Entering Waterloo, NY. For being just GP38-2s (well, originally a GP40 in #2003's case), these are still very sharp units. I supposed future generations will look back on that comment and go "Just GP38-2s?! They could go out and shoot them any time and complained about them! They didn't know what how good they had it!"
Tiptoeing through Waterloo. There was a string of grade crossings, and this was the best shot I could get. I don't think it would be considered technically correct, but I still like it. Just before the crossing there was both a stone whistle post and a stone milepost, but there was no way to get a shot with them in it. There's a surprising amount of the whistle posts and mileposts left on this line, but they are all in terrible places to try and work them into a shot.
The original brick passenger depot and freight house in Seneca Falls, now used by municipalities. There's no way to really work these into an eastbound shot, between the lighting and vegetation, but it's cool they're still standing. It's amazing how many of the stations and freight houses are still left on this line. I know there's the depot and freighthouse at Shortsville, the depot at Clifton Springs, the depot and freight house at Seneca Falls, the depot at Cayuga Lake, the depot at Skaneateles Junction, and the depot at Marcellus/"Martisco".
Tried to get a shot of it passing by the old Mynderse Academy. I wasn't super happy with the shot but there's just so many trees in the way. That is one of the old stone whistle posts about halfway back on the first locomotive.
Having swung over a caseway on the north end of Cayuga Lake, GS-2 turns back south and passes by the old station. You have to hustle here to get ahead of the train if you go to Seneva Falls, because the train heads straight across the lake, while you have to head north, go around the tip of the lake, and then come back south by car. The whole time I was racing down along the east shore of the lake, I could occasionally look out to the left and see the train crossing the bridges and causeways, and I barely had time to get here, park and get out to snap this shot.
Crossing the Owasco Creek at Auburn, NY.
I went to Skaneateles Junction, where the NYC's Auburn Road once connected to the now-extinct Skaneateles Short Line Railroad, which fed traffic at Skaneateles Falls, and I had gotten stuck in traffic on the way there, so I waited and waited and waited, and at one point was about ready to throw in the towel, thinking it had gotten ahead of me. Well, unlike, say R&N's North Reading Fast Freight, FGLK's GS-2 does stop and switch some industries, and had stopped in Auburn to set out one of the covered hoppers, dropping our train length to a mighty 2 cars.
Passing by the gorgeous "Martisco" station in Marcellus. When the Auburn Road was originally built by the Auburn & Syracuse in 1850, they bypassed the village center of Marcellus, but they did provide a station, albeit some some two miles north. Originally a wooden structure, the present two-story Italianate brick structure was erected in 1870. In 1897, the Marcellus Electric Railroad was chartered to provide a direct rail line between the village of Marcellus and the Rochester & Syracuse station, and in 1905, the Marcellus & Otisco Lake Railway was formed to take over operation of the Marcellus Electric Railroad short line. By that point, the Auburn Road was under New York Central control, and the New York Central had it's own station directly in Marcellus, so to avoid confusion, this location was renamed to "Martisco", a contraction of Marcellus and Otisco.
Nick, can you elaborate a bit more on: "stone whistle post and a stone milepost"?
I am assuming they are very old (thus stone) markers that tell the train where it is on the line (milepost) and where there is a crossing coming up and thus should start hitting the whistle?
This is what the Google is seeing as a stone whistle post (although I don't see a crossing, maybe around the corner?). I am assuming they would normally be on one side of the track? So, in this case, the crossing may be behind the camera.
Passing by the old, inactive, semaphore on final approach to Solvay Yard. It had stopped a little bit west of here, and grabbed 4 boxcars, two regular height and two extended height, bringing our grand total up to six cars on the last leg of the run. I didn't get a photo of it, unfortunately, but one of the boxcars was an old Wisconsin Central car, which is pretty neat, since the WC vanished in 2001. Earlier in the weekend, while driving back to my hotel, I had also seen a Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion boxcar in Geneva Yard, but it was gone by Monday morning.
aircooled said:Nick, can you elaborate a bit more on: "stone whistle post and a stone milepost"?
I am assuming they are very old (thus stone) markers that tell the train where it is on the line (milepost) and where there is a crossing coming up and thus should start hitting the whistle?
This is what the Google is seeing as a stone whistle post (although I don't see a crossing, maybe around the corner?). I am assuming they would normally be on one side of the track? So, in this case, the crossing may be behind the camera.
