I'm guessing the "intriguing announcement" is that one of the ex-Reading FP7s is ready for action, since they posted photos of them putting the finishing touches on the #902 back in February.
I'm guessing the "intriguing announcement" is that one of the ex-Reading FP7s is ready for action, since they posted photos of them putting the finishing touches on the #902 back in February.
Some pretty cool photos of the RDG FP7 pair that SMS now owns with an NRHS excursion that came out of Philly and ran to Leaman Place and then ran up the Strasburg Rail Road. I remember reading that reading that this was the only external excursion to run up Strasburg with outside power and coaches. There were a lot of trips that used Amtrak power from Philly or Harrisburg to the Leaman Place interchange in the '80s through to the 2000s, but they always stopped and everyone transferred to Strasburg coaches with Strasburg steam engines pulling them.
Heading back under the PRR wires on the Keystone Corridor. Note the weird SEPTA Republic Locomotive critter tucked between the FP7s and coaches, which was needed for HEP.
I believe the last time the Reading FP7s last ran was 2010, when they handled some excursions on Steamtown's trackage.
Well, guessed right. From Woodstown Central today:
"Given the current state of steam engine #9, our dedicated crew has worked diligently to ensure the return of another true classic in our roster. We’re proud to bring this piece of history back to the rails for enthusiasts and fans alike. Welcome to Woodstown Central, 902.
The vision that began over three years ago during a conversation between the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society and SMS Rail Service will at last become reality.
Following several months of mechanical improvements, cosmetic repairs and the application of a shiny new paint job, the shop forces at SMS finally have ex-Reading Company FP7, 902 ready to pull its first passenger train. An event that has not occurred in over fifteen years.
Join us on “National Train Day” - Saturday, May 10th as Ex-Reading Company FP7 902 will make her inaugural run on the Woodstown Central RR, pulling our very popular “Scenic Rambler”. A 32 mile, 2-hour excursion between Swedesboro and Mannington, NJ."
Some more of the old New York & Greenwood Lake equipment is on the move to new owners, being handled by the Susquehanna.
Last week, former Long Island Rail Road "power pack" Alco FA generator/cab car #7375 was moved from Lackawaxen to Syracuse by NYS&W. This was an SP&S FA-1 originally and it's headed back west to the Inland Northwest Rail Museum in Reardan, Washington. INRM already acquired an ex-Northern Pacific GP7 that was also at the NY&GL and moved that out to their property. INRM is a static display museum, so I doubt that the #7375 will run again, although as I understand it, it was one of the LIRR "power packs" that retained the original 244 V12 and generator, no clue if it's still present or repairable though.
The Erie-painted Alco RS-3 that was stored at Port Jervis and was owned by the defunct NY&GL also made it's way north to it's new home. Formerly D&H #4085, it was acquired by the new Delaware & Hudson Railway Historical Society, who is going to move it to the Saratoga, Corinth & Hudson to restore it. NYS&W handled it from Port Jervis to Binghamton, then NS moved it from Bingo to Albany, and then CPKC took it up to Saratoga Springs, where SC&H picked it up and moved it to Corinth for it's eventual restoration to operation and D&H paint.
I'm pretty sure NY has the highest concentration of Alco RS-3s at this point. Off the top of my head:
Absoluely gut-wrenching news from Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad:
Last night, our future went up in smoke.
Our crew was in Morton having dinner- tired after a long day but hopeful, even celebrating. Just hours earlier, we got confirmation that the sale of the railroad was finalized. After years of effort, we were finally going to own the thing we’ve poured our lives into.
Then the messages started. A fire. A bridge. Maybe “the” bridge.
At 6:40 p.m., our largest wooden trestle—the 28-span bridge between Mineral and Morton—was reported burning to the fire department. It took over an hour for fire crews to reach it. By the time we got the news and arrived on scene, at 8:45, the air was thick with burning creosote. The damage was done.
That bridge was rebuilt 20 years ago and was structurally sound. It was the key to reopening freight and passenger service to Morton—work we’ve been making real progress on. That span carried more than trains. It carried the weight of our financial stability, our plans for local industry, and the future of the communities we serve.
Our organization has done a herculean amount of work in the last two and a half years. We’ve carried more passengers than ever before. We’ve cleared more track. We’ve fought for every inch of progress with sweat, sacrifice, and no shortage of stress. And this—this hurts. We’ve cried, a lot. We’re tired. And we’re angry.
Because let’s be clear: bridges do not spontaneously combust. Someone did this. Whether through recklessness or malice, someone set in motion the destruction of decades of infrastructure and millions in future regional impact.
We’re still licking our wounds, and we don’t know what the path forward looks like yet. But we do know we need help.
