Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Wednesday was the 25th anniversary of the Gettysburg #1278 incident. This event marked the closest a steam locomotive has ever come to a boiler explosion in tourist use, and nearly closed the door on steam railroading in the US forever.

Canadian Pacific #1278 was one of 30 G5d-class Pacifics built for CP in 1948 by Canadian Locomotive Works. It led presumably a normal career with CP, as there is no history of it being involved in any collisions or pulling any noteworthy trains. It was retired sometime in the early '60s by Canadian Pacific. It was then purchased by New England seafood magnate Nelson Blount, along with G5c-class #1246 and G5d #1293, and moved them to Steamtown USA's Bellows Falls, VT location to join sister Canadian Pacific G3c #2317. Nelson Blount would have all 4 CP engines restored to operation and they would handle the bulk of Steamtown's excursions over old Central Vermont trackage. After Blount's death and Steamtown's move to Scranton, PA, the new trackage that they were using had steep grades that the CP Pacifics were not well suited for and Steamtown found itself in need of stronger motive power. None of the larger engines in their collection were operational or would work with the location (NKP Berkshire #759 for example would not fit the turntable or manage the curve out of the roundhouse). So Steamtown began to divest itself of their light Pacifics, keeping only #2317. #1278 was traded to Gettysburg Railroad for a recently restored Canadian National Mikado, #3254, with Steamtown operating the Mike to run alongside #2317 until 2010.

Gettysburg Railroad had been formed in 1976 to operate a short line between Gettysburg and Mount Holly Springs over old Reading trackage that had been adandoned by Conrail when Reading became part of the Consolidated Rail Corp. Gettysburg ran a freight operations at first, using a collection of scruffy old diesels, including a couple Alco RS3s, an ex-NYC GE U30B, a rare Alco RS36 and one of Western Maryland's homely chop-nose GP9s.

This was a real ragtag operation that was run on a shoestring budget on a branchline that had been neglected by its previous owner (the Reading had been financially ailing for years). Think weeds growing up through the ties, collection of old junk, all run by guys who weren't really that qualified to be doing this and improperly trained, trying to cut as many corners as possible. One story tells of the roadbed gravel being all gone in spots, but gravel was expensive, so instead they purchased shale to replace it. The shale immediately crushed to a fine dust, but they kept operating. Another story recounts a guy being at the Gettysburg yard and an FRA inspector swinging by and looking over their roster and immediately slapping an out-of-service order on everyone of their locomotives, for stuff like no valid FRA certification, wheel flanges worn too thin, etc. Yet another remembers being aboard one of their passenger trains, and the crew switching the loaded passenger cars on the fly (while moving, uncouple the locomotive, run it past the next switch, reverse back, switch over and couple on again without stopping, just letting the passenger cars coast to a stop) which is a big no-no. And in that photo of the GE U30B, #28, take note of that car immediately behind it. That was a double decker auto-rack that was converted to a double-decker open air gondola for passenger use. But auto-racks were sprung to support a couple tons of automobiles, so when transporting just people it had a bone-jarring ride quality and was louder than sin. Anyone who remembers Gettysburg, remembers that damn auto-rack car.

At some point, Gettysburg decided that they wanted to get into running steam excursions, and purchases a pair of steam engines. One was Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain Coal Company 2-8-0 #38, the only surviving H&BTM steam locomotive, which they sold off some time in the 1980s to Knox & Kane Railroad. The other was Frisco #76, another Consolidation. They would later acquire Canadian National #3524 from a private owner and restore that to operation, and then in 1987 trade that off to Steamtown for Canadian Pacific #1278. Now, steam locomotives and cutting corners do not go hand-in-hand.

On June 16th, 1995, the #1278 was heading to Mount Holly with an evening train when the crown sheet (top sheet of the firebox) failed and dumped water into the firebox. This instantly flashed to steam and blew out the firebox doors into the cab. Two of the crewmembers suffered minor burns, while one was severely scalded but survived. No passengers were injured, and no one died. It is frequently stated that #1278 suffered a boiler explosion but that is incorrect. It was a crown sheet failure. A true boiler explosion likely would have killed the crew and some of the passengers and made the situation much worse. As it was, there was instant concern that this event could bring about an end to all steam locomotive operation in the US.

