Grassroots Railroad Sports?

The rebuilt cylinder head, lapped in and ready to install.

And then, dropping the full R2 assembly in.

And torquing that one as well.

R1 and R2 refreshed and ready to go. There are two more cylinders that they need to overhaul, L5 and one other they didn't mention, but they now have to order another pair of liners and other parts, which will total about $5k. They've also realized that eventually, all the liners will likely need replacement, but these 4 should get the #529 back in action, and then the others can be addressed one at a time.

The NH #529, back when she was operational. Good-looking machine, although that kind of goes without saying, since it's an RS-3

With a photo freight at Thomaston for the 2002 Railfan Day.

The #529 at Providence, Rhode Island, during it's tenure with Amtrak

The #529 is the last surviving New Haven RS-3, of the 45 that they originally owned. Like everything else on the NH, the RS-3s wore a couple of different schemes.

There was orange hoods with a Pullman Green cab and lower hood stripe. There were a couple variations ranging from orange hood tops to green hood tops and, with and without curved fillets where the lower hood stripe met the cab. Two variants of the same scheme are paired up here.

Then there was the McGinnis era livery, with an orange cab, black hoods, and the big stylized NH on the hoods.

And then there was the final livery with orange hoods, black cab, and white stylized NH on the cab sides.

The rarely seen 1947 Plaster City Chrysler rail car.

Winter in Norway.

914Driver said:

The rarely seen 1947 Plaster City Chrysler rail car.

That was at US Gypsum's plant at Plaster City, which that 3-foot gauge railroad has never actually had a formal name, US Gypsum employees just call it "the railroad”. Lucius Beebe's Mixed Train Daily recounts how one year, the narrow-gauge GE 70-tonner was out of action and they borrowed one of the narrow gauge Southern Pacific "Slim Princesses" for use at Plaster City. In his account, the operating crews were decidedly less enthusiastic about operating a steam locomotive over the line.

When White Pass & Yukon ordered the later batch of Safety Cab-equipped MLW DL535E diesels and then bailed on the order due to the Fero Mines closing, three of the four partially-completed locomotives were instead purchased by US Gypsum for use at Plaster City and are still in use there to this day.

The fourth wide-cab DL535E had actually already been completed and shipped to Alaska by the time WP&Y bailed on the order and so they ended up with it regardless of trying to cancel the order. That locomotive has been running up there until recently, but it was just announced this weekend that WP&Y is selling it to Cumbres & Toltec to use for MoW and emergency rescue power. At the moment, C&TS has zero diesel power that can operate over the line, and has to keep reserve engines hot at Antonito and Chama to run a rescue or handle ballast trains, which chews up boiler time.

I know everyone is trying to make their charters stand out from the rest, but this one seems to have gone a bit far for the sake of authenticity.

Okay, I kid, I kid. Over the weekend, a charter was running on the Old Patagonian Express, a 750mm (30") gauge line down in Patagonia, Argentina and hit a washout and flopped over on it's side. There were reported to be several injuries, a couple severe but non-life-threatening, and fortunately no deaths.

One passenger recounted "What a day! At about 11:15 this morning as we were going about 17 KPH we hit a washout on the line. The locomotive #104, rolled over and took the entire train down the embankment. It is pretty scary to be trapped in a wooden coach as it rolls down the hill. Our wood stove was burning and the danger of fire was immediate. We had to kick out doors and crawl out and through the remains of the vestibule." That wood stove in a wooden coach is particularly alarming. Back in the day, that was the cause of a lot of the fatalities in bad wrecks. The train would derail, and before people could get clear of the wreckage the cars would catch on fire from the coal or wood stoves aboard and burn a bunch of people alive.

Take a look and there's quite a bit of frightening details to see: Axe-cut ends on the (round) ties, track settlement 'dip' obvious, no tie plates, no evidence of any tie replacement, kink at the bolted joint on the lefthand rail, missing interior spike on at least one tie on the lefthand rail. The line, and most of the equipment, date back to 1923, hasn't run in four years until a couple months ago, and hasn't seen any major traffic in the better part of a decade. Mostly they just fire it up once in a while for charters like this. As some have put it too, this is an extremely remote, extremely shoestring operation, not sure what the status of recovery equipment is for a situation like this. Hopefully it doesn't end up like the Lawrence of Arabia train.

Yesterday I had vacation time to burn, so I made the trip out to the Rochester area to catch the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville in action and get some photos of their big Alcos before they're gone. I had been told that they run Mon-Fri, spend the morning switching the Lakeville yard and the couple businesses attached to the yard, and then hit the road north out of Lakeville between noon and 12:45.

