Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In the same region, and with an engine of similar size and wheel arrangement, the Siouxland Historical Railroad Association, Sioux City Railroad Museum and American Heartland Railroad Society announced that the three organizations were teaming up to restore GN H-5s Pacific #1355, currently in Sioux City, Iowa, to operating condition. This engine's pretty neat, in that it was originally built as a 4-6-0 in 1909 and was assigned to passenger service out of Spokane, WA. In 1924, the locomotive was sent east to St. Paul, MN, where the railroad rebuilt it as a 4-6-2, with a larger boiler, cylinders and firebox. The locomotive was designated an H-5s at that time and a year later it was converted from burning coal to oil. In 1950, the locomotive was sent to Minnesota to work in freight service before being retired in 1955. At about the same time, the community of Sioux City, Iowa, requested a locomotive from the GN for display. The #1355 was selected, pulled from the dead lines, and sent south to Iowa where it has been ever since.

This announcement is kind of surprising for a couple reasons; the first is that the Sioux City Railroad Museum, where the #1355 is displayed, just suffered some pretty severe flooding last week. It seems, uh, ambitious to announce that you are putting a steam locomotive back in service when you are rebuilding from flood damage, which could cost more than expected. Another is that the Sioux City Railroad Museum was reportedly restoring a different steam locomotive, Florida & Alabama 2-6-2 #18, or at least they announced they were three years ago when they acquired F&A #18. It's been radio silence on the #18 since then. And it was a really odd choice even then, since the Sioux City Railroad Museum is not an operational museum. They are basically a small yard with a quarter-mile of trackage, and not only do they lack a place to run, they really don't have a shop to perform a mechanical restoration either.

The status of the #1355 is a little confusing too. Some reports, including those of the president of the American Heartland Railroad Society, say that an operational restoration was attempted on the #1355 and was never completed. According to him, the locomotive is in good shape and “just needs a little TLC” to run again, and that over a decade ago, a group nearly completed an overhaul of the locomotive’s boiler but it was never run. He’s hopeful the group will be able to test fire the locomotive before its tube time runs out later this year but then another 1472 overhaul must be completed, and the firebox will also need attention before it can run again (I wonder if that's a similar issue with the Belpaire firebox as what PRR #1361 has faced). An RYPNer mentioned that there was drama surrounding #1355 involving replacing rivets in the boiler barrel, and holes that ended up oversized, which are not a deal breaker but complicate the process and add cost. But another RYPNer said they visited the museum, and were told there had never been a plan to get the #1355 under steam again, because "they said they only have about 1/4 mile of track and didn't think it would be worth all the time and money to get it running again."

No real word on what the plan is for where it will run, they're playing that one close to the chest, but I'm wondering if maybe there is some sort of short line in the area that will maybe play nice. I also don't believe that the museum has a coach fleet, which is another complication.

Arcade & Attica #18 continues to inch closer to being ready for operation, with the shop forces getting her primed for paint. The boiler jacket, appliances, running boards, and bell are all installed and everything is being primed. Graphite for the smokebox and stack, orange for the handrails, numbers, letters and runningboards, black everywhere else.

They have previously hydro-tested it, under FRA supervision, and it's been test-fired to make sure all the appliances work, but it has yet to make any test runs. The A&A is hoping that it should be running by the end of July, although any timeline involving restoration of a steam locomotive is tentative.

I'll be really excited to see the #18 run, since it's the only active large steam locomotive in the state of New York and it doesn't look like that'll be changing any time soon. As far as I know, there are no other operational restorations going on anywhere else in the state. It's a little under 3 hours east, so really, I can do a day trip to go see the #18 run.

