By the summer of '08, the #4211 was back on the property, on loan from Lake Superior Railroad Museum, and allowing Cliffs Erie to run an A-B-B-B-A set on trains.
By the summer of '08, the #4211 was back on the property, on loan from Lake Superior Railroad Museum, and allowing Cliffs Erie to run an A-B-B-B-A set on trains.
End of an era: on October 27th, 2008, the F9s made their final trip over Cliffs Erie before the operation shut down for good.
The last operating Erie Mining RS-11 is used by Cliffs Erie to power a "clean-up" train that is picking up bad order and MOW cars off the line prior to its being shut down
Erie Mining Company F9A #4211 and F9B #4222 sit at Hinsdale waiting to be picked up by CN's MRF train for transport to Duluth, MN and the Lake Superior Railroad Museum.
Erie Mining Co. F9A #4214 and C420 #7222 sit in the weeds in a small three track yard on Cliffs Erie property waiting for something to happen, four years after the last train rain. I have to assume the the #4214 had some sort of mechanical issue, since I haven't seen any photos of it running for Cliffs Erie in the 2004-2008 era. If it was operational, it would have made more sense to use it, rather than borrow the #4211 from LSRM.
Former Erie Mining and later LTV Steel Alco RS-11 #7209 sits under the Hinsdale bridge and next to the former DM&IR's Hinsdale branch. The photographer noted that it was waiting for movement to it's new owner, Mesabi Nugget, which bought some of the former Erie Mining/LTV property and were making iron nuggets used in the steel making process and the engine would be be used as a switch engine within the plant site. I'm not sure if this came to pass or if the #7209 still exists.
C420 #7222, one of three C420s purchased by Erie Mining Co., sits in the weeds in the shadows of the very crusher building it once served. The 7222 (previously EMCo #602, EMCo #352) was assigned purely to mine duties at the EMCo/LTV site for it's entire career. It was the only one of the three C420s that did not see duty on the mainline. The other two (EMCo #7220 and #7221) did a stint in road service and were renumbered for that to the #4218 and #4219. Once they returned to mine service they again assumed their 7200-series numbers, but the #7222 kept it's number and was assigned to the mine hauls for it's entire time at EMCo/LTV. This unit sits at the Delaware-Lackawanna's Von Storch shops in Scranton in much the same condition. I just saw it about a month ago.
F9A #4210 with F9Bs #4224, #4225, and #4223 sit near what was once the pellet yard of Erie Mining Co. and later LTV Steel. These units helped to pull over 300 million tons of taconite from the mine to the dock at Taconite Harbor, but nature is starting to reclaim them in this photo.
Its the winter of 2013 and snow has settled around the F9s and C420, still sitting there dormant 5 years after their last operation.
Another year later and the #4210 stares at the remains of the F9Bs it once worked with, all three reduced to scrap.
Fortunately it was a happier story for the last two F9As on the property, the #4210 and #4214, as they were purchased by the Vermillion Valley Railroad, and on February 26th, 2015, two Canadian National C40-8s show up to retrieve them from the interchange at Hinsdale and move them on their way. The #4210 and #4214 were the last motive power of any kind left on the property, and the entire Erie Mining Co. operations sits completely empty and dormant almost a decade later, slowly returning to nature.
The #4214 is still awaiting her turn in the shop, but Vermillion Valley Railroad has restored the #4210 and it still wears an EMCo livery, just with Vermillion Valley lettering on it.
My own photos of the #7222 down at the Von Storch shops in Scranton. From what I hear, she may be a parts donor, and not slated for revival.
The Flying Yankee has landed at Conway, NH.
I believe this is the first time the Flying Yankee has sat on live rails on it's own trucks in 20 years.
The Flying Yankee has had a long and troubled history that is almost the same level as PRR #1361.
The Flying Yankee is a three-car, articulated, self contained trainset built by the Budd Company in 1935, similar to CB&Q's Pioneer Zephy. It’s purpose was to afford a lightweight and economical transportation piece with solid construction of stainless steel and appointed in modestly high-end interior design for the comfort of passengers. The Budd Company was a relative newcomer to railroad car construction and was pioneering the use of stainless steel. They partnered with both Electro Motive Corporation (not a part of General Motors at the time) for the propulsion engine and with General Electric for all the electrical and generation needs. Air brake equipment was provided by either Westinghouse or New York Air Brake, however, the two are completely interchangeable so whichever is irrelevant. Heating for the train was supplied by an on-board flash boiler producing steam that was distributed to baseboard elements. Air conditioning was of the mechanically-compressed Freon type, itself rather new to the railroad industry.