We’re asking for your support. Donations will go toward reopening the railroad—whatever that now requires. Insurance deductibles, legal costs, recovery planning—we’re just starting to grasp the scope.
If you’ve ever believed in what we’re building here—or if you’re just as mad as we are that someone tried to destroy it—please help us rebuild. This place matters.
We’re down. But not out.
Stay tuned to this thread as daylight hits—we’ll post updates and photos as we’re able to get a better look at the damage.
And please: stay off the damn tracks.
There is a GoFundMe if you wish to donate. So far they've raised $16k of the hoped $45k.
Florida Gulf and Atlantic slowly chugging into Havana Florida. Speed probably controlled by poor track condition. Makes one trip per day up and back from Tallahassee.
Interesting side note. This picture is at mile marker 64. Yet the track only runs about 20 miles back to Tallahassee. Many years ago (Like WWII) the line started at Camp Gordon Johnson on the Gulf coast where they trained for the D-Day invasion. The mileage numbering started at that base, now a village called Lanark Village and continued up to Bainbridge Georgia. All the rails have been removed from Lanark up through the Apalachicola National Forest to Tallahassee many many years ago.
NickD said:Winding down through the valley at Clayville, as they head back to Utica. To the right is a Pratt & Whitney plant. According to Bill Moll, "where the Pratt & Whitney plant is used to be a paper mill. That generated a lot of carloads at one time. I have a binder book of waybills that I found upstairs in the Utica freight house with a lot of waybills from that plant."
Here is a picture of that P&W factory circa 1979 showing where the tracks used to go along side that building to load out of there. I think the concrete supports are where the tracks ran along side the wooden structure. I buried that structure in 2016 to build a new building expansion on that site.
Purple Frog said:Interesting side note. This picture is at mile marker 64. Yet the track only runs about 20 miles back to Tallahassee. Many years ago (Like WWII) the line started at Camp Gordon Johnson on the Gulf coast where they trained for the D-Day invasion. The mileage numbering started at that base, now a village called Lanark Village and continued up to Bainbridge Georgia. All the rails have been removed from Lanark up through the Apalachicola National Forest to Tallahassee many many years ago.
It's similar on the Adirondack Railroad. Above Remsen, the mileposts all go to Hxx, indicating distance to Herkimer, which was the southern terminus of the Mohawk & Malone Railway/NYC Adirondack Division. But the NYC consolidated the Adirondack Division and the St. Lawrence Division (former Utica & Black River, then the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg) south of Remsen to Utica, and yanked up a section of the Remsen-Herkimer line between Prospect Junction south to Poland in 1942, which left a 2.8 mile segment from Remsen south east to Prospect Junction, and a 17.3 mile segment from Herkimer northwest to Poland. In 1965, the Remsen-Prospect Junction was removed, and then in 1972 the the Poland-Herkimer segment was removed after Hurricane Agnes tore it up pretty bad. So you couldn't ride to Herkimer, post-'42, but the NYC left all the Herkimer-based mileage posts intact from Remsen north.
The bridge at Morton as of this morning, with total collapse impending. They were actually trying to fell trees to land on the bridge to keep it from spreading. Creosote soaked timbers burn very hot and are nigh impossible to extinguish, so it's basically just a case of waiting for it to collapse. Now, the "good news" if you can call it that, is that this was not on their regularly-operated Mineral-Elbe section, north out of Elbe, and so it doesn't effect their current operations. This was on the southbound Morton Branch from Mineral to Elbe, which from what those familiar with it say was last used commercially by Tacoma Rail in 2005, and used for tourist trains by Mount Rainier Scenic between 2006 and 2009 while the Nisqually River bridge between Mineral and Park Junction was repaired after a big storm. The following winter washouts damaged a lot of that line to Morton and it was never repaired. Last train over it, as near as I could tell, was a photo charter by Martin Hansen, who said that they line was out of service just beyond the trestle, so they got some photos of equipment on the trestle and then returned to Mineral.
The downside is, MRSR had been working hard at reopening the Morton Branch, both to give new experiences to riders and because they were pursuing freight service in Morton to supplement their finances. The trestle was in good shape, there aren't many 300-foot timber trestles left, and it will be expensive to replace, both due to size and how remote it is. If I had to guess, the perpetrator was likely someone who lived along the line and wasn't happy about trains possibly returning.
I've got the Dynamo Productions charter on the Arcade & Attica with 2-8-0 #18 and RS-3u #114 this Sunday from 10am to 10pm. Sadly the forecast is looking overcast and rainy, but I'll make the best of it.
I also may have bought tickets to another Dynamo Productions charter today. They put out this teaser earlier this week.
This resulted in a whole flurