Climbing up the grade towards Black Horse Lane crossing, with 8 cars in tow. Despite being amongst the smallest 2-10-0s ever built, the #90 is the biggest engine that Strasburg operates and has the grunt to make this grade with ease.
Climbing up the grade towards Black Horse Lane crossing, with 8 cars in tow. Despite being amongst the smallest 2-10-0s ever built, the #90 is the biggest engine that Strasburg operates and has the grunt to make this grade with ease.
Approaching the Esbenshade Road crossing. Those ten 56" drivers give the #90 a long lanky look, and in profile, you can see straight through between the bottom of the boiler and the tops of the drivers. The 46,153lbs of tractive effort isn't super impressive, especially for a 10-coupled engine, but the nice thing is that these Baldwin light decapods, which were a standard catalog offering, could run on 63lb rail. There is a loose family connection between the Baldwin "Sport Series" Decapods, as these were nicknamed, and the Russian Decapods, like Frisco #1630, but Straburg #90 is not a Russian Decapod, like some say.
Heading towards Paradise Lane and The Red Caboose Hotel.
Whistling at the crossing at Carpenters. The #90 has worn a Reading 6-chime the entirety of her career at Strasburg. Kelly Anderson said that they actually did have the original whistle for the #90 laying around in the shop, but that the internally-threaded base had been split at some point before they got the #90, either by overtightening or material defect. With #90 celebrating her 100th birthday next year, it would be neat to see the original whistle repaired and installed.
Taken from the graveyard at Carpenters, as #90 exits the copse of trees.
At Paradise Lane with an uncharacteristically dirty stack. I know that after delivery to Great Western of Colorado, the GW installed a smokebox extension to try and get it to better burn the subpar coal that they were using. After returning to Pennsylvania, Strasburg veterans said that the #90 was impossible to get a clean stack on, no matter how skilled the fireman. they dove into it and found that Great Western had also cobbled in a Master Mechanic self-cleaning front end that was poorly configured, and so they deleted the self-cleaning front end and the smokebox extension, and found then it operated perfectly clean. This is just a case of an overenthusiastic fireman.
Approaching the Strasburg yard. To the left you can see SW8 #8168 getting ready to make a freight run to Leaman Place and you can also see ex-CPR 4-6-0 #972 and the boiler for LIRR 4-6-0 #39 sitting on a siding to the right of the main track. The #972 is pretty much left for dead, given to Strasburg to settle George Hart's bills after his death and determined that it basically needs every single part. LIRR #39 is supposed to be undergoing restoration, with a lease to Strasburg once it's done, but the fundraising seems to have stalled out and Strasburg really hasn't mentioned it much.
Running tender-first past the picnic grove at Groff's Landing. There's a passing track here and in the summer, trains stop here on the trip east to Strasburg to A) let passengers off and B) let the westbound train go by. On an off-peak day like today, they're only running a single train and the picnic grove isn't open either, which means that chasing the train today was a bit difficult, since you would leave Carpenters and head to another crossing and barely get there in time.
Heading back east past Groff's Landing. I was planning to take video here, but literally as the train came into view, the workers at Cherry Hill Adventure Farm behind me fired up a forklift and began making a racket, so I went to photographs instead.
One of the less-photographed members of the Strasburg roster, SW8 #8618, heads back to Strasburg after dropping off freight cars at Leaman Place.
Arriving back in Strasburg.
Easing up past J Tower and an old PRR position light signal at the eastern end of the line. J Tower was originally called LEMO Tower by the PRR, due to being located at Lemoyne Junction (Like how ALTO Tower is at Altoona), which was the meeting point between the Cumberland Branch and the Northern Central Line. It is one of only two surviving examples of Pennsylvania Railroad's standard design two-story wood frame interlocking towers. Built in 1885, this tower was still in service until the early 1980s under Conrail, and then was saved by the Lancaster Chapter of the NRHS and dismantled and relocated to Strasburg.
Sitting at Strasburg. They ran regular trains at 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00. The next train was the dinner train at 5:30, which would be almost a full hour after sunset, so I decided to leave then.
Very nice pictures (and video), feels like I'm there again.
Thanks,
Lou Manglass
So, today I was off to New Hope, PA to visit the New Hope & Ivyland Railroad, which is an operation that I have never visited. They operate the old Reading Co. New Hope Branch, which the Reading sold off in 1966, and operations are based out of New Hope. The passenger excursions typically run to Lahaska, but occasionally run as far as Buckingham Valley, and the line still extends all the way to Johnsville. The NH&I handles freight as well, and interchanges with the Pennsylvania Northeastern at Johnsville. NH&I has gotten to the point where they pretty much only fire up their steam locomotive, ex-Lancaster & Chester 2-8-0 #40, for Christmas and Easter, so it's a bit of a rare opportunity to see it running. According to a guy I spoke to at Strasburg yesterday though, NH&I has said they plan to run steam more next year, with the theory that they want to use up the boiler ticket quicker so that the next overhaul they can convert it to oil-burning.
So, big warning about New Hope, the city, not the railroad. It's super wealthy and hoity-toity, and a very old city. That means lots of 15mph, 1.5 lane roads and absolutely miserable traffic, especially this time of year. There's a huge Christmas village thing, and when I was leaving New Hope to make the drive to Hamburg tonight, there was literally 5 miles of cars at a standstill coming into New Hope. Also, it makes it a bit tough to chase them.
This is the original 1891 depot, constructed by New Hope Railroad. Like a lot of Reading Co. branches, it was organized and sold bonds as an independent railroad to judge interest. If sufficient interest was found, the Reading subscribed to the remaining bonds, built the railroad, and then leased it back to themselves. The New Hope Railroad, which became the New Hope Branch, saw it's final passenger train in 1952, and then Reading Co. spent the next decade and a half trying to peddle the line off, eventually succeeding in 1966.
In addition to operating the #40 today, they were also operating diesel-hauled passenger trains, with them alternating every hour. So, the first train of the day was diesel-powered, and here it is on it's way out of downtown New Hope. The power leading is an ex-Pennsy GP30, now numbered #2198 and painted in a handsome black and maroon livery. This is paralelling W. Mechanic Ave and that's the Aquetong Creek, which the line follows and crosses several times, to the left.
Crossing the Aquetong Creek over a low bridge, with a friendly wave from the brakeman.
Crossing over Reeder Read. The line has a pretty saw tooth profile, dropping down out of New Hope, then making a climb from past where I took the previous photo steadily through this crossing and the next, and then descending back down to Lahaska.
Taken at Lower Mountain Road, this is the train heading back to New Hope. They were running the diesel train in push-pull, withe GP9R #8218 leading in the other direction. I'll give you a guess on the original ownership of this chop-nosed Geep. I'll give you a hint, the numberboards are the giveaway.
it's an ex-Canadian Pacific unit that was chop-nosed by Canadian Pacific. CP tended to install those big blocky eyebrow-like numberboard housings on their chopnosed units. They can also be seen on the RS-18us, like #1835 and #1845 on the Adirondack Railroad
Winding back alongside the Aquetong Creek.
After the diesel train got into the depot, and a little song and dance to get everything situated, the #40 heads south out of New Hope with the 10am train. I did learn that A) they run the steam train a bit faster than the diesel train (my guess is, since steam engines make more power the faster they go, they need to keep the speed up for the grade), B) traffic is kind of bad, and C) there were areas were there was just nowheres to pull off the road to park your car. Kind of a tough chase.
The noon diesel train heading through at S Sugan Ave.
All the parking in New Hope required you to pay, so I bit the bullet and shelled out a couple bucks to get some photos of the #40 at the depot.
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