Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In reply to 02Pilot :

I agree. Kodachrome, K II,  and K 64 were all amazing products and the "gold standard" of most of the professional color photographers of the day. Those films were almost singlehandedly responsible for the slow adoption of digital photography as it took a very long time for the resolution of digital to even approach the quality of those film products. 

I'll make an attempt at providing some depth to the slide above. First, I believe it was shot in Ektachrome. Ektachrome was much faster (ASA now ISO) but coarser in grain and less responsive to color. Notice the colors seem washed out. The sky is very light blue almost looking like white in places. I could never get satisfactory color response out of that film regardless of what techniques I employed.  It also looks like the photo is way out of focus. It seems to have good depth of field yet every part of it seems to be out of focus. Could be a photographer hiccup, a camera problem, or a scanner problem. Might be something as simple as a smeared lens. 

Digitizing film does add an extra step that could go wrong but when done properly with good equipment should approach the resolution of the original photograph.

Lou Manglass

This is part of the Kershaw Collection being sold off, find the tread at GRM.

914Driver said:

This is part of the Kershaw Collection being sold off, find the tread at GRM.

Someone on RYPN who was familiar with the engine said this:

"I think almost everybody who worked on steam in the '70s through '90s has been involved with the beautiful little logger at some time or other except those who actually live nearby. It's already had some running gear work done, boiler is in decent shape, the dome was a Baldwin forge welded longitudinal seam which I actually found a reference for with a very low efficiency rating...... but the metal was very thick so for a little 160 PSI coffee pot not at all unusable. I'd certainly consider it as restorable without too much heavy work. RK liked to take pauses in the stream of work to rethink things which made it somewhat frustrating to try to maintain a project's momentum. Gary Bensman and Grant Geist left a lot of stuff there which had been well picked through and parts had been strewn here and there such that finding things and reassembling after machining, etc was an interesting treasure hunt. Royce owned an airport with a railroad track running through it behind his newer plant which he wanted to reconnect with a like running through the old downtown into the W of A shops ruins, and an ancient brick kiln industrial site as an industrial history attraction, but that didn't seem to gain a lot of traction to grow. He had some really good guys working on his auto collection working there and we all shared and helped each other out."

In reply to TheMagicRatchet :

You're probably right about it being Ektachrome. The evolution of that film was problematic for quite a while, with the early iterations experiencing color shifts and other problems.

For reference, this is a photo I shot and scanned on modern Ektachrome E100. The camera and lens were excellent (Konica Hexar AF), but the scanner was not great (Pacific Image PrimeFilm XA). Bearing in mind that the scanning could be better and that I shot it from a moving train, I think it still shows that slide film, shot properly, can be quite sharp.

In a development that is equally depressing and frustrating, it sounds like Spokane, Portland & Seattle Alco FA-1 #866 is meeting the scrapper's torch today. This was one of the FAs purchased by Long Island Rail Road for conversion to a "power pack", which was a HEP generator and cab car for push-pull commuter operations. When LIRR retired the "power packs", this one was purchased by Northwest Rail Museum in Portland, Oregon for cosmetic restoration to it's original appearance. These all lost their traction motors when first built, and a lot of them lost their Alco 244 V12s and GE generators for sled-mounted Detroit Diesel generator sets later in life, so operational restoration would be a massive undertaking. Northwest Rail Museum had cleaned up some of the body and painted the nose dark green, but that was as far as they got. Along with Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation (owners of SP #4449 and SP&S #700), they had their stuff stored at the old SP Brooklyn Roundhouse in Portland, and got booted by UP back in 2012. Northwest Rail Museum moved their stuff to a new location, which has since lost it's connection to active rail, and their stuff has basically just sat there and been vandalized and left to the elements.

Apparently, on January 6th, 2024, the members of the Northwest Rail Museum were informed by the property owners that their stuff needed to be moved, since it was an eyesore and attracting vandals, or it was headed to the scrapper. While the museum knew of this, they never bothered to let anyone know that the stuff was in danger and pretty much just threw in the towel and resigned themselves to it being scrapped. It wasn't until yesterday that a third-party, who had caught wind of this, made a post on Ahead Of The Torch that the #866, along with several passenger cars are slated to be scrapped in the next couple days. No one was aware the stuff was at risk, and by waiting this long it's too late to get them moved out, especially without an active connection to rail (although lack of any internals would make it lighter and easier to crane out).