Yeah, basically whistle posts let you know where to start blowing the whistle, typically two long applications, a short application, and then another long that was held until you entered the crossing. It was standardized as that by the AAR, but before that, the signal for a crossing did vary from railroad to railroad or even division to division. (John Taibi's book on the New York Central's Adirondack Division mentions that on that division, until the signal was standardized, you blew two longs and two shorts for a crossing). Sometimes you would whistle for a tight clearance, like a cut in the land, to give people time to get clear of the cut before a train entered. I know the Adirondack Division does have a whistle post for a cut just south of Thendara, and when I ran the Colebrookdale's GP38-2, there was also a pretty tight cut there that I had to reduce speed and whistle for in case any of the locals were walking the tracks. Early on, whistle posts were wooden, then replaced with stone or concrete, and now they are metal on a piece of channel iron, like a modern road sign. I have also seen workers holding a whistle sign. In that case, it was that it was a double-track mainline and Maintenance Of Way crews had one track out of service, and so trains were to blow the horn on approach so that no workers were inadvertently too close to the active tracks.
Mileposts usually were based from the end of the line or branch or division. Again, I'll go with the New York Central, because I'm most familiar with their system and how it was laid out, and they were pretty standardized. The "Water Level Route" from New York City to Chicago was all marked NY1, NY2, NY3, and so on. Then where the divisions branched off, your mile markers started from there. The Utica & Black River split off at Utica, so all mileposts were U1, U2, U3, etc. The Adirondack Division split off the main line at Herkimer so all the mileposts started with H. The Auburn Road split off at Syracuse, so they're all S1, S2, S3, etc. They were useful for knowing where you are. Okay, we're at H26 and Remsen Depot is H27.7, so we need to be ready to stop. Or, we're at H16 and Remsen Hill is from H17 to H19, so we need to start building up some speed in advance. You would also have orders based around mileposts; "Hold at Milepost 36 to wait for a train that's running late to pass" or "Trackwork at Milepost 164, be prepared to slow down". Of course, mileposts could get weird as rail lines were developed, improved and merged. For example, in the lead up to the Erie-Lackawanna merger, Erie dumped their old Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City and moved everything over to DL&W's Hoboken Terminal. But the old Erie mainline mileposts still were JCxxx, even though you couldn't get to Jersey City. When NYC dumped the southern end of the Adirondack Division from Herkimer to Remsen and ran everything up the old U&BR, the mileposts were all marked U for Utica below Remsen but then turn to H for Herkimer above Remsen even though Herkimer was severed from the line. And I remember reading that the D&H did a pretty major reconstruction program on the old Penn Division that realigned the line and shortened it up rather significantly. They kept the mile markers the same from one end and then just had a "short" mile at the one end, rather than renumber the entire system.
I mentioned a Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion boxcar in an above post, which is a really obscure one. The LEF&C can trace it's ancestry back to 1903, with the Clarion, Summerville & Pittsburgh, although it didn't take the LEF&C name in 1913, as a result of consolidation of three railroads in the area. The name was a bit optimistic, since the line never reached Lake Erie or Franklin, but it was based out of Clarion, PA. Originally formed to haul timber products, it shifted into the coal industry shortly afterwards and ran from Clarion southeast to Strattanville, Holden, Sutton (where it interchanged with the New York Central's Pennsylvania Division) and Summerville (where it interchanged with the PRR). This gave the railroad 15 miles of total mainline track, although trackage rights over the NYC to Franklin expanded it's effective length to 80 miles in the early '20s. That was short-lived, since the NYC ended those trackage rights in 1924, and a year later the LEF&C also abandoned it's 3.2 mile Mill Creek Branch from Strattanville to Mill Creek.
The LEF&C toiled in relative obscurity, largely due to it's short length and remote location, although it was profitable almost the entirety of it's life, excepting the Great Depression through '35, and the final years from the late '80s to it's abandonment in 1993, when the Clarion River region coal mines began to close down and Conrail began to pull out of the Clearfield coal fields and abandoned the NYC Penn Division. It dieselized early, purchasing two new RS-1s in '49 and a used Minneapolis & St. Louis RS-1 in 1950, and it's remaining diesel purchases were all end-cab EMD switchers, two SW1500s in '71 and four MP15DCs in '76. One of the RS-1s, #20, actually survives, having been sold to Livonia, Avon & Lakeville in 1972 when the SW1500s arrived and then having been donated to Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum in 2016.