The FRA and NTSB immediately launched an investigation to see what exactly had happened. The #1278 had been run low on water in the boiler and that had melted the crown sheet and caused it to sag 12-18" before springing a leak. The engine was found to have a number of serious safety faults. The line from the feedwater heater to the boiler had sprung a leak, so when they were trying to add water to the boiler, a good portion was leaking out. The flow gauge for the injector (what adds water to the boiler) had failed, been replaced, failed again and then the owner had just decided to forgo it entirely and thus had no . The injector had the incorrect brass disc installed, with too small of an opening, causing it to inefficiently add water to the boiler. A thick layer of scale was found inside the boiler (which causes the water to not cool the metal properly because the scale acts as an insulator) due to insufficient water treatment facilities and none of the crew knowing how to blow down the boiler. The generator was not operational, and so the locomotive had no cab lighting, making the gauges difficult to read, particularly at night. The sight glass for the boiler water level was 85% plugged with scale, making it read incorrectly. The fact that the sight glass only fluctuated 1/2" during operation should have been a warning sign (2-4" of fluctuation over the tracks was nominal) but, again, lack of training meant that the crew wasn't aware that there was something wrong and it couldn't be trusted. And this was just issues related to the crown sheet failure. Every other mechanical part of the locomotive was in an unsafe state of disrepair as well.

The only thing that did go right was that Canadian Locomotive Company welded the crown sheet on their locomotives, unlike most manufacturers, which just riveted them. This made it stronger so that when it was overheated, the rivets didn't fail and drop the crown sheet into the firebox. This most certainly would have resulted in an off-the-frame, bundle-of-tubes boiler explosion that would have killed the crew and likely passengers. If that had happened, the banning of steam locomotive operation would have most likely happened. As it was, the FRA instituted new policies and procedures as a result. While they have increased the cost of restoring and operating steam engines, there has not been another incident like this in the US.

This put an end to Gettysburg Railroad's steam operations, and the line itself would struggle along for less than a year before closing up shop. The locomotive would linger around for several years before Jerry Joe Jacobson purchased it at an auction in 1998 and moved the engine to his Ohio Central Railroad, where it would sit in the "dead line" until 2006 when it was moved to J.J. Jacobson's Age Of Steam Roundhouse.

It has been cosmetically restored but Age Of Steam has said that the #1278 will most likely never run again. Too many years of neglect, plus the damage to the boiler and firebox, and then many more years of sitting, have done too much damage to the engine. Instead, they intend to keep it in the state it's in as an instructional tool and cautionary tale, to respect these engine for the danger they can be and that you cannot cut corners when working with them

This has actual video of the failure, nothing gruesome but near the end you see steam blowing out the cab. Also note that damn auto-rack. And at 0:40, note how far the second car lists to one side, a good indication of the condition of the roadbed. And there are parts where the camera lens is obscured by water from the leaking fitting on the freshwater heater

NickD said:

And at 0:40, not how far the second car lists to one side

i didn't realize until the clip was over that i'd been holding my breath.  i can't believe anything could make it down those tracks at all in shape like that.

Honestly, the #1278 deal was a bad trade. CP #1278, which had been relatively recently restored, was in excellent mechanical shape. Admittedly, it was underpowered for the Steamtown Scranton site, but it was a nice engine. It then went to Gettysburg, who ran it into the ground and neglected it to the point that it is pretty much accepted that it will never run again.

In return, Steamtown got #3254, which while recently restored, was honestly a mechanical basket case. It had suffered multiple serious accidents at some point in its original career, which severely bent the frame rails. The cab isn't even centered on the locomotive anymore. While it had the power that Steamtown needed for their excursions, and fit within the confines of the Scranton roundhouse and turntable, it was always troublesome. The bent frame caused it to wear out running gear parts at an accelerated rate, axle bearings to wear out and run hot, and it rode particularly poor. Steamtown would actually park the engine 2 years before it's flue time ran out and has said that it is indefinitely retired with no plans to restore it to operation.