On a wider scale note, it's kind of sad how the FA-1s/FA-2s would have passed into extinction without the LIRR "power pack" conversion, and then preservationists jumped at being able to save them when LIRR retired them, only for almost all of them to have slipped into states of severe neglect and decay. SMS Rail Services has been working on a pair for a private owner and IRM has slowly been chipping away at theirs, but the rest are all in bad shape, and I sadly wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the last one to be scrapped.

There's a rumor going about that C&O #614 might be getting moved to Goshen, Virginia, where N&W #611 is operating out of on the Buckingham Branch Railroad. Now, is it just moving there to be a display piece or to be restored to operation? Well, Ross Rowland, who owns the #614, is making a lot of vague, handwavey statements but not really saying much of substance.

All I can say at this moment in time is that the future of mainline steam excursions in Va. looks very promising.

The state of Va. has made a MAJOR long term financial commitment to vastly expanding passenger rail serving all regions of the state and the state also invests north of $ 50M a year on tourism development.

The 2023 excursions behind the 611 were made possible by the state taking ownership of the Buckingham Branch RR which under its prior CSX ownership prohibited excursions. The long standing management team running the BB RR led by President Steve Powell is now free to pursue those opportunities that make business sense such as the highly successful 611 trips.

One informal survey of the cars in the parking lot at Goshen showed vehicles from 14 states represented. Now that's what you call tourism development !!

There will be more to talk about soon.

About the standard for him in more recent years. Once the guy for mainline steam excursions, his brand has faded a bit in more recent years, between a number of failed/stillborn projects, some problematic public statements that the internet has not let go, and no real wins in his corner since the last of the 1998 excursions with the #614 over New Jersey Transit. While I have no clue on the veracity of these rumors, it would be neat to see the #614 up and running again, especially on home rails and alongside the #611. The #614 is a really neat engine, one of those late steam-era designs that had short service lives and really never got to show it's true potential, and it's various excursion lives over the years were rather short and sporadic.

The #614 was delivered to the C&O in 1948, and was kind of an odd order, since it was deep in the waning days of steam but C&O went all-out with basically every option (they weirdly skipped on a feedwater heater and went with a Hancock exhaust steam injector) to make a state-of-the-art locomotive. After just four years of service, the C&O placed it, and it's sisters, into storage, rendered surplus by the arrival of diesels. After four years of storage, the #614, and sister J-3a #610, were pulled out of storage to handle a traffic surge. C&O was also leasing some RF&P power to handle the spike, and one of the leased RF&P engines was 4-8-4 #614, so to avoid confusion, a paint brush and chisel were taken to C&O #614 to renumber it to #611. It's revival lasted one year, giving it a total of five service years, and then the #614/#611 was placed in storage, and then eventually donated to the B&O Railroad Museum, still as #611.

In 1975, Ross Rowland had grabbed Reading T-1 #2101 out of a scrapyard in Maryland and put it back in service in 30 days to handle the northeastern leg of the American Freedom Train. After that was over, Rowland had talked Chessie Systems into hosting a series of steam excursions using the #2101, called the Chessie Steam Specials. They ran in 1977 and 1978 and were very successful, and Chessie Systems was planning to host them again in 1979. The #2101 was stored at Chessie's Silver Grove, KY roundhouse over the winter and the roundhouse ended up catching fire and burning down. Rowland and Chessie Systems determined that the #2101 was "irreparably damaged" by the fire and decided to park the #2101 and a deal was struck to cosmetically restore it to it's AFT appearance and trade it to the B&O Railroad Museum for C&O #611/#614. In more recent years, Rowland has admitted that the #2101 was likely salvageable but the fire served as a good excuse to get rid of the #2101; Chessie Systems wanted something from one of their own lines, and the #2101's solid bearings had always been a trouble spot and Rowland wanted something with roller bearings.

After 18 months of work, the #614 was fired back up. Along with an operational restoration, it was returned to it's original number and had it's tender internally modified to carry significantly more coal (it's easier to find and take on water than coal, and you can just run auxiliary tenders and pump the water forward in motion).  It ran the renamed Chessie Safety Express all over the Chessie System during 1980 and 1981, and then Chessie Systems ended the excursions and the #614 was back out of work The #614 was placed in storage at the old Western Maryland roundhouse in Hagerstown and there it sat until 1985.

In 1985, in response to high diesel fuel costs and stable coal prices, the American Coal Enterprises launched the ACE-3000 project to develop a modern, efficient steam locomotive for mainline freight hauling. The #614 was a late design that was reported to be very efficient, and was all restored with nothing to do, was taken out of storage and renumbered to #614T (T for Test), fitted with a bunch of data collection systems, and ran on the Chesapeake & Ohio hauling freight trains. Again in his vague, handwave-y way, Ross Rowland has long proclaimed that the data gather was "very surprising" but has never elucidated what those results were, but dropping fuel prices and backroom politics at ACE killed the program and the #614 was parked that same year.

