Grassroots Railroad Sports?

The exact quote from Shaughnessy's book, regarding Rutland vice-president Gardner A Caverly's reaction to a chance encounter with one of these engines.

He saw the locomotive struggling upgrade with northbound tonnage. The ground trembled, the setting sun was darkened with rising black smoke, and the white hot fire gleamed through the ashpan doors. He listened to the thunderous exhaust and the wail of her whistle echoing and re-echoing through the pine-clad hills. Never before had he been so deeply moved by the power and glory of steam. It was a subject fit for an artist, but Michelangelo himself could not have recorded the emotion that overwhelmed him. He was nearly brought to tears as the engineer waved for it was only the week before that he had signed the engine's death warrant."

Vermont Rail System is essentially the modern day version of the Rutland.

As I mentioned before, the Vermont Railroad, as it was originally known, originally got the Rutland's main line from Burlington down to Rutland and then on to Bennington.

In 1997, Vermont Railroad bought out the Green Mountain Railroad. Green Mountain, formed in 1964, had the Rutland line from Rutland down southeast through Chester to Bellows Falls.

In 2002, Vermont Rail System, as it had renamed itself, acquired the far west end of the Rutland, from Ogdensburg, NY,  31 miles east to Norwood, NY.

That's basically all the Rutland trackage that still exists, all operating under one roof.

Other than that, they bought out the Clarendon & Pittsford, a one mile railroad owned by Vermont Marble Company, which was a major customer and interchange partner with the Rutland, in 1972.

They also bought out the D&H's Rutland Branch in 1982. That line went east from Whitehall, NY to an interchange at Rutland, VT. The D&H decided to sell the line, the same time they were abandoning chunks of the Washington Branch and selling off the rest of the Washington Branch as well as the entire Greenwich & Johnsonville. The Rutland Branch was placed under the Clarendon & Pittsford's purview by Vermont Rail System.

In 1999 they took over ex-B&M trackage from Montpelier to Barre from New England Central, as well as the joint ex-B&M/CV line from Newport north to White River Junction from Iron Road Railways in 2002. These two lines were placed under the control of new subsidiary Washington County Railroad, with the Montpelier-Barre line as the Granite District and Newport-White River Junction as the Connecticut River Division.

And then in 2022 VRS took over the old B&M White River Division between Concord & Lincoln, keeping the New England Southern name, which has been used since 1982.

Vermont Rail, when they took over the old Rutland main line in '64, purchased a handful of used RS-3s (the Rutland's own RS-3s were all sold to Lousville & Nashville, who had also picked up all the Lehigh & New England's FA-1s around the same time) to begin service with. They took the old Rutland livery design with the chevrons on the end, but swapped the dark green for bright red and the yellow for white, as well as applying a logo consisting of a trio of Vs forming a mountain range. 

A Vermont Rail RS-3 next to one of the Green Mountain's ex-D&H S-4s. The Green Mountain Railway kept the Rutland's old livery, and continued the tradition of 539 power alive, through a couple of ex-D&H S-4s, as well as one original Rutland RS-1 and a couple other secondhand RS-1s.

Perhaps the most impressive piece on the Vermont Rail Systems roster is RS-1 #405. It was purchased by Rutland as their #405 in 1951, along with five other RS-1s. While the other five were sold off over time, both before and after Rutland's closing, the #405 was leased by Nelson Blount's Green Mountain Railroad after it was formed in 1964. It was used to assist Steamtown USA's steam locomotives on occasion, but mostly handled the freight service on the Green Mountain. After Blount's death, a divide formed between the Green Mountain and Steamtown, which led to Steamtown's departure for Scranton in the '80s, but the #405 stayed at Bellows Falls. It also hung around after Vermont Rail System took over the Green Mountain in 1997. While it's mostly just used for passenger excursions over the Green Mountain these days, its also used to switch the yard at Rutland on occasion, and has even been known to handle over-the-road freights when traffic is light enough or other VRS motive power comes up ill. That makes the #405 pretty rare in that it's operated over the same rails from day one for the past 72 years, which I don't think can be said of many other diesels.