To keep #3254 running, Steamtown instead parted out #3377 over the years, removing a lot of parts from it and swapping them over to replace worn-out components on #3254. In fact, #3377 is technically now an 0-8-0, because they robbed the lead and trailing trucks off her, as well as swapping her tender to the #3254 and scrapping the #3254 tender body. The real tragedy is that when Nelson Blount bought #3377 back in the '60s, Canadian National had entirely overhauled #3377 only 5000 miles before retirement. Blount never ran it, because during the move to the original Steamtown USA location in North Walpole, thieves robbed the copper and brass "jewelry" off of it in transit. According to those who recently examined the #3377, the boiler is like-new inside, and the cross-hatching is still visible in the cylinders and brass bearing journals, it has that few miles on it. 

So: Gettysburg got a nice engine and ran it into the ground, in trade Steamtown got a piece of junk, and then a second nice engine got parted out to keep the piece of junk operating.

ScottyB said:

NickD said:

And at 0:40, not how far the second car lists to one side

i didn't realize until the clip was over that i'd been holding my breath.  i can't believe anything could make it down those tracks at all in shape like that.

Like I said, they were running on a Reading branch that had been abandoned when Reading was consolidated into Conrail. Reading had been dying a slow death for years, so they hadn't been taking care of it, and then Gettysburg was always cutting corners on everything, including replacing the gravel with shale to save money. The shale immediately crushed into dust and might has well have not even been there.

3 of Steamtown USA's 4 CP light Pacifics on a triple-header. #1293 in the front, #1246 in the middle and #1278 in the back

Also worth noting in the 2nd and 3rd photos is the engine to the left. That is Canadian National #89, a 2-6-0. That engine was a favorite of Nelson Blount's, and would end up being sold to Strasburg Railroad in the 1980s. During its transit from Bellows Falls to Strasburg, it actually got caught up in a flash flood and was completely submerged overnight. It was dried out and run the rest of the way and continues to operate there to this day.

When running multiple steam engines, are the controls linked in any way or is it just the skill of multiple operators working together?

ShawnG said:

When running multiple steam engines, are the controls linked in any way or is it just the skill of multiple operators working together?

 

Skill of multiple operators coordinating. Its easier these days with radios. Back in the day, they were coordinating by whistle signals and feel. There is actually a terrific story in The Mohawk That Refused To Abdicate about the Pennsylvania's line through Shamokin. They were hauling huge iron ore trains and there was a steep grade, so they had two I1sa 2-10-0s on the front and another two I1sa Decapods on the rear and would go pounding up this grade, sounding like the end of the world. It was one of the last holdouts of steam on the PRR, so David Page Morgan and Phil Hastings went to document it. The day they were watching, they got partway up the grade, the lead engines slipped and the whole train stalled. While making attempts to get moving again, the lead engines and helpers got out of sync and the rear helpers were still reversing when the lead engines went forward and they tore a coupler apart dead in the middle of the train. So the lead engine crew took the coupler off the front of their engine and hiked it all the way back to the middle of the train and swapped it out, telling the rear engineer, who was watching "You get to bring the next one." It then started raining and they made three or four more attempts, kept loosing their footing, before finally roaring up over the grade in the rain with 40 driven wheels and almost 400,000lbs of tractive effort beating the rails.

On the most tangential of tangents, my mother was born and raised in Shamokin; my father in Tamaqua.  Unfortunately I was born about 15 years too late to see the end of the steam era, except as museum pieces.  I do remember seeing abandoned and / or retired steam engines parked here and there around the area.