Hopefully this rebuild, which was quite extensive, will give the #18 years of trouble-free service. The Arcade & Attica isn't the most cash-flush railroad in existence, and they've always kind of had to squeak by the #18, which has resulted in extended periods of time out of service during overhauls. When the new FRA regulations went into effect in 2001, basically a result of the Gettysburg Railroad crown sheet failure in '95, they had to take the #18 out of service to inspect it to make sure it was in compliance with the new regulations (already-operating locomotives were not grandfathered in) and originally it was only supposed to miss the 2001 season and maybe part of the 2002 season, and then was found to be in worse shape than expected and was out of service until 2008, being repaired and brought into compliance. Theoretically that would have made it safe to run through to 2023, if the in-service days were metered out right (you want about 98 days a year, to get the full 15 years out of it), but it was taken out of service early, before the 2018 season, due to issues with the boiler, particularly in the firebox. At that point the decision was made to yank the boiler off the frame, something I don't think has ever been done in the 60 years it's been at the A&A, and maybe not the in the 40 years before her arrival, and have the boiler completely gone through, have the firebox reconstructed to avoid future issues, and the running gear was sent out to Indiana for the Gramling Locomotive Works for an in-depth repair and overhaul. They've also traded out the old, worn-out tender with mismatched trucks and a noticeable downward rake for one off of ex-Frisco/Mississippian/Gettsyburg 2-8-0 #76, now on display as "B&O #476" in Oakland, MD. Hopefully during this batch of restoration and paint, the A&A lettering will be centered and straight on the tender. The previous paint job really triggered my OCD.

Some relatively rare footage of the #18 running, on a Dynamo Productions charter. Seems like, despite being the Empire State's only operational large steam locomotive, she's done a good job of dodging camera lenses, still and video alike. I'm hoping that with her return to service, someone will do a photo charter at some point in the future. And not have an exorbitant price tag attached. That rather unusual whistle is a Canadian National 4-chime, which isn't one you hear a lot of. Most of your whistles are single-chime (hooters), or 3-, 5-, or 6-chime if multiple notes. I believe CN was the only one to use a 4-chime, and I remember seeing a prototype seven-chime that Great Northern had blueprints for but never built.

Honestly, with the way New York is, and just the general shift across the country, I am kind of surprised that A&A stuck with having the #18 coal-fired and didn't have her converted to burning oil during this overhaul

NickD said:

NickD said:

On the topic of #611, there were a lot of people disappointed to learn that she apparently will not be running on the Virginia Scenic Railway for the Goshen-Staunton Shenandoah Valley Limited, after running a couple of those trips late last fall. 

Directly from the Buckingham Branch Railway/Virginia Scenic Railway's page. Definitely very strange when all of the trips were sold out last year, and BBR/VSR launched a pretty huge renovation at Goshen to accommodate the trips, including building a new 1500ft siding from scratch, access roads into a new 400 car parking facility and provisions for watering and coaling the #611, as well as rounding up cars for a train from all corners of the land and building a volunteer train crew of car hosts.

According to Ross Rowland, who seems to be involved at a certain level with this operation,  there were perhaps some issues between BBR and Virginia Museum of Transportation. Sounded like BBR busted their ass getting Goshen set up and running the trips, and VMT didn't really back them up. There were also some rumored leadership issues within the #611 crew which added additional turmoil to the equation. The small crew who got it done last year said we need at least a year off to catch our breath. According to both Ross and the unnamed BBR employee, the BBR will likely run the trips again in 2025 but this year was too much. 

Unfortunately, it sounds like another year will tick off the #611's boiler cert with no action. The #611 becomes due for her 1472 in 2030, and I have to wonder what the future will hold for her then. She was restored in 2015 for the NS 21st Century Steam program, which unexpectedly shut down in 2017, and since then it's always been a struggle to find a place for her to be able to run in the long-term.

Some more news has shaken out on this, and it sounds like things are getting kind of ugly at Virginia Museum of Transportation. Six board members resigned at the beginning of the recent membership meeting. Among them is a former official of Norfolk Southern who understands modern railroad operations as well as Will Harris who is the person who spearheaded the events last year in Goshen and funded them with his own personal money. That included, but was not limited to, constructing the new 1500ft long siding so the #611 and train had an operating base on his land, building a 400-car parking lot, building access roads into the facility, organizing the volunteer car host crews, locating and moving the 17 cars needed to make a train to Goshen, and ensuring there were coal & watering capabilities on site, and he did this using his own funds, and land, believing in the long term future for steam in VA. All of the transformation that took place to turn an open field into a stop point for excursions with parking and gravel pathways was paid for by him and not the museum.

Each board member that resigned apparently handed in a letter of resignation which included a list of the issues they had concerns about. All of the letters mentioned things such as....