 GMRC 405 makes the deadhead move from Chester, VT down to N. Walpole, NH after operating as a passenger special to view fireworks in Bellows Falls earlier. Engineer Scott Whitney guides 405 with "Green Fleet" consist over the 1899 double stone arch bridge spanning the Connecticut River

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CSX has rolled out another heritage unit: CSX #1897, in honor of the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway, better known as the Monon Railroad. It wears the black and gold paint scheme, which was inspired by the college colors of Purdue University, which was served by the Monon.

The big excitement was that the #1897 was also dispatched on a freight train with the NYC heritage unit, believed to be the first pairing of CSX heritage units\]

Passing by an L&N E8A that is on display at the L&N Depot Museum in Bowling Green, KY

Passing through Hanceville, Alabama with a Birmingham-Louisville autorack train.

In reply to 914Driver :

You also have the famous photo of The Man In Black leaned up against steam locomotive drivers for the cover of Life magazine. That was actually Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis 4-8-4 #576, on display at Nashville's Centennial Park. The steam effects were from a smoke generator, since the #576 was cold and dead at that point.

That also looks like D&RGW K-27 #463 in the back ground of Cash's All Aboard The Blue Train album, which also has some train themed songs. Aside from the obvious ones, Rock Island Line is about the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and Wreck of Old 97 is about the September 27, 1903 wreck of Southern Railway train #97, the Fast Mail, which fell off a trestle at Danville, VA and killed 11 onboard personnel and injured another 7 as a result of excessive speed to try and keep schedule.

The NYS&W Utica Branch borrowed one of MA&N's big Alco C425s this Monday. Sad that I always miss this kind of stuff because there's no advance warning. You just kind of have to be free every morning and go swing down and see what's going on. Particularly neat about when this happens is that MA&N #2453 was originally built for Erie-Lackawanna, and so when it runs on the NYS&W Utica Branch, which was originally the DL&W Utica Branch, it's back on home rails. Although I'm not sure how often, if ever, the E-L ran the C425s up the line from Chenanago Forks to Utica. I believe it was mostly RS3s and GP7s and GP9s on the line. 

If you want an opportunity to operate a steam locomotive for fairly cheap, Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine & Steam Train in Ashland, PA is selling slots to operate their 30" gauge 0-4-0T for thirty minutes on April 20th and 21st. The cost is $60 per person, which is a lot cheaper than running any of the steam engines at Strasburg or IRM. Send an email to CNR3254@gmail.com and you'll be sent a FareHarbor link to select your time and date. All proceeds are going towards helping get their other 30" gauge 0-4-0T running.

I actually got to ride in the cab of this engine back in May when I visited this museum. Really cool place.

If Strasburg were to offer an In-Cab Experience with the #89 again, I'd certainly jump at that opportunity. Seems like that might be the only way I ever get to see that one run, with the way my luck's been. I missed it by a day when I was down in December. They were running the #90 on Friday when I was there, and I went east to New Hope the next day, but they were apparently running the #89 and #90 that day.

I would also imagine that PRR #1361, once it's finally operational again, will likely pay a visit to Strasburg, and I wonder if they'll sell In-Cab Experiences with the #1361 like they did with #611. I'm not super enthused about watching an 80"-drivered K4 run tender-first at 5mph, but I would relish the chance to take the throttle on a Pennsy K4. Unless they price it like they did the #611 tickets. Those were $611 for the #611, not sure I'd want to pay $1361 for the #1361.

It'll still be a couple years until the #1361 is ready for prime time. The Railroaders Memorial Museum/FMW Solutions (owner/restoration contractor) have said that they are still doing fundraising for the total amount to restore it to operation. They still have funds and work is still continuing, but they'll need more money once they get farther. And they said, even if some donor were to step up tomorrow and cough up the full amount (I think it was $3 mil), it would still be three years minimum to have it up and running.

The #1361 restoration is a disproportionately large job because they have to undo damage from the 1980s restoration, which in turn never addressed serious abuse and neglect suffered during the final years of it's operation as well as 30 years of outdoor display, as well as completely reengineer the firebox and firebox wrapper to bring it into FRA compliance, and they were planning to do a roller bearing conversion to avoid the axle troubles it had in the '80s and make Class Is more receptive to hosting it, as well as adding Positive Train Control to also hopefully make it Class I friendly.