So, tracking down all four of Steamtown's 4 Canadian Pacific light 4-6-2s:

#1278

The easy one to distinguish, because it had the Elesco bundle-style feedwater heater (that cylinder that is cross-wise over the top of the boiler). This one was actually built with the Elesco coil-style feedwater heater (looked like a big square box ahead of the smokestack) but Steamtown USA swapped it out when they restored it. I can't seem to find why, maybe to make it look similar to #2317, or maybe the original coil-style had an issue and they had a used bundle-style feedwater heater laying around. As recounted, this is the one that went to Gettysburg, had a crown sheet failure and is now at Age of Steam Roundhouse, unlikely to operate ever again. Also, it is numbered #127 here, which is because Nelson Blount had the numbers of the three G5-class Pacifics shortened by removing the last number (#1278 became #127, #1246 became #124 and #1293 became #129).

#1246

#1246, wearing the CP passenger colors of black, sky blue and maroon. #1246 does not have a feedwater heater. It was a G5c, which made it earlier than both #1278 and #1293 (which were G5d class). Green Mountain Railway (the railroad that Nelson Blount created to own the abandoned Rutland tracks that Steamtown USA operated over) purchased it in 1967 and it technically remained under GMRy ownership, and was lettered for GMRy, until 1973, when it went to Steamtown ownership and was repainted to CP colors. This engine pulled the last two Farewell To Vermont excursions before the move to Scranton. On arrival in Scranton, it was found to be too light and lacking in power to pull trains over the DL&W tracks, and was retired in 1986. These days, it is on display at the Railroad Museum of New England, with plans to maybe one day fire it back up.

#1293

A G5d like the #1278, this one still had the original Elesco coil-type feedwater heater, which is the big rectangular protuberance ahead of the smokestack. This was the first one that Blount purchased, in '64, and like the #1246, it was technically owned by Green Mountain Railway. Steamtown "purchased" it from GMRy in '73 and easily restored it by '76 (the engine had had only an 8 year career with CP) and painted it black and green. It was used for Vermont's Bicentennial train and logged 13,000 miles in the first year. It also had a role in E36 M3ty Jamie Lee Curtis horror film (implying there is another kind) "Terror Train" in 1980. In 1982, it was damaged when Steamtown USA's roundhouse roof caved in due to snow buildup (the same cave-in nearly destroyed Meadow River Lumber #1) and that was the last it operated under the financially ailing Steamtown. Unable to afford to fix it, it made the move to Scranton, but they didn't have the money to fix it there either, plus #1246 had already proven that CP light Pacifics weren't the motive power for the job. It sat around until 1996, when Steamtown sold it to Jerry Joe Jacobson's Ohio Central, who restored it to operation in 13 months. When the OHC was bought up by Genessee & Wyoming, J.J.J continued to operate it there on excursion usage, and then moved it to his Age of Steam Roundhouse facilities (alongside the #1278) where it was operational until this year. The time ran out on the flues, and AoSR is busy moving B&LE #643 to Ohio, as well as restoring Yreka Western #19 to operation, so it will be a while until she sees steam again.

#2317

Purchased in 1965, #2317 was the oldest of the 4, as it was a G3c class built in 1923. It was on display until 1978 when it was restored to operation and put in the CP passenger scheme, which it never wore in active service. It made the move to Scranton in '84 and hauled the first excursion trains on the new site, also being repainted back to the original gold and black paint scheme that it would have worn. When the National Park Service took over in 1987, they did an in-depth study of all the locomotives, and discovered that #2317 had suffered a boiler explosion sometime in the 1930s (a true boiler explosion not a crown sheet failure) while sitting, as well as a rollover at some other point in her career. This left #2317 always a little finicky with adjusments needed to her running gear. Yep, go figure, Steamtown traded a good CPR Pacific for a junk CNR Mikado, never fixed the other good one, and sold off the third good one and kept the older troublemaker CPR Pacific. From 2004 to 2007, troubles with the lead and trailing trucks, driving wheel tires and steam dry pipe kept the #2317 confined to short hops in the Scranton Yard, which also chewed through its FRA certification time, but in '07 it was repaired to be fully operational again. Then in 2010, it's FRA flue time ran out and it was parked. It has sat stored in the roundhouse for the past 10 years, while Steamtown focuses on the restoration of Boston & Maine #3713 "The Constitution", a heavy Pacific, with Steamtown saying that #2317 will be next in their efforts.