The Flying Yankee had a long career on the B&M, racking up over one million miles. However, like a lot of these trainsets of this era,its diminutive size and lack of operational flexibility, relegated it to services that were not in need of high capacity not long after it's premier. When the B&M retired the Flying Yankee in the latter 1950’s it was donated to the original Edaville for display but there was no place to operate the standard gauge train at Edaville due to its two-foot gauge track. Upon the closure of Edaville in 1991, much of the equipment there was disbursed. Two-foot gauge equipment was moved to Portland, Maine using the antique hauling equipment provided by veteran equipment mover James Robinson of Dublin. NH. The Flying Yankee, however, was given to the State of New Hampshire, though I highly doubt that the State was very enthused about accepting responsibility for the trainset. It too was transported by Mr. Robinson to a location in Glenn, NH to await permanent plans.
A while after the train’s arrival at Glenn, the Flying Yankee Restoration Group (FYRG) was formed to attempt to have it restored for posterity. Of the individuals involved, at least one was a prominent local businessman and another was a retired railroad engineer, but reportedly, nobody in the group had any practical experience in the rehabilitation or restoration of railroad equipment. The initial hurdle was to put out invitations to any parties interested in undertaking the overhaul and refit. The two major bidders were were the Claremont Concord Railroad (CCRR) and also the Green Mountain Railroad. The FYRG ultimately chose the CCRR to perform the refurbishment.
The initial hurdle was a bit of a problem to the CCRR. How could they get the Flying Yankee from Glenn to the CCRR’s shop at Claremont Junction? James Robinson, during the ensuing time the train sat at Glenn, had retired from moving equipment and was no longer available. Funding for the project was just in its infancy so there was no cash available to hire riggers to move the train. Much head scratching thus went on as to how they could get the funds to afford the move. A gentleman named Scott Whitney came up with the solution. The Flying Yankee was owned by the state of New Hampshire, and while the state wouldn't pay to move it, because they really wanted nothing to do with the Flying Yankee, they could just have them get one of the National Guard units to move it as an exercise. No money spent and the Guard got some good training at rigging.
With the trainset now at Claremont Junctio, work began in earnest on evaluation of the equipment and how to proceed with the restoration. Work then began on taking the machine apart piece by piece to begin restoration. Funding was now coming in as the word of the project spread. Things were looking pretty good to most eyes. However, the FYRG leaders had decided to take a different direction than a true restoration. They wanted to be able to bring the 6000 on tour around the whole Northeast and possibly beyond. Their grand idea would involve running the train over Amtrak-owned routes, a huge mistake.
Cosmetically, the Flying Yankee would require no changes to speak of. External repairs to dents and dings as possible would still need to be done, as well as the interior appointments. The staff at CCRR was doing exemplary work in this direction and required no input from outside. Mechanical and electrical components, on the other hand, would require far different approaches as to what would be affordable and what was beyond reason.
Starting with the basic electrical system, there was a basic flaw. The plan was to make the Flying Yankee have a 480V three-phase system thus making it similar to Amtrak standards. I say “similar” because, being a dedicated trainset, it would never operate with any Amtrak equipment per se. The only occasion to do so would be if it suffered a breakdown on Amtrak rails. If such were to happen, it is likely that it would be the one and only time, as the Flying Yankee would then be banned from Amtrak as unreliable. Those in the know were against the use of 480V three-phase because the support facilities for this are extraordinarily expensive. The FYRG was imagining bringing the trainset to many locations around the NE area and hoping to just ‘plug in’ wherever they went, but 480V facilities are few and far between and then mostly only exist in locations where the public would not be allowed to go. A single location can cost tens of thousands of dollars to install and the group envisioned several that would only be used on rare occasions.