1) financial irresponsiblity with the state money

2) VMT interference with the operations of the #611

3) Questions around locomotive maintenance and condition

A volunter who had been involved with VMT for years on this project and others, noted that the financial irresponsibility subject comes up often. There have been a lot of questions about the state funding and how it was spent or where it. When the "Fire Up 611" campaign kicked off back in 2015, part of the project's fundraising was for the VMT to construct a maintenance facility for the locomotive. All traces of this initiative and the program have been wiped clean from their site unfortunately. Every inspection and bit of work done on the locomotive has been done at Strasburg or the N.C. Transportation Museum. Questions about what happened to the money that was raised for the proposed locomotive facility that has not been built were always side-stepped. Some in the membership have also asked to see the financial records or where the money is going only to be told that this is private information despite VMT being a non-profit.

Also, moving forward, since Harris resigned from the Board, IF the #611 has a future on the Buckingham Branch, there exists the possibility that maybe he won't be willing to play nice anymore. Not trying to insinuate that Harris is vindictive or anything like that, but this could this could become a situation similar to what has developed on the East Broad Top where one guy, thinking he would be running the show owns a portion of land associated with the railroad, but since he isn't involved now can do whatever he wants and no one can do anything about it to stop him. Or Harris could effectively charge VMT ransom to store their locomotive on his siding/land and charge a per diem on any tickets sold originating from his location. Otherwise, VMT would have to find somewhere else with the logistical resources to do what has already been done in the most ideal location.

Some people reached out to VMT and tried to get any info, but mostly got the same ol' stuff run through a PR filter, including a delightful line about 'the board has always been unanimous', which is obvioulsy bunk. You don't have six members of the board unexpectedly resign all at once if things are just peachy. They also said that they are "in support of the engine's operations" but as one volunteer on the #611 said, they were on layover in Crewe in 2017 and had a board member come up in the cab and tell him that he liked the engine to be at the museum since he thought it brought more people through the front door. So, guess they aren't unanimous.

Harris reportedly retired due to health concerns and a desire to spend more time with his grandchildren, and the statements have been that there's no discord on the board (no word from the other 5 board members) but "For health reasons and to spend more time with his family" is the oldest of shopworn excuses for a forced retirement. Right up there with "has left to pursue other opportunities". I'd be interested to see what each of the other quitting board members gave as their reason.

Doyle Mccormack once said that there are more cold engines sitting around for egotistical and political reasons rather than mechanical issues, and this seems to be a case of that. There definitely seems to be a steam locomotive curse: The more successful you are, the closer you come to a meltdown.

The crisis here continues to deepen. The local newspapers in Roanoke have gotten ahold of this tale, and now the resigned board members are pushing for an audit. One board member who hasn't resigned has said that "the museum is either audited or reviewed by Anderson & Reed accountants on an annual basis, although it’s been a few years since the last audit." Which seems to be contradictory. Resigned board members also showed places where financial numbers allegedly differed, such as with a large order of merchandise placed ahead of the Norfolk & Western J Class 611 steam engine excursions that happened in Goshen last fall. Among the 611 merchandise, museum staff ordered roughly 6,000 hats themed to the beloved steam engine, but sold fewer than 1,000 hats during the excursions, according to documents. They also showed documents where the museum’s cost to purchase each hat varied by almost $6 per piece, depending on which document. Pretty eyebrow-raising is that the letter said there is more than $130,000 worth of excess merchandise leftover from recent 611 excursions, after $230,000 of goods were purchased for an event budgeted at $65,000. Sounds like those who were making the excursion happenen are mad that poor choices by others at the museum were tanking the profitability of the trip.

It raises lots of other troubling issues. One of them is that the VMT Board is in discussions with the FRA regarding allegations that the "point man" in charge of seeing to it that the locomotive was in compliance with all FRA regulations failed. Another is that there's still no accounting for the over $2 million grant for the railroad to construct a facility and store the locomotive. The facility has never been built in the 7 years since they fired up the #611 again, but no one can seem to say where the money is.

A great photo by George Hamlin of the "Jersey Builder" or "Bay Head Builder" or "Gin Bin", an odd bit of '70s railroading. A lot to unpack here, with more railroads than you would expect.