NickD said:

ScottyB said:

NickD said:

And at 0:40, not how far the second car lists to one side

i didn't realize until the clip was over that i'd been holding my breath.  i can't believe anything could make it down those tracks at all in shape like that.

Like I said, they were running on a Reading branch that had been abandoned when Reading was consolidated into Conrail. Reading had been dying a slow death for years, so they hadn't been taking care of it, and then Gettysburg was always cutting corners on everything, including replacing the gravel with shale to save money. The shale immediately crushed into dust and might has well have not even been there.

I actually cross these tracks every day on my way to and from work. Interestingly enough, they were just doing some work on the roadbed maybe 3-4 weeks ago - replaced a bunch of ties, laid new gravel, repaved the crossing. Going further south from Mt. Holly, there are definitely stretches that are totally overgrown with weeds and if you didn't know any better you'd think they'd been abandoned for years. I don't ever recall actually seeing any traffic on the line, but there are some box cars at the paper mill nearby that get moved pretty regularly. 

On a related side note, I made a run up to the East Broad Top on the bike Sunday, just for somewhere to go. Poked around the yard in Orbisonia for maybe 20-30 minutes, then traced the route as far north as I could follow it (which turned out to be the wrong direction, as I would later find out, as it only goes another few miles in that direction.) The facilities are looking a bit run down to be perfectly honest, but there appears to be some work going on in earnest. Most of the rolling stock is in what I'd call fair condition - not great, but not terrible either. There were a few coal cars on a siding in really rough shape. No locomotives to be found, much to my disappointment. Unfortunately I don't have any pics either, as my phone cameral is less technologically advanced than an actual potato.   

This thread is super interesting, btw. I haven't been around much lately and have some catching up to do, but thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge Nick!

Quite the crossing!

Furious_E (Forum Supporter) said:

 

On a related side note, I made a run up to the East Broad Top on the bike Sunday, just for somewhere to go. Poked around the yard in Orbisonia for maybe 20-30 minutes, then traced the route as far north as I could follow it (which turned out to be the wrong direction, as I would later find out, as it only goes another few miles in that direction.) The facilities are looking a bit run down to be perfectly honest, but there appears to be some work going on in earnest. Most of the rolling stock is in what I'd call fair condition - not great, but not terrible either. There were a few coal cars on a siding in really rough shape. No locomotives to be found, much to my disappointment. Unfortunately I don't have any pics either, as my phone cameral is less technologically advanced than an actual potato.   

The new owners of EBT have been pounding away at the place. Their Facebook page is a flurry of activity. They've been hydro-testing boilers on locomotives, removing asbestos, moving old hopper cars out of the way, laid down 5 new switches in the yard, jacked the one building up (it had settled 9" over the years), started taking the one passenger car off the trucks to overhaul it, laid new cement floors in the roundhouse and have been digging through the archives and finding all sorts of cool stuff, like the original Baldwin blueprints for the locomotives. They are actually going to have an even August 14th for the 60th anniversary. They're going to pose the steam locomotives outdoors for photos and pull a couple passenger cars with one of the diesels they have.

I love the line in the old logbook about "Eng not steaming" and someone wrote "Eng won't steam if you can't fire". Zing!

East Broad Top has settled on which locomotives they will be restoring to operation for next year. #14, which is one of their "little" Mikados, was to be expected, as it was the last engine they had operating when they closed the doors in 2010, so it was assumed it needed the least work. #12, I have heard is a mechanical basket case, and is a little different from #14 and #15, so none of the parts could be swapped from #14 to make it easily operational. And #15 hadn't run under the new FRA regulations, and so the last time it had been over hauled had been much less thorough and require more time, work and money than #14.