In 1992, the #614 was moved back to the B&O Railroad Museum for display, while Ross Rowland pitched his idea for the 21st Century Limited, a traveling exhibit that would contain hundreds of examples, artifacts, and illustrations of the challenges faced by the people of the 20th century, and how those challenges were met and overcome. To give the public an idea of the train, one side of 614 was decorated in a futuristic way with a blue streamlined shrouding and centered headlight, and there was talk of also restoring NYC 4-8-2 #3001 to assist in pulling the train. Plenty of corporate sponsors, including Chrysler, signed on, but the project ultimately fizzled when it became apparent that there wasn't enough time to build and launch the train by 1996. The #3001 restoration never went beyond an initial investigation, and the #614 moved around the B&O Railroad Museum under it's own power a couple time in it's new appearance, but that was about it, and it was quickly returned to it's original appearance.

In 1995, with the 21st Century Limited visibly dead in the water, it was moved to the New Hope & Ivyland for an overhaul, and Rowland began talking with NJTransit about running excursions over their rails. After the disastrous 1988 NRHS Convention, some of which ran on NJT rails, NJT wanted nothing to do with the idea originally. He then pointed out that they had a proven engine with no records of mechanical failures and that he had run mainline excursions for decades without any major debacles. NJTransit was eventually warmed up to the idea, but insisted that the locomotive had to have cab signals, automatic train stop systems, an MU stand for controlling diesel helpers from the cab of the #614 and a modern brake stand. The #614 underwent serious work at the Port Jervis shops to add all these features, resulting in much cursing from the NJT shops crews reportedly, and emerged ready to run again in 1996. From 1996 to 1998, it hauled a number of excursions between Hoboken and Port Jervis, which were well-run but ultimately ended by NJT over insurance prices. There were also disputes between Rowland and NJT over him exceeding track speed limits that also resulted in a breakdown in the partnership. This was the last time the #614 ran, and it was moved over to the Reading & Northern and placed in storage at Port Clinton.

Rowland tried to auction it off in 2000, but no one managed to place a sufficiently high bid. Andy Muller, president of the R&N, also tried to make a private deal with Rowland, which would have given the #614 a terrific home and place to stretch it's legs, but Rowland's asking price was said to be too high. In 2007, Rowland kicked off planning for his Yellow Ribbon Express, another exhibition train in the vein of his 1969 Golden Spike Limited and the 1976 American Freedom Train, which was supposed to be pulled by the #614 and tour the US from 2017 to 2020 raising money for the veterans of post-2001 conflicts. Issues with funding and the reluctance of Class Is to host steam excursions, as well as general logistical problems, meant it was a non-starter, and the whole project died a quiet death. Then, in 2010, Rowland and Jim Justice, owner of the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs, West Virginia, and then-governor of West Virginia, entered into talks for the Greenbrier Presidential Express, a luxury steam train hauling people from Washington D.C. to the Greenbrier Resort.  In May 2011, the 614 was moved to the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge and repainted in green paint and relettered in preparation for the proposed service. The project was canceled in May 2012 due to lack of funding, CSX's strong stance against steam locomotives on their rails, and capacity problems on the CSX portion of the route, where a lack of passing sidings would make it difficult for eastbound trains to gain headway against the flow of westbound empty coal trains. The #614 has sat there, in the green paint and lettered for the stillborn service ever since. Rowland still talks about doing an American Freedom Train 2.0 in 2026, but the idea doesn't seem to be rooted in any version of our reality, ignoring the lack of display sidings, the government not wanting to move rare and important artifacts around the country, Class Is stances towards steam and special moves, and the fact that he hasn't had a success in almost thirty years, his last big cross country trip was in '76, and that he has made a number of eyebrow-raising public statements that have made even diehard railfans turn away from him. He has even admitted that no one at the White House has been taking his phone calls, and with the semi-quincentennial in 2 years, I think he's out of planning time.

C&O #614 with a long string of NJTransit coaches at Secaucus, NJ.

Passing through Port Jervis on NJ Transit

A doubleheader with NYS&W #142 and C&O #614 on NJTransit. While the #614 was a late-build steam product, being turned out in '48, the #142 was a full 41 years younger, having been turned out in China in 1989 before coming to these shores.

Passing through Lansing, Michigan in May of '81, during her Chessie Safety Express days.