To begin with, the odd squared-off long hood belongs to an EMD GP40P, which is owned by Central Railroad of New Jersey, but financed for the CNJ by the Baltimore & Ohio and the New Jersey DOT. The story there was that the CNJ, which had just gone bankrupt for the 5th time, was hauling all their commuter runs with some absolutely worn-out GP7s and Fairbanks-Morse H-24-66s, and really needed newer, more reliable power. NJ DOT was worried about commuter service collapsing completely and so sweet-talked the B&O, who had a controlling interest in the Reading, who in turn had a controlling interest in the CNJ, into helping acquire new power for the CNJ. The B&O would back the purchase, but if CNJ was to go under completely or the state was to take over commuter runs, the locomotives would revert to B&O ownership. At the time, CNJ had been in talks with Alco to build a passenger version of their C430, but as soon as B&O got involved they put their foot down. It had to be something that would integrate nicely into the B&O roster, and B&O was an all-EMD show by this point, so CNJ ended up with GP40Ps, a GP40 on a longer frame with a squared-off long hood to contain a steam generator and passenger gearing and dual control stands. They were painted in B&O blue and yellow, numbered in the 3600-series block like the B&O's own GP40s, and the CNJ lettering on the hood sides was applied so that B&O could be applied over the top of it.

Now, behind that GP40P are a bunch of coaches in blue and white paint, and that's because they came from Burlington Northern and had originally been part of Great Northern's passenger fleet. GN had always had their classic green and orange passenger livery, but in 1967 had rolled out a fresh new gray, blue and white livery, called "Big Sky Blue". It was fairly short-lived though, since in 1970, Great Northern merged with CB&Q, Northern Pacific, and SP&S to form Burlington Northern. Not all the equipment had even received Big Sky Blue and the repainting started again, with Burlington Northern's new "Cascade Green" and white livery. This was even shorter-lived, due to the advent of Amtrak about a year later, however. So when Amtrak took over, BN had cars in GN Omaha Orange and Pullman Green, GN Big Sky Blue, and BN Cascade Green, as well as Northern Pacific two-tone green and CB&Q stainless-steel. Another effect of Amtrak was that fewer of the national fleet of long-haul passenger cars were required, due to the discontinuance of many of the trains that were still operating on April 30, 1971.  As a result, many cars were not required for Amtrak’s initial fleet, and were available for sale. CNJ had an ancient coach fleet of their own, mostly old balloon-top cars from the 1920s that had been built with the option to make into EMUs for a stillborn electrification plan, as well as some secondhand stainless coaches from Santa Fe and Rock Island and some smoothside Budds from Missouri Pacific, so they grabbed up a bunch of the ex-BN coaches, all of GN heritage and in all three paint schemes. Since these coaches had been used on the Empire Builder, they were nicknamed "Jersey Builder" or "Bay Head Builders" and some people called them "Gin-Bins" because they were G(i)N/B(i)N cars.

So, I mentioned that CNJ had a stillborn electrification program, so whose wire is that overhead? Well, that's the Pennsylvania Railroad (or Penn Central, since this is 1973) catenary at Elizabeth, New Jersey. In 1967, there was a move to reduce taxes and overhead via the Aldene Plan, where the CNJ’s commuter services began terminating at Penn Station in Newark, rather than the Jersey Central’s historic riverfront terminal in Jersey City. It would involve the building of a ramp to connect the CNJ and the Lehigh Valley Railroad at the site of the recently abandoned Aldene Station to reroute trains bound for Jersey City to follow the LV to the Pennsy's New York & Long Branch. Passenger train ceased to utilize the CNJ’s own line along the “Chemical Coast” north of Perth Amboy, and ran instead on the routing used by the PRR’s own trains between Perth Amboy and Rahway, where the branch from the North Jersey Coast Line joined the Philadelphia-New York main line via a grade-separated junction. 

So, in this photo you have B&O-financed diesels in CNJ paint, pulling GN/BN coaches on PRR/PC tracks

A "Jersey Builder" at Bay Head with a mix of BN/GN paint on the passenger cars, as well as one ex-MoPac coach in the mix.