#16, one of the three "big" Mikados, was a pleasant surprise, as #16 has not operated since 1956, when the line shut down as a freight hauler (it was revived in 1960 as the tourist line). #17 had been operated in the tourist years, but #16 and #18 were not, as the "big" Mikados were harder on the track and the owners saw no reason to have multiples of them running. #16 was presumably chosen because it has less wear and tear on the running gear than #17, and I'm guessing was in better shape than #18.

No word on whether it will always just be these two or whether further down the road they will try and bring #12, #15, #17, or #18 back.

In reply to NickD :

You mean 4 steel "Osgood Bradley" coaches and a single steel O.B. combine along with two formerly and also steel St. Louis & South Western Observation cars.  There were no wooden cars used, the consist was entirely steel.

Strasburg opened for the season this weekend. Down to 2 months until I get to take the throttle on this gentle giant, 2-10-0 #90

Strasburg #90 is frequently incorrectly referred to as a "Russian Decapod". It is not, it is a Baldwin Standard.

What was a Russian Decapod? When Russia entered WWI in 1914, their railroads had been heavily reliant on 2-8-0s and 0-8-0s and they found themselves in need of a larger, more powerful locomotive. They were producing an 0-10-0 locomotive, but it could only be built at one factory, and so they were rolling out rather slow. So the Ministry Of Railways placed an order with US manufacturers with a design brief of 10 drive wheels, a low axle loading, a large firebox to burn low-grade coal, and an overall similar design to their 0-10-0.  The weight of the boiler and firebox caused US designers to add a lead truck, also allowing a slightly bigger boiler while keeping the axle loadings within acceptable limits. Many felt that a 2-10-2 would have been superior, but the added length from a trailing truck would have resulted in clearance troubles on their turntables.

The Russians bought 400 of them and were so pleased, they returned in 1916 for another order of 475, although this second order was a little heavier. In 1917, they returned for a third batch, and originally Baldwin was only going to be able to supply 75 of them. But when the US entered the war, they decided to increase the order to support allies, and were going to produce 500 for the Russians. But then the Bolshevik revolution kicked off and it became clear to Baldwin that the new government was not going to be able to pay for the locomotives. Fifty had been shipped to Russia, but another 250 were still awaiting payment at the Baldwin plant. 

So, Baldwin regauged them from the Russian standard gauge of 5' to the universal standard gauge of 4'8.5" and the United States Railroad Administration doled them out as they saw fit. Erie received 75, Seaboard Air Line received 40 of them and Frisco received 21, while 22 other railroads, such as Western Maryland and New York, Susquehanna & Western received smaller amounts. And construction was cancelled on the remaining 200 locomotives for the order.

These Russian Decapods had a short 52" driving wheel, an engine wheel base of 27.83" feet, an engine weight of 207,000lbs, and a 25"x28" cylinder and a 227 square foot firebox, generating 51,490lbs of tractive effort. They were superheated and had Walschaerts valve gear but were hand-fired and had no feedwater heater. One oddity of these engines was that the throttle operated backwards from American engines. On a US engine, you push the throttle towards the bulkhead, yank it towards you to add power. On these engines, you shoved the throttle into to open the throttle, pulled it back to close it. This caused confusion when one would start to go into wheelslip and engineers would instinctively jam the throttle in to reduce power, but would instead cause it to slip even worse. Overall though, these were well-liked by the railroads that ended up with them. They were slow and plodding, but had decent pulling power and were light on the rails due to spreading their weight over so many feet. SAL liked using theirs on their logging and phosphate branches.

There are 6 preserved Russian Decapods in the US: Frisco 1615, 1621, 1625, 1630 (the only operational one) and 1632 and Seaboard Air Line 544.

Frisco #1630 hauling a 135-car train of empty coal cars off the property back in 2016

In 1924, Baldwin, who saw that a lot of the recipients of the Russian Decapods were fond of the engine, went back to the drawing board and developed an improved version of the light Decapod and offered them as a "Standard Series" Decapod. 