Reading & Northern had been teasing that they were going to be announcing their 2024 Iron Horse Rambles schedule for this year. This will be the third year of these, hauled by Reading T-1 #2102 and named in honor of the original Reading Company Iron Horse Ramble excursions. Now, the past two years, they have all been Reading-Jim Thorpe round trips, and the only real unusual one was the one in September in 2022 where they doubleheaded it with Reading & Northern 4-6-2 #425. I said a while back that I've seen #2102 make the Reading-Jim Thorpe run enough in the past couple years (The first Ramble and two years of fall excursions) that I didn't really feel the need to go down there and see the #2102 run this year.

Well, they announced the schedule last night and it is interesting. Well, not the first one, because the first one is on May 25, 2024 and will operate from Reading Outer Station to Jim Thorpe. But the second one, on Saturday, June 22, 2024, will be the very first steam passenger excursion from their Nesquehoning Campus (it was a first responder vehicle facility that they took over to be their passenger car maintenance department) to Tunkhannock, PA, for the town’s 43rd Annual Founder’s Day Festival, operating over the entirety of their Lehigh Division mainline through the Lehigh Gorge. The final one will be on Saturday, August 17, from Nesquehoning to Pittston, PA for the annual Tomato Festival.

I may have to ride the second one, because I've ridden partway up through the Lehigh Gorge behind the #425 and that was quite an experience. Traveling behind the #2102 with a lengthy train would really be quite an experience. It is my father's 65th birthday this year and he's retiring, maybe I'll see if he wants to go with me.

There are some people that are wondering how they're going to turn it at Tunkhannock, since there is not a wye or turntable there. Prevailing theory seems to be that during the layover at Tunkhannock, they'll tow it back to Pittston with diesels, where there is a wye, turn the whole train, and then tow it back north to Tunkhannock to have it ready for when the it's time to depart. There's also some people wondering how well the track up there will handle a big Reading T-1 and 18 or 19 passenger cars, since that track wasn't always in the best shape, but they have done some pretty heavy work there for the frack sand trains they've been running up to Tunkhannock Transload.

They're also supposedly building another little station, like the one they have up at Pittson (officially called the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Regional Railroad Station) at the Nesquehoning complex. Parking is at a premium in Jim Thorpe and the city already suffers from congestion, so it makes sense to depart farther north from Nesquehoning, especially now that they own the big factory there, and then swing across the Lehigh River at Jim Thorpe Junction and head up through the Gorge. 

It's a smart move to change up some of the destinations. They run a lot of Reading-Jim Thorpe trips, and while they don't seem to be losing any momentum, it's still a good way to avoid stagnation, as well as bringing some of that tourist money to other locations. The Lehigh Division also doesn't see a ton of the big excursions. There's the weekly Pittston-Jim Thorpe runs, and #425 used to do the Mountain Top Rotary Club Excursion and run from Jim Thorpe to White Haven, but nothing like a Ramble over the full length.

Probably the closest thing to Reading #2102 running through the Gorge would be back in 2015, when NKP #765 ran up through Lehigh Gorge. It was running excursions out of Bethlehem on Norfolk Southern, and ran over to Allentown and then up the old Lehigh Valley through Lehighton and Jim Thorpe and then went up over the same tracks all the way up through the Lehigh Gorge to Pittston. NS and R&N actually both share the tracks up through Lehigh Gorge, while NS owns the line on the east side of the river approaching CP Coal, as well as the line on the west side south of Jim Thorpe. You never really see any NS traffic there (I don't think I've ever seen any activity on the west side of the river) and NS has basically idled the line. There's those that hope that NS will sell it to R&N and R&N will then have the whole LV line from Allentown to Pittston.

The CNJ #113 group is also teasing some sort of "rare mileage excursion" with the big 0-6-0 this summer, details are still scant. They're also firing it up on May 18th for the new Minersville Community Days. I'm not going to either of those (I'm already looking at one, maybe two trips down to the R&N, and I'm busy on May 18th) but if anyone reading this wants to go down for it, I highly recommend it. The #113 is a seriously cool machine and the partnership between them and the R&N is really neat. 

I'm sure this has been posted before but here is my version of Engine 225 a 2-8-8-4 locomotive used in the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota and is located in Proctor, MN off of US Highway 2 just east of Duluth, MN.

Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range 2-8-8-4 "Yellowstone" Locomotives in the USA

With a bonus F-101 Voodoo fighter jet.

Glacial Lake Agassiz was a giant lake that drained the Hudson Bay area at the end of the last Ice Age. It's outlet was along the North Dakota/Minnesota boarder draining south from the Red River of the North into the Minnestoa River eventually entering the Mississippi river in Minneapolis, MN. The soil of today's Red River Valley is the softest dirt anywhere likened to quicksand with a soil bearing capacity of only 1500 pounds per square foot.