Something for future reference, you can get access to the Lakeville yard if you contact them ahead of time and if they have a free employee to act as your spotter/guide/babysitter. I didn't realize that until I went past the yard, saw the sign for visitor check-in, and looked it up online. I'll file that away for next time. Other than that, if you don't have a drone, or don't want to trespass, you aren't seeing what's going on in the yard. I went up to S. Lima Road and could just barely see a headlight and ditch lights moving around in the yard, but couldn't make out anything more than that.

This is from the S. Lima crossing. The line to the left goes to Livonia, but as I understand it, there aren't any customers down there anymore and it is out of service. The track to the right drops down into the Lakeville yard.

I pre-drove some of the route and then went back and waited for them to hit the road. And sure enough, at 12:45, they came crawling up out of Lakeville Yard.

Running long hood first (the LA&L lacks any turning facilities) they had two of their C425s, the #425 and the #428, assigned to the train. The #425 was built for the New Haven, then was passed on to Penn Central after New Haven was incorporated into the merger, then was passed on to Conrail after it's creation. Conrail sold it off to the LA&L in 1982, when Conrail was purging the Alcos from their roster. The #428 is a real boomer engine; it was built for Spokane, Portland & Seattle, then went to Burlington Northern when all the Hill Lines were merged, then spent a brief time on the Arkansas & Missouri before heading down to Florida to run on the Seminole Gulf Railroad in 2003 and then coming north to the LA&L in 2011.

Approaching the Papermill Road crossing In Avon.

Approaching downtown Avon. There was a series of three rapid grade crossings over a pretty impressive fill here that I was hoping to get video of when they headed south.

The old Erie depot in Avon still stands, although it's now (maybe?) a pub (It looked kind of defunct)

The LA&L power cut off the cars that they had on the other side of Main Street and then ran light down past the old depot and through the small yard in Avon.

Backing down the spur in to the Barilla pasta plant. This seems to be their major customer. They dragged out a pretty healthy string of covered hoppers, then dropped off another string, and most of the cars in the Avon yard were also all covered hoppers. I'm guessing they're delivering grain to be used for making pasta.

Climbing back up with what I presume are a string of empties.

Dragging the empty(?) cars up into the yard at Avon.

And then cutting off from them to make a run around them and go grab loaded cars to shove down into the Barrilla spur.

I will say that I'm said that I didn't get any video of the #425 (more on that later) because it had one hell of a horn on it. But it was trailing most of the way to Rochester, since the #428 was leading long hood first.

Switching cars at the north end of the yard at Avon. They grabbed up a huge string of empty cars, shoved them all south of Main Street in Avon and hooked up to the cars that they had brought up from Lakeville.

And then we were underway. This was north of the Barrilla plant and a rather large farm that also appeared to be a customer. 

The LA&L passes by the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, and the R&GVRM has Lehigh Valley "hammerhead" RS-3m #211 in their collection. Originally built for the Pennsylvania Railroad, it was optioned with both dynamic brakes and steam generator, which is why it has the tall rear hood. In 1970, Penn Central had a bunch of RS-3s, including this unit, that they were going to trade in to GE, but when Lehigh Valley learned about this they cut a deal to trade a like amount of their completely worn-out RS-2s to Penn Central for these RS-3s, and then PC could trade the RS-2s to GE. The #211 was one of the units that was traded to the Lehigh Valley. Six years later, Lehigh Valley was merged into Conrail and the #211 went with it. Then three years later, the #211 became even more of a freak when it was run through Conrail's "Dewitt Geep" program, which involved rebuilding RS-3s with 1200hp EMD 567 V12s taken from cast-off E8s and E9s at Conrail's Dewitt facilities.

And here comes the LA&L freight, roaring by the old Erie "Industry" depot and LV #211.

And arriving in Rochester, crossing over the Genesee River on it's way to Genesee Junction, where it interchanges with CSX and Rochester Southern.

Unfortunately, this is as far as I could follow them. Genesee Junction, a dot on the map really where the RSR, LA&L and CSX converge is not accessible without trespassing on CSX property, not something I was game to try. I was hoping they would run south fairly soon, and I could at least catch the #425 leading over this bridge, maybe get some video of the really impressive horn on it, but they were up at Genesee Junction for a long time puttering about, I couldn't even see their lights they were so far out of sight. And by 5pm, the light was pretty much gone and they hadn't returned, so I called it a day. I would like to get out there this summer or spring, when there is more light longer, and I'll get permission to access Lakeville yard. LA&L says it will be two to three years before the Alcos are gone, but you never know.