Cosmetically these engines were easy to distinguish from the Russian engines. The boiler looked less pencil-thin and wasn't perched quite so high and the stack was shorter. Both the sand and steam domes were cylindrical in shape and much more spaced out (the Russian Decapods had them close together and the sand dome was more oblong in cross-section). There was also a much more noticeable gap between the bottoms of the running boards and the tops of the driving wheels.

The engine wheelbase got a little longer (less than 1 foot), as a result of the step-up from 52" driving wheels to 56" driving wheels. Engine weight also increased from 207,000lbs to 212,000lbs. Boiler pressure was increased by 10psi from 180 to 190, while the cylinders were stepped down an inch to 24"x28". The firebox area was also decreased by 30 square feet, from 227 to 197, because the Russian engines were designed to run on Russia's poorer quality coal. The smaller cylinders and taller driving wheels cut tractive effort down by 5000lbs, but these were not engines that were being worked to their very limits in drag freight. They gained a reputation for being free-steaming, relatively quick (those extra 4" of driver diameter helped), light on rail and sure-footed.

Baldwin produced 21 of these light Decapods for 6 railroads: 3 for Alabama, Tennessee & Northern, 3 for Durham & Southern, 3 for Georgia, Florida & Alabama, 1 for Great Western Railroad of Colorado (#90), 1 for Osage Railroad and 10 for Edmonton, Dunvegan & British Columbia/Northern Alberta Railroad. Particularly interesting is that the last Durham & Southern engine was the only North American steam locomotive built in 1933. When Seaboard Air Line took over the GF&A, they liked their 3 "Standard Series" engines so much, they went to Baldwin and ordered another 8. Some of SAL's Standard Series and Russian engines would be sold off to Gainesville Midland, who would operate them until 1959. 3 of the Gainesville Midland 2-10-0s survive: #203 (ex-AT&N #402, a Baldwin Standard), #206 (preserved as SAL #544, a Russian) and #209 (ex-SAL #533, another Baldwin Standard).

But, to bring this back to Great Western #90/Strasburg #90, it is most definitely not a Russian Decapod. Larger boiler, short stack, 56" drivers and spaced-out domes make it a Baldwin Standard, not to mention the build date. Great Western ordered it in 1924, 6 years after WWII and the USRA doling out the Russia-bound engines to US railroads.

It is interesting that Great Western Railroad of Colorado only ordered the one 2-10-0. Why that is, is lost to time. Its certainly not that they disliked the engine, because they kept it on the roster until the end of steam operations and then used it for excursion service into the mid 1960s before selling it to Strasburg. They also rebuilt the engine 3 times, twice after grade crossing incidents that flipped it on its side and killed the fireman both times, and again after it was damaged in the GWRoC's roundhouse fire.

There is a certain irony to the fact that #90 is small for a Decapod, but was the largest locomotive on both railroads she has served on.

Lehigh & Hudson River Alco C420s #21 and #24 at the L&HR's Warwick engine facilities. Purchased in '63, these 2000hp Alcos were only the railroad's second order of diesels, the first being a set of RS-3s back in 1950. Never a healthy railroad, they wouldn't purchase anymore diesels either, struggling along until '76 when they were rolled up into Conrail.

L&HR #22 in the shop being serviced.

The L&HR Alcos got off to a bad start, when they were being towed to the L&HR by the Lehigh Valley, they were involved in a head-on collision with a CNJ train. #23 and #24 were repaired and operated right up until the end.

Its 1976, and the end of the L&HR is nigh. Always a small feeble railroad, it operated heavily as a transfer between various northeastern railroads in its final years. Particularly important to the L&HR was the Penn Central's Poughkeepsie Bridge. The Penn either couldn't afford to maintain the bridge, or didn't want to, and this made railroads like the Erie-Lackawanna, Reading and Lehigh Valley increasingly leary of using the L&HR, knowing the condition of the bridge. When the bridge mysteriously burned in '74 (some say it burned due to PC negligence, others insist that PC was more complicit in the fire) it was the beginning of the end for the L&HR.