One of the GP40Ps with four Big Sky Blue coaches and one Omaha Orange car.

Even more of a visual mess, we've got a GP7 in the "Red Baron" livery that was introduced late in the CNJ's lifetime, with a B&O blue GP40P, and Big Sky Blue coaches.

All the oddball used passenger equipment really magnified the ragtag appearance of the CNJ. Always financially ill due to short haul distances, brutal NJ taxes, and money-losing commuter services, the CNJ went bankrupt in 1939 and then again in 1967. They had been the last Class I to run Camelbacks during the steam era, 30+ year old T-38 4-6-0s, simply because they couldn't afford to replace them. In the diesel era, they bought from just about every manufacturer, with DR-4-4-1500s and twin-cab DRX-6-4-2000s from Baldwin, H-15-44s and H-24-66s from Fairbanks-Morse, RSD-4s and RS-3s from Alco, and F3s and GP7s and SD35s from EMD, and had half a dozen different paint schemes floating around at any one time. The Reading and B&O, and even the N&W, propped the CNJ up enough to keep it running but none of them wanted to take over the railroad. It served as their eastern end into NJ and NY, but kept them from having to operate those onerous NJ commuter operations. The borrowed N&W F7s (themselves acquired through the N&W takeover of Wabash) and B&O F7s, secondhand ex-B&O SD40s, and even a few Reading AS-16s (to use with the last remaining "babyface" DR-4-4-1500, #71, after her partner #75 died) added to an increasingly motley appearance, along with the secondhand coaches from ATSF, Rock Island, Missouri Pacific, and Great Northern/Burlington Northern. It looked less a railroad and more a rolling museum....or junkyard. In 1967, it gave up it's own access to Jersey City, and then 5 years later, it gave up all lines outside of it's home state.

CNJ GP7 #1523, in badly weathered blue and yellow, leads a string of the ex-MoPac coaches. The odd boxy protuberance at the bottom of the long hood contained a generator for car lighting. The old passenger cars used steam heat and electric lighting. In normal circumstances, a passenger car had an axle driven generator that provided lighting and charged banks of batteries, which lit the cars when the train wasn't moving. But on the CNJ's commuter runs, with lots of stops and shorts spurts of movement, the battery banks would get discharged and the axle-driven generators couldn't keep up. So the GP7s were delivered with a generator in the long hood strictly to run the train lights. C&NW and Boston & Maine had similar GP7s for the same reason.

CNJ "Red Baron" SD40 #3067 leads two blue and yellow RS-3s through Bridgewater, NJ, one year before Conrail. To the right is the junction with the Reading. In December of '67, the B&O sold 8 of it's own SD40s to the CNJ to help keep operations moving. In 1972, CNJ rolled out the new US Coast Guard-inspired painted, nicknamed the "Red Baron" livery and applied it to a small handful of GP7s and RS-3s, as well as this single 6-axle unit.

Tired-looking Baldwin DR-4-4-1500s pass by JU Tower at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with an eastbound freight in December of 1963. The neglect has already set in. To be fair though, the "Babyfaces" on the CNJ outlasted them on pretty much any other railroad. Particularly odd is that the CNJ's DR-4-4-1500s outlasted the CNJ's EMD F3s, for one reason. When the CNJ was looking at buying SD35s in 1965, the first new power in 9 years, they found that the trade-in value for the F3s was better than the orphan Baldwins, and so the F3s went to Pielet Bros. scrapyard and the remaining DR-4-4-1500s hung around. Near the end, their numbers had dwindled down to just a single A-unit, CNJ #71, and since Baldwin's couldn't M.U. with anything else, and you can't really operate a carbody unit in reverse, they were having to borrow Reading Baldwin AS-16 road switchers to hook to the back end and pair with it.

At or near the highest point (elevation: 1676 feet) on the Jersey Central: Mountain Top, PA. The EMD SD35s with a westbound freight have just met a Lehigh Valley eastbound, and are beginning the steep descent to Ashley (elev. 650'). The Lehigh Valley helper set, which cut off from the eastbound, will follow the CNJ freight west as far as Laurel Run, where they will regain LV rails to Coxton. Taken in 1970, in just two years, the CNJ would end their lease of the Lehigh & Susquehanna, the Lehigh Coal & Navigation's line from Allentown up to Scranton, and abruptly pull out of Pennsylvania entirely, forcing Lehigh Valley to take over these lines and merge the L&S and their own lines together.