The underside of the Flying Yankee was not in need of much work. The equipment in place such as air conditioning and air brake was already something that needed overhaul. Yes, there would be some restoration work required on any materials made of common steel, especially where steel meets stainless steel and the resulting corrosion thereon. Things like truck bolsters, buffers and end plates between cars would need attention but none more extreme than anything else out there of Budd construction, so this would be considered common repairs. At this time was one of the most annoying, time consuming and labor intensive jobs that the Amtrak inspector deemed necessary for the train to operate on Amtrak lines. This was the complete removal of the original Budd applied insulating coating that covered the entire bottom of the stainless steel sub flooring of the equipment. This was something that was absolutely not needed for the operation of the train since the subfloor is corrugated stainless and had reportedly weathered the years remarkably well. However, Amtrak insisted and the CCRR crew spent countless hours in labor time trying to remove all of the coating. It resisted any sort of power wash and they had to resort to manually chipping it away in its entirety. Not only did it not reveal anything, now the train is devoid of this insulation that was sound deadening. The time lost on doing so rapidly depleted the available funds for man hours that were better devoted to meaningful work. If the FYRG hadn't had this plan to try and run it over Amtrak-owned routes, this never would have needed to be done.
The original air brake system was a very simple one. Different from a regular locomotive, the Yankee has but one air brake valve that controlled the entire consist. As an older style it did not have what is referred to as a pressure maintaining feature. Unfortunately, in the quest for Amtrak compatibility, the FYRG specified that it would have to be equipped with all forms of modern air brake equipment including cab signals (which it did have an old primitive variation of originally but B&M had long since ceased to use), penalty application hardware and systems monitoring and recording hardware and electronics that were in no way required for the actual operation of a historical trainset.
Electrical equipment included both the main and auxiliary generators and traction motors, all of which are General Electric equipment. While old obsolete designs that GE did not offer parts for, GE was completely able and willing to overhaul them in a timely manner to like-new condition, with some upgrades cooked in. The Flying Yankee is powered by a Winton model 201A two-cycle diesel engine. This is an early model employed by Electro Motive Corporation but has long passed being in production even for replacement parts. However, it was an integral part of the Flying Yankee's history, and structure, and could not be ignored. The equipment had been parked at Edaville with no stack protection, and the 8-201A engine was in rough condition. They were given a lead to an 8-201A Winton engine that had been a warehouse spare for a retired locomotive and but apparently they ever followed up on it. As a result the Winton engine began a complete rebuild from the ground up to bring it back to operation. By the end of the time the Flying Yankee was on CCRR property the Winton engine was nearly completed and the block was ready to install in the power car for reassembly.
Then the money ran out... Suddenly people were catching on as to how much was being spent on making it road-worthy in the eyes of Amtrak. Donations dwindled and rent to the CCRR was not being paid. On the outside you would hear rumors of how the CCRR has mishandled things and absolutely NOTHING could be farther from true. They performed every task they were ORDERED to perform, regardless of how nonsensical it was. After languishing for a while longer with no progress (CCRR wasn’t going to work on it for free!) the story started to circulate that the FYRG was going to pull the train set from Claremont under the guise of it having completed “Phase 1” of the restoration and now would be going to “Phase 2” at the Hobo Railroad in Lincoln, NH. Of course that was a pure fabrication in an attempt to cover financial woes, the only truth in it that is was indeed going to move to Lincoln. Its rumored that the CCRR was never compensated for storage fees for the trainset languishing on their property without being worked on.
Once finally in Lincoln, there was a small amount of hoopla made over the Flying Yankee’s arrival but still no money was available for work. The fans had quite enough of what was going on. At this point there was a change in direction of the FYRG’s concept for the fate of the Flying Yankee. Group leaders decided that the Winton engin, as well as the auxiliary and main generators, should be replaced by a modern power plant. To the FYRG, this would improve reliability for it's voyages over Amtrak-owned routes. To say the least, the historical enthusiasts were incensed at the notion of replacing the Winton. To them, the Winton was the historic backbone of the trainset and to remove it and replace it with something modern was just wrong. Also, the Winton engine was an integral part of the construction and to replace it would require structural re-engineering of the entire engine mounting bed. Thusly, the historical integrity would be further compromised. This is not to mention the extraordinary effort and money that would be wasted in the overhaul as far as the Winton had progressed along with the refurbishment of both the main and auxiliary generators.