So, what's the deal with a Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion boxcar still in service? After all, the LEF&C was a pretty obscure line and even larger shortlines and regionals today rarely own their own cars, and the LEF&C vanished 30 years ago anyways. Well, it's a snapshot of some of the odd '70s railroading practices, in this case, the short-lived "incentive per diem boxcars".
All through the '50s and '60s the rules on boxcars was that a "foreign" boxcar racked up per diem charges while on the rails of a railroad, which was about $12 a day. But the AAR car-service rules required that once a boxcar went out to a customer, was required to be reloaded and sent back, or if there were no nearby qualifying loads headed to the railroad that owned the car, it then either had to be sent back, empty, to the nearest interchange with the owning railroad or follow the exact same route back the way it'd come out loaded.
This worked pretty well for decades, since the boxcar was the primary car for handling most freight and odds were they were coming and going loaded. But by the late '60s, most traffic that could be handled by boxcars was being shipped by truck. So a lot of boxcars went out loaded and hung around for a while waiting for a qualifying load only to come back empty. This resulted in extremely low utilization, with something like only 10% of boxcars in service throughout the nation. And the per diem charges were so low that there was no profit in handling loads by boxcars. This result was a lot of boxcars dated back to before WWII and were getting to be in very poor shape, but railroads weren't going to spend money on new cars that were going to barely see any use and didn't generate any profit when they were used.
In turn, industries that were still shipping by rail, predominantly food manufacturers and paper mills, began to scream bloody murder over the manufactured shortage of boxcars, particularly clean, leak-free boxcars. The ICC's fix was "incentive per diem boxcars". Any new-construction boxcars would be eligible for a higher per diem charge, $22 a day, plus a mileage charge of 4.7 cents a mile for the first five years of it's use and these cars would also be free of the old requirement that they be sent back to the owning railroad every trip. They could go anywhere they wanted after a trip. This would hopefully encourage railroads to buy new boxcars and circulate them more. The catch? There was a percentage limit on how many new boxcars a railroad could build to get in under the new IPD boxcar rules, based on the existing amount of boxcars that a railroad owned when the new rules went into effect.
Now, if a railroad didn't own any boxcars when the rule went into effect, which a lot of shortlines didn't, then there was no restriction on the amount of boxcars they could build to take advantage of the IPD. On paper most shortlines lacked the capital to go build huge fleets of boxcars, so the ICC likely didn't think it would be a problem. Instead, investment firms saw a weird loophole to take advantage of: they would buy huge fleets of boxcars, lease them to a shortline, and then collect a percentage of profit. And it did work. IPD boxcars were seeing 75% usage rates, which was turning into earnings of $6000-7000 a year, which was a solid return on a $32000 car that had a projected lifespan of 30-40 years, a tidy profit for both investors and shortlines. Tax breaks tied to financing had huge incentives, and investors and leasing companies projected paying off the cars before the 5 year date hit and the per diem rate dropped, which owuld mean the cars would still be profitable. Investment companies quickly figured out that western timber railroads were the most profitable IPD owners; the cars would be loaded up with paper on the west coast, head east, and then be gone for huge amounts of time, racking up huge per diem charges for a big proft. Customers were happy too, since there was a huge supply of clean, leak-free boxcars to move their products on. And railfans got to spot all sorts of new, brightly painted boxcars travling around with unusual and unfamiliar names, like Marinette, Tomahawk & Western.
Some of these IPD boxcar fleets were massive, and were actually longer than the entire trackage of the railroad. The one-mile long Virginia Central had 200 cars. Atlantic & Western had three miles of track but 625 cars. Hutchinson & Northern had six miles of track and 575 boxcars. Pickens Railroad had 700 boxcars against their nine miles of tracks. The Lake Erie, Franklin & Clarion bought 515 boxcars versus their 15 miles of tracks. The 63 mile St. Lawrence Railway had the most, with 3200 boxcars and other four-digit owners included Ashley, Drew & Northern (1200), Maryland & Pennsylvania (1200), New Orleans Public Belt (1100), St. Marys Railway (1055), Alabama State Docks Terminal Railway (1000) and White City Oregon (1300). A bunch of investment and fleet management companies formed to own multiple rosters of IPD cars across multiple railroads; Itel and subsidiary SSI Rail, Brae, National Railway Utilization Corp, and Emons Industries. These companies built car repair shops, and even took control of some of the shortlines that were leasing IPD cars from them. Itel in particular owned seven shortlines through it's SSI Rail subsidiary.
The good times came to an end in 1980 though. Between the recession and deregulation of the trucking industry, a lot of that boxcar traffic suddenly dried up. This was combined with the explosion in box car fleets (15000 in 1978, 40000 in 1981) as investment companies and investors just kept buying new cars, since they didn't all have a grasp on how the railroad industry worked. The surplus of boxcars also caused the ICC to eliminate the incentive portion of the per diem rates for boxcars. Suddenly, all the chickens, or boxcars, came home to roost, literally. Since there were no loadouts for them, railroads began sending them back to the shortlines that owned them, and suddenly these shortlines were inundated with the cars that they owned and really hadn't ever seen. As one Conrail employee told, the yardmaster looked at a huge cut of IPD cars headed back to their owners and said "About time that all the doctors and lawyers get a chance to see their boxcars." Since most of these railroads didn't have on-line customers or the space to store hundreds of cars, they were then having to pay Class Is to store the cars for them, and now these profit-generators were draining money instead. They defaulted on the leases and now all these leasing companies were stuck with fleets of boxcars with no use for them. Railvest, who owned the Virginia Central went bankrupt first, preceding the recession, ceasing operations in 1978, a warning to the rest. Itel entered Chapter 11 in January of '81 and Emons in 1984, individual investors were losing money, and entire fleets were sold off to Class Is for pennies just to get rid of them.
An odd twist though was that any IPD boxcars that kept their shortline markings as of December 31st, 1981 had their per diem rates locked in for life, which makes them very attractive for secondhand buyers, which explains why 30 years after the LEF&C vanished, there are still boxcars rattling around in their paint and markings. As they near their mandatory 50-year retirement age though, those cars will start to dwindle, although reportedly, there have been talks about bumping that to 60 years, again due to a shortage of new boxcars.
Lerro Photography announced that they are doing a photo charter with Pere Marquette #1225 this fall in Owosso, Michigan and they said it be disguised as "C&O #2699". Now, the C&O, PM and NKP Berkshires are all related, as are the extinct Erie and W&LE Berkshires (the Van Sweringen brothers owned all those railroads and had a design committee for motive power for them) and NKP #765 has been disguised as a C&O "Kanawha" once, so my first thought was that they were going to dress the PM #1225 up as a C&O engine. But the number had be scratching my head, since all the C&O 2-8-4s were in the 2700-series, so why #2699 and why not #2725 (like when NKP #765 became C&O #2765) or even #2790 (one digit after the last C&O 2-8-4).
But then I read the info for the charter and forgot all about a rather obscure point; when the C&O absorbed the Pere Marquette in 1947, after years of ownership, the Pere Marquette still had a number of it's Berkshires running around and they were all to be renumbered into the 2600-series, since they were older than the C&O 2-8-4s, and they were to receive Chesapeake & Ohio tender lettering and the "C&O: For Progress" logo on the tender. Pere Marquette #1225 was to become C&O #2659, for example. But one stipulation of the merger was that only the locomotives that was fully paid for could be renumbered and repainted, which meant only the 1937 built Class Ns (#1201-#1215) could be renumbered and repainted. The newer 1941-built N-1s (#1216-#1227) and 1944-built N-2s (#1228-#1239). Shortly after that was announced, C&O instead began dieselizing the west end of the system, and the ex-Pere Marquette N Berkshires were mostly retired by '51, sidelined at just a over decade old and scrapped by '54. N-1 scrap dates were mostly in the late 1950s and all surviving N-2s were retired in January 1958 and scrapped in 1961.
As a result of this merger stipulation and change in plans, most of the PM engines were never renumbered, let alone relettered for their new owner. Only two or three ex-PM Berkshires ever received that distinct logo on the side of the tender and Lerro has photo evidence of the #2699 renumbered and wearing the logo, so that’s the number they are going to give the engine for the photo charter.
The #2694, which has gotten C&O lettering but not the "For Progress" logo appears to be the Judas sheep here, towing nine of it's stablemates to their likely retirement.
Nick, we spent the majority of today meandering northwest through TX & following BNSF along most of our route & I have a couple questions. .
Along the way I saw 2 things that surprised me:
Edit: I saw a BNSF intermodal on a different sub today that did have a DPU, and a coal train that had helpers on the end, even though it was only 1/2 mile long.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
On the DPUs, it could be the territory, since that's flatland running with minimal curves, don't really need to be as careful of string-lining or managing the slack action. Although CSX has DPUs on pretty much everything on the Chicago Main, and that's the old NYC Water Level Route, which has about as little grading as you can get and had a lot of the curves (and grade crossings) removed through repeated redesigns in the '30s through the early '60s. Also, from what I'm reading, on a lot of their trains, BNSF just isn't as prone to running DPUs as other railroads. They do add a lot of logistics; they're kind of a chore to add to the train and link to the head end and any time you have to fuel enroute, you have to fuel the head end and the DPUS, which causes delay not only to the train itself, but also for following trains waiting to get to a fuel pad. Even over Cajon Pass, they aren't as prone to adding DPUs, but they do add them over the steeper, and tightly curved, Tehachapi. In the winter, BNSF does like to run DPUs, just because a rear, or midtrain, unit helps maintaining your brake air pressure when you get some leaks due to cold temps.
Piggyback is still a thing, but if you live in CSX territory, you don't see it as much because CSX owns CSX Intermodal, which is their big container-handling business. CSX has always been all-in on container double-stacks, which is ironic since C&O pioneered RoadRailers. ATSF on the other hand was always big into TOFC, with stuff like the Super C transcontinental high-speed piggyback trains. ATSF actually kind of missed the boat on container trains because they were convinced that TOFC was the way to go, and they went down some strange development paths with stuff like the "Fuel-Foiler" ten-pack articulated piggyback cars. And then they got on board the container craze with their bizarre, unwieldy "A Stacks", which used the spine cars for the "Fuel Foilers", but were a complete flop.
Going back to the Berskhire wheel arrangement, there were quite a few famous members of that wheel arrangement. Of course, the Van Sweringen Berkshires (NKP, Erie, Pere Marquette, Wheeling & Lake Erie, C&O) have always been quite famous for their performance and clean appearances. The Virginian 2-8-4s have a fringe fame, since they were exact copies of the C&O design. Louisville & Nashville's "Big Emmas" held the crown for being the most expensive 2-8-4s built and for modernizing the L&N's somewhat antiquated and lightweight steam fleet. The Boston & Albany's were known for being the first and the originator of the wheel arrangement. Boston & Maine's have a cult following because of that weird externally-mounted Coffin feedwater heater. But there were some other ones that were truly obscure and rarely photographed. Interesting to note is that almost all of these were of the 63"-drivered variants. The 69/70"-drivered Berkshires tended to be much more successful, since the larger drive wheels allowed faster running speed for extended periods of time, which took advantage of the larger firebox afforded by the 4-wheel trailing truck.
Detroit, Toledo & Ironton purchased 6 Berkshires from in the '30s, with 4 in '35 and 2 more in '39. Interesting that they purchased Berkshires at this point, since the DT&I was under the control of the PRR at that point, and the PRR was never a fan of 2-axle trailing trucks. The PRR had already sold some H-series Consolidations to the DT&I, and it's surprising they didn't transfer a few more of those, or maybe even some L1 Mikados or I1 Decapods instead. They became preferred locomotives on the south end of the line over Summit to Glen Jean, Greggs, and Jackson. because of their superior performance in handling coal and ore drags, but there were problems with the design, at least as far as their service on the DT&I was concerned. The railroad was too narrow in places and much of the right of way had badly conditioned ties, and the four-wheel Commonwealth trailing truck proved troublesome in yard switching duty with its high axle loadings, while the large twelve wheel tender was a problem on light rails of passing sidings and yard trackage. The verdict on the all-weather cabs split down a seasonal divide: in the winter they were great, but "summer was dreaded. Crewmen would open all the doors and windows and even wore an extra set of coveralls to protect them from the intense heat in the cabs. They were handsome engines, with Coffin internal feedwater heaters, embossed steel emblems on the tender, center headlights, covered air pumps and an interesting pilot.
One of the more camera-shy variants, the Chicago & North Western purchased 12 of the wheel arrangements in 1927, which were built by Lima and bore a strong mechanical resemblance to the Boston & Albany's A-1-c Berkshires. Appearance-wise, they were pure C&NW, with a centered headlight, bell mounted above the headlight, and a Mars light at the top of the smokebox, and the twelve were classed as J-4s. Photos of them are rare and mentions of their actual performance are even rarer, but they were retired in 1950, which seems to indicate that, while not an outright failure, they weren't worth holding onto until the end of steam.
The Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo (which reached neither Toronto nor Buffalo) was owned by New York Central (73%) and Canadian Pacific (27%) and used to cross the NY/Canada border at the northwestern end of NY state. Since the NYC had majority ownership, lots of TH&B motive power was NYC castoffs, including a couple of those famed NYC Hudsons, but there was some new design equipment as well. TH&B traffic up the Niagara Falls Escarpment entailed scaling a 1.04% grade for 4.41 miles and existing Consolidations couldn't manage the loads. Tests with a New York Central Mikado and a Boston & Albany Berkshire led the railroad to opt for the latter but there was a hitch. For reasons of economy, mainly taxes, it was decided to build the locomotives in Canada, but Lima had no Canadian subsidiary so tooling would have been prohibitively expensive for such a small order. As luck would have it Alco had just finished an order for 12 Berkshires of their own design for the aforementioned C&NW, so the patterns were promptly rushed to MLW Alco's Canadian wing. By "small order", I mean two locomotives, the only engines of that wheel arrangement ordered by a Canadian railroad. Not long after the TH&B put the pair in service, however, they found their low factor of adhesion limited them to a 2,450 ton train load limitation without a helper engine and so, to address that issue as well as problems with slippage and stalling when starting from rest, the shops installed Franklin trailing truck boosters in August 1929. After a 25-year career, the two As were the last freight steam to operate on the TH&B. Both engines went to the scrapper in November 1953.
The Santa Fe was no stranger to Lima's "Superpower" concept, although their examples all came from Baldwin; the 84"-drivered, 300psi 3460-series Hudsons, the legion of tireless 2900- and 3700-series Northerns, and those tremendous 73"-drivered 5011-series Texas-types. But, in 1927, ATSF also had Baldwin build them fifteen 2-8-4s. Yes, the ATSF is not a railroad that comes to mind when the Berkshire wheel arrangement is mentioned, and that's because these were relatively underwhelming engines. The most damning statement I've heard of them was that they were "1923 engines with a 1927 wheel arrangement." Essentially a Mikado with a two-axle trailing truck grafted under it because that was the newest wheel arrangement, they lived 27 year careers but were rarely photographed and rarely mentioned. The ATSF also ended up with some used B&M 2-8-4s at the end of WWII, which they restyled to look more like conventional ATSF power, but those were also poor performers, which was why Boston & Maine was happy to foist them off on ATSF and SP, and go largely unspoken of.
Extremely difficult to find photos of, this is one of the Norfolk Southern's "pocket Berkshires" working in it's second life for the Nacionales de Mexico. These five locomotives were designed specifically for use on the (original) Norfolk Southern, which could only handle a maximum axle weight of 50,000 pounds. These Berkshires were essentially a Mikado with an extra trailing axle to reduce the axle loadings, and they had 63" diameter drivers, 23.5" x 30" cylinders, a 250 psi boiler pressure, and exerted 49,300 pounds of tractive effort. Each weighed 335,400 pounds, making them the smallest and lightest Berkshires built. Rather modern for their size, they had nickel steel boilers, Hichen type tenders, and the front pair of main drivers were equipped with the Alco Lateral Motion driving box that reduced the rigid wheel base to 11-feet in order to better negotiate the 10 degree curves between Colon and Mount Gilead. They were the first and only stoker-equipped locomotives owned by Norfolk Southern and served a crucial role during WWII, but were disposed off around 1949-1950, heading down to Mexico to join other American expatriates, like Flagler-era FEC 4-8-2s, D&RGW narrow-gauge 2-8-0s and Nickel Plate Mikados, and some of them ran there until as late as 1962.
Perhaps the most camera-shy were the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac's 10 Lima-built Berkshires that were purchased in '43, and were the rare case of a short-lived and obscure 69"-drivered Berkshire. Purchased strictly because of the drought of diesels in WWII, these were essentially reprints of the NKP/PM design, and were likely well-suited to the RF&P's high speed bridge line nature. Leased briefly by the PRR in 1950 and again in '51, they were retired and scrapped by '52, at less than 10 years old.
Missouri Pacific owned locomotives of 14 different wheel arrangements, so the fact that they had Berkshires shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but they were still rarely-seen machines. In 1928, MP ordered 5 Alco-built 63"-driver Berkshires for subsidiary International-Great Northern, with Walschaerts valve gear, Worthington 4 1/2 BL feedwater heater, Chambers front-end throttle, Alco Type G power reversing gear, Franklin trailing truck booster, and Dupont Simplex mechanical stokers. They performed fairly well and in 1930, Missouri Pacific received another 15 engines for themselves, but these were built by Lima. They still used Walschaerts valve gear, which was unusual, since Lima preferred to use Baker valve gear on their engines. These vanished between '40 and '42 though, when MP rebuilt all of them into 75"-drivered Northerns. Like a lot of WWII-era "rebuilds", how much of the original Berkshire was reused is debated, but it's noted that "practically complete boilers were constructed at the Sedalia shops ...". In addition, "new [General Steel Castings] cast-steel bed frames with integral cylinders [were] applied, also new and larger driving wheels, roller bearings, new valve gear and rods, and larger tenders installed." Which makes it sound like just the boiler course with the serial number was reused to get around wartime restrictions, and maybe some of the appliances.
Illinois Central was another railroad that largely avoided the 2-axle trailing truck, preferring 4-8-2 and 2-10-2s and 4-6-2s to Northerns, and Texas-types, and Hudsons. But they did roster a batch of 51 "Lima-types", as they called them, which included the very first 2-8-4 built. Lima had built the original prototype and it had demonstrated on the NYC's Boston & Albany and impressed the NYC very much and the NYC promptly ordered 25 identical engines, followed by another thirty over the years, from Lima. Lima then took the first prototype, Lima #1., on the road and Illinois Central proceeded to order 50 identical engines in 1925, followed by the prototype itself in 1926. They looked unlike anything else the IC owned, with the big brooding Elesco horizontal feedwater heaters slung out over the smokebox and long boiler tube pilot. IC was not impressed with them in the long run, as a historian noted that "they rode poorly above 40 mph, sometimes so roughly that the reverse gear wheel would suddenly spin into full forward gear. When that happened the throttle had to be closed at once and the valve gear returned to the proper position -- and several engineers broke an arm doing so. The trailing truck also had a tendency to derail when backing up." In 1939, the IC ran the entire class through a rebuild that yanked off the Elesco feedwater heaters, swapped on the traditional IC pressed-steel pilot, ditched the air pump shields, swapped the new Type E superheaters for the older Type A design, reduced piston diameter by 1" and fudged with the spring rigging. The result was a reportedly better performing engine, but one that obliterated their original identity, making them look like the rest of IC's power.
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One of the ex-NYC Hudsons that I mentioned were sold to the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo. The #5311 and #5313, both J-1 Hudsons, were rendered surplus on the NYC in '48 with the arrival of Niagaras and diesels, and so the two were sent up to the To Hell & Back to replace older Pacifics, becoming the #501 and #502 and running until '52. The tender off of the #502 actually still survives to this day, the only large part off a Hudson to survive. The TH&B converted it into a steam generator car for use with their GP7s in passenger service and it eventually found it's way to Steamtown, where it sits rusting away in the yard at Scranton.
TH&B Berkshire #202 rolling through downtown Hamilton woith a 44-car freight.
The replacement for those steam locomotives, maroon and cream-painted GP7s, NW2s and SW9s, head through the interlocking plant at Chatham St. as they depart Aberdeen Yard with a sulphuric acid train for Canadian Industries Limited in Niagara Falls, ON.
The GP7s and a couple GP9s were the newest power the TH&B ever bought, and they ran right up until the railroad was absorbed by CP in 1987, after Conrail sold off their stake in the line that they had inherited through NYC/Penn Central. Three of the GP7s lead the CP Starlite past Burlington Station on the CN Oakville Subdivision destined for Aberdeen Yard in April 1971.
TH&B GP7s #72, #75 and #76 bring the westbound Starlite over to Aberdeen Yard in Hamilton in June 1968. These units are still very clean compared to how they looked toward the end of their life
It's days with the TH&B over, SW9 #55 sits outside the Chatham Street roundhouse in Hamilton.
Two GP7s bracket passenger-equipped GP9 #401 (See the air tanks atop the roof, moved there to make room for the steam generator water tank?) as they pass Burlington Bay in Hamilton, Ontario.
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