vergne inline-8 in it, with a Mekhydro hydraulic transmissions, and a separate smaller Maybach engine to run the HEP generator.

While the Xplorer had a styling that was more sharknosed, New Haven's RP-210s had front ends similar to the P-12-42s and the Roger Williams RDCs. Also, while New York Central planned to run their set out in Ohio, the New Haven wanted to run theirs into Grand Central Terminal, which required them to be capable of operation on NYC's 13 miles of electrified lines. This forced modifications to the RP-210 that included adding 300hp traction motors in the lead trucks of the locomotives, as well as third-rail shoes on the trucks. The third-rail shoes were designed and installed by the New Haven shops, and they rushed the project in hopes of getting the Dan'l Webster into service before NYC's Xplorer, in hopes of stealing their thunder.

After whipping up a media circus surrounding the debut, the Dan'l Webster made it's debut run on January 7th, 1956, a full five months before the Xplorer made it's first runs. Unfortunately, the jerry-rigged third-rail contact shoes on the rear power car ended up misaligning when the train merged from New Haven's track #1 to New York Central's track #2, opposite JO tower at Woodlawn Junction in the North Bronx. The damaged shoe then produced a stream of sparks which set the grease in the truck journal box on fire and also melted away the aluminum skirting. The train made an emergency stop, tying up traffic while the rear power car and passenger car were cut off, and the rest of the train continued to Grand Central. The damaged power car and coach were to be towed to Van Nest for repairs, only for the fire-damaged truck to derail near Pelham Station, snarling traffic up again and resulting in an additional four-hour delay for evening commuters. Not an auspicious start, and the whole affair was savaged by the present press members.

New Haven ended up fixing the third-rail shoes, as well as adding trolley pantographs for the tunnels under GCT, but the Dan'l Webster was an unmitigated failure. The same cars that rode poorly on C&O and NYC's well-maintained roadbed and welded rail rode even worse on the New Haven's crumbling infrastructure and jointed rail. The RP-210 power cars were plagued with all sorts of issues. The Maybach V12s, in true German fashion, were fiddly, fragile, and maintenance-intensive, not helped by the service manuals being written all in German. There are tales of NYC and NH shop forces having to go to Volkswagen dealerships to get metric hardware to fix them. The high-RPM engines were rigidly-mounted and shaking the entire locomotive apart. The underbuilt Mekhydro hydraulic transmissions were overworked and prone to overheating and causing a loss of all forward momentum. New Haven could never get the third-rail shoes to work properly, and ended up removing them, the traction motors and the pantograph, and ended up shuffling them off to the non-electrified Springfield Route instead. The whole set was parked not long after, with Baldwin now out of business and New Haven thoroughly disgusted with the whole affair.