The Flying Yankee has since sat, off it's trucks and up on wooden blocking with the interior gutted, at the Hobo Railroad, and no further work had occurred. Plans to move it to Concorde, NH, site of a former Boston & Maine railyard, fell through in 2017. The state hoped to open the train to public viewing in Lincoln but that never happened either. Also, the owners of the Hobo Railroad began making rumblings about how the Flying Yankee was beginning to overstay it's welcome and would need a new home, and then the Hobo Railroad was sold to Patriot Rail and became the Granite State Scenic, and Patriot Rail also reportedly wanted it gone.
Last fall, New Hampshire finally put the Flying Yankee up for sale, hoping for a new owner to be able to get the restoration over the finish line, but requiring the trainset to stay in the state of New Hampshire. The former volunteers of the FYRG updated and filed all the required state and federal documents to bring the group back into good standing and established a new name, the Flying Yankee Association. Along with that came a brand new board of directors, including several members with business and management experience. The group’s new leaders said that past decisions like only using contractors to restore the train hampered progress and now they plan on using a mix of contractors and volunteers to get it done. The Flying Yankee is presently in a “partially restored state.” It was moved to Conway Scenic Railroad and put on the rails at Conway, NH to place it on display while they begin work, with discussions apparently having been held to hopefully run it on Conway Scenic once it is finished.
I'm curious to see if the FYA decides to stick with the Winton 201A, although they reportedly don't have a ton of spare parts for the engine. For example, from my understanding, there was only one extra spare cylinder liner being prepared, due to cost considerations, not enough to overhaul the engine a 2nd time. According to Preston Cook, a longtime EMD employee, there were sketches done prior to FYRG involvement, for a 12V-71 Detroit Diesel engine and generator replacement propulsion skid that would have exactly fit the Winton engine footprint and would have allowed reinstallation of the original Winton engine and GE main generator at a later time if the train was put on stationary display. They were done for a discussion of restoration back in the 1980s that did not develop further. But I don't think 12V-71s are too easy to find these days either.
I'm also curious how well the Flying Yankee will work on Conway's rails. I'd imagine it would mostly stick to the Washington Valley end, between Conway and North Conway, because I'm not sure how well it would handle the grades up the old MEC Mountain Division to Crawford's Notch. But also, it lacks a coupler on the rear, so you cannot tow it backwards, and it cannot be run in reverse (no cab at the back) and Conway has no active wyes to turn it on. I believe there are two, one at Bartlett and one at Quebec Junction, but both are long out of service, covered it mud, weeds, and trees. And it also has fairly limited seating and capacity can't be added.
I don't know, its a cool piece of history, but I remain unconvinced that an operational restoration is the best idea. There's multiple reasons that none of these surviving early Budd trainsets are operated anywhere, and it would really just be a neat static display piece. The Cole Land Transportation Museum in Bangor, ME would have been a great home for it, except for the stipulation that it had to stay in NH.
On the subject of Conway Scenic, I got my tickets for the 470 Railroad Club excursion on November 2nd. I rode this 2 years ago with 02Pilot, and while there was some severe disorganization, the scenery was still excellent and we got quite a few photo stops. And now I have an actual camera, instead of using my phone. The 470 Railroad Club has said that they will be using some of their motive power, and they're hinting that they would really like to have their ex-B&M GP9, #1741 running and painted in the Herb Matter-designed "Bluebird" blue, white and black livery. The #1741 isn't enough to haul the train by itself, so the options I can see are; the #1741 paired up with MEC-painted GP7 #573, or with the #1741 pushing on the trip up and the clubs two F-Units leading, and then you get the F7As up and the #1741 on the trip down. Or they'll just use the later MEC Harvest Gold-painted GP38 or GP35.
I also didn't fall for the first class scam again. I chose to ride in the dining car, with the choice of a hot meal, but that was assigned seating and I was seated with a really cool husband and wife and one random guy who was just really strange. And then they didn't serve the hot meals, because not enough volunteers showed up. Except some people still randomly got hot meals. And, they typically disembarked for photo runbys from the regular coaches at the rear, which meant that riding first class meant you were last in the photo line and didn't get great shots.
A comparison between the as-delivered (left) paint scheme on B&M GP9s and the later simplified (right) livery. Later on, B&M dumped the white stripe altogether and just went for a solid blue dip. I'm hoping the plan is to go with the as-delivered livery.
Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson, the new scenic railroad operator running on the old D&H Adirondack Branch out of Corinth, NY had announced that they had a huge announcement for this weekend, and I had three separate theories on what the announcement would be.