An SD35 and a "Red Baron" RS-3 pass by MP 38, Raritan NJ, in 1974. By this point, the ICC and USRA had determined that the CNJ, RDG, LV and Penn Central were not capable of reorganizing and were already working on their ominous-sounding Final Solution Plan to try and save the northeast. The original idea had the CNJ and Reading being taken over by Chessie System (B&O/C&O/WM) as well as the Chessie System getting the eastern end of the Erie-Lackawanna, while Penn Central, Lehigh Valley and Lehigh & Hudson River would be consolidated and placed under government watch. When the E-L unions refused to come to the table, the plan fell apart.

A "Red Baron" RS-3 leading two SD35s.

Leased F7s at the Communipaw engine facility in Jersey City. The #13 is one of the F7As that B&O lent to the CNJ, and CNJ was allowed to paint their logos and renumber them. The N&W F7As, already secondhand from the Wabash, retained the N&W lettering and numbers. 

DR-4-4-1500s trudging out of what I believe is High Bridge, NJ

A rare complete A-B-B-A set of DR-4-4-1500s at what I think might be Allentown Yard.

Over the weekend, I was out to the Finger Lakes for an Evolution Performance Driving School on Saturday and then a Finger Lakes Region SCCA autocross on Sunday. I spent Sunday night in Canandaigua and then decided to follow Finger Lakes Railway's GS-2 freight east on Monday. GS-2 runs from the FGLK's yard in Geneva to the interchange with CSX at Solvay every day except Saturday on the old NYC Auburn Road.

This is the main headquarters, enginehouse and yard at Geneva. Dead center we've got one of the AllEarth Rail RDCs that the FGLK was leasing. AllEarth Power got out of the rail business and sold all these RDCs to an operation up in Canada, which should include this one, but apparently this one hasn't been picked up yet. AllEarth Rail was an offshoot of Vermont-based solar panel manufacturer AllEarth Power, whose owner wanted commuter rail in Vermont and bought a bunch of RDCs with some plan to petition for Vermont to start commuter rail service and then he would force them to lease his RDCs, which would eventually be converted to battery electric power. That never came to be, and so he later started leasing out the RDCs, still Detroit 6-110 powered, to operations.

Behind the RDCS, and off to the left, are the GP38-2s that are painted in FGLK's NYC "lighting stripe" inspired livery. These days, motive power on FGLK trains is either GE B23-7s, numbered in the 2300-series, or GP38-2s, numbered in the 2000-series. They once had GP9s and SD40s, but those are gone or retired. You can see one of the rare exceptions, barely, off to the right. That is FGLK #2201, an ex-L&N U23B painted in Lehigh Valley-inspired paint. I don't know how much the #2201 gets out these days.

Looking down into the yard and enginehouse from a grade crossing, with Geneva on the hillside behind it.

GY-2 (Geneva Yard Job) was switching cars in the yard, both to build GS-2 and to service local customer Guardian, with ex-Conrail GE B23-7 #2301.

'

At one point they set three covered hopper cars out, installed an End Of Train Device, then cranked down the handbrakes, and mys assumption was that was the tail end of GS-2, and that they would add more cars to it. Well, they gathered up a huge string of covered hoppers, and then came over onto the closest track and aligned the switch to head north to Guardian, and then two of the GP38-2s started backing down and at that point I realized that GS-2 was likely just going to be those three cars.

GS-2 gets out of town behind GP38-2s #2003 and #2001. The #2001 is ex-Conrail, while the #2003 is actually an ex-Milwaukee Road GP40 that was converted to a GP38-2 later in life (basically, update electrical gear, remove turbocharger) for use on Union Pacific. I liked having the bumper for this siding that appears to be long disused in the foreground. And, yep, three covered hopper cars comprises the whole train as it leaves Geneva. I've seen mentions of 50-60 car trains, but I guess my luck with catching R&N NRFFs that are barely into the double-digits also applies on the FGLK as well.