Anyway, the Union Pacific Railway was having trouble climbing the grade out of the valley heading east between the towns of Glyndon and Hawley, MN so in 1906 they began building a 7 mile embankment to climb out of the valley. It soon started sinking and was eventually abandoned. 

Construction of the Stockwood Fill, 1906–1909

VolvoHeretic said:

I'm sure this has been posted before but here is my version of Engine 225 a 2-8-8-4 locomotive used in the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota and is located in Proctor, MN off of US Highway 2 just east of Duluth, MN.

Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range 2-8-8-4 "Yellowstone" Locomotives in the USA

Funny story on those DM&IR Yellowstones. The DM&IR was primarily an iron ore hauler, from the mines at Proctor to the docks at Duluth and Two Harbors., with minimal passenger service and not a lot of other freight traffic. Because that ore was hauled on the Great Lakes, they were very seasonal in operation, so as soon as the Great Lakes froze up, traffic died off to pretty much nothing. So, they got to leasing their motive power a lot during the winter, so that it wasn't just sitting around and they could gather some income. Not that unusual in the diesel era, but pretty rare in the steam era.

Denver & Rio Grande Western battled the mountains, and so needed a lot of very big, powerful engines, and they began leasing the DM&IR's 2-8-8-4s in the winter. In '43, the DM&IR had ordered another batch, and they were due to be delivered in winter, so rather than have them delivered to Proctor just to sit, they were instead delivered directly to the D&RGW.

Shortly afterwards, the D&RGW had to make an embarrassing telegraph to notify the DM&IR that 2-8-8-4 #224 had run away while descending a grade on the Denver & Salt Lake and been pretty spectacularly smashed up. It was repaired and went on to run on the DM&IR until the end of steam in '59, but put an end to D&RGW leasing their steam locomotives.

One of the DM&IR Yellowstones hauling mixed merchandise on the D&RGW in 1942 near Littleton, Colorado. Look how tiny that stock car looks compared to the tender. You can also see two more locomotives dead-in-tow further back, likely more DM&IR Yellowstones being delivered to the D&RGW.

An example of DM&IR diesels far from home. A couple of their SD18s are hauling an empty coal hopper train on the Clinchfield at Trammel, Virginia.

A really strange one: the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range's two steam generator-equipped SD9s, #129 and #130, wait at Duluth, Minnesota with Amtrak's short-lived Arrowhead in February '77. Amtrak's SDP40Fs were parked due to derailment issues, so Amtrak was leasing whatever they could get their hands on, and these two SD9s fit the bill. SM&IR had bought them to haul what little passenger service they had, and most of that was later handled by RDCs, but kept them to haul office car specials and occasional excursions. If two SD9s seems excessive for a four-car train, it's important to remember that these only made 1750hp a piece. That works out to less than 300hp per axle. Southern Pacific had had a pair of steam generator-equipped SD9s that they had tried running in commuter service and had found that a single SD9 just could not accelerate from a stop fast enough to keep a schedule, even with only two or three coaches. They absolutely had to run them in pairs to be able to stay on schedule, while a single GP9 could do just fine. The SD9 was a great drag freight locomotive, which was why the DM&IR had them, but they were not speedy.

Another shot of the DM&IR steam generator SD9s at Duluth with Amtrak's Arrowhead. Originally running between Minneapolis and Superior, Amtrak extended it to Duluth in February of 1977. This is actually the very first Arrowhead to arrive in Duluth. During Amtrak's early years, there were a lot of these short-haul regional routes that came and went, and the Arrowhead was one of them. Inaugurated on April 15th, 1975, it vanished by April 30th, 1978.

A DM&IR "SDM", which was a chop-nosed SD18, and the two passenger SD9s, drag a string of empty ore jennies up Proctor Hill. Ore gondolas, often called jennies" were smaller than your average hopper car because iron ore is so much heavier than coal or gravel or anything else you haul in hoppers. PRR hauled ore in coal hoppers, but it could only be loaded in the two end bays, not the middle bay, and even then it was not loaded much above the halfway point. Someone mentioned that an inexperienced crew once filled coal hoppers with iron ore the same way they would fill them with coal and the result was cracked frames and destroyed axle bearings. DM&IR also took their ore jennies and converted them to "quads": four-unit sets that were permanently coupled with drawbars between them. The idea was that it cut down on air line connections to leak or couplers to pull apart when climbing the hill.