One was that they had reached an agreement to run north of Corinth to Hadley or all the way south to Saratoga Springs regularly. Right now, Saratoga Springs hasn't seen need to have them come down into town, and the line above Corinth is operated by an e-bike company who only gives them permission to run to Hadley once a year.
Another was that they had acquired one of the old ex-LV/D&H GP38-2s that CPKC is now retiring, particularly D&H/CPKC #7303, which is still rattling around in faded D&H paint. Hal Raven, owner of Raven Rail and SC&H, has been making rumblings about trying to get one of those GP38-2s for a while.
The other was that he had managed to get ahold of D&H RS-36 #5019, which has been sitting, derelict, up at North Walpole after the Upper Hudson Railroad, who operated the D&H Adirondack Division before Iowa Pacific and SC&H, lost their contract. I've heard a lot of people asking about what the status is with the #5019 and I've seen Hal Raven make references to trying to get the #5019.
But instead, the big announcement is that Genesee Valley Transportation has sold SC&H two of their operational Alco RS-3s, both ex-D&H, to SC&H. The #4118 and #4103 are in the early D&H black and yellow chevron livery, and they will be back on home rails. And, as a bonus, there is even documentation of the #4103 running up the Adirondack Division pretty frequently back in the day. Very exciting that there will be two more operational RS-3s back in the state of NY.
It is interesting to see Genesee Valley Transportation selling off some Alcos, because they very rarely do that. They may move units around between their various operations, and they'll scrap donor units when they've been completely stripped of all usable parts, but I can't think of any other instances where they've outright sold units to a different railroad. I think there's a couple reasons to this. One is that these aren't going to some shortline that's going to run them into the ground, or scrap them as soon as they have a mechanical failure. They're going to a tourist line that's owned by an Alco and D&H buff, they're already running 539-powered Alcos, and they won't be beating the daylights out of these and can perform a bit more rigorous maintenance. Another is that there's a big historical connection; they're ex-D&H, already in the early black and yellow D&H livery (the lightning stripe blue, grey and yellow didn't start until D&H acquired the RS-11s), the Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson runs the old D&H Adirondack Branch and there is documentation of the #4103 running on that line. And lastly, I think D-L is okay with letting going of some of their RS-3s (they also have CNJ #1554 and D&H #4068) because they really just don't run them that much.
Seriously go look for pics of the D-L's RS-3s and you'll find that most of them in the past 5 years are just taken of them sitting at the Von Storch shops, or occasionally on display or hauling an excursion out of Steamtown. There's a few photos of them hauling freight, especially if you go back further, and even then, a lot of the time they weren't leading. There's a couple reasons I can see for D-L not running the RS-3s a lot. They're the only 244-powered Alcos on their roster, making them orphans in a sea of 251-powered equipment, and 244 support isn't great. They're also the oldest power on the roster and have their quirks as a result. They are noisy and they rattle and shake and pitch and roll going down the line. The cabs are fairly cramped and not air-conditioned (a lot of photos have the cab door open for ventilation) and they are drafty and the cabs tend to be loose and don't sealing tight, meaning they're hot in the summer, leak water in the cab during rain, and they're cold in winter. RS-3s were also set up for long hood forward, which hurts visibility (the high-hood RS-11 they have also rarely leads because of visibility), and that also means you're breathing exhaust fumes through those aforementioned leaky cab doors. Old ones were manual transition, you had to "shift" them (17, 22, 29 mph) which is another step in the operating process that you don't have to do with anything else. And they're pretty low horsepower, it takes 4 of them to do the work of two M630s or M636s, which means more messing around if you are an engineer and hostler MUing them and going through the set up checks and air test.
They're not bad units, but you can see why someone who is earning their living running trains on a day-to-day basis may not prefer them, and the all the more so for the younger guys who have grown up in a 2nd-generation diesel world and just want to get through their day. Still great machines for a musuem or a tourist operation though.
So, yeah, it makes sense why D-L is selling two RS-3s, and then they also still have another two, D&H #4068 and CNJ #1554, to dust off for display or the occasional excursion over at Steamtown.
Still, a bit sad to see what was the largest modern-day fleet of operational RS-3s be split up. But I think the days of getting photos like this were past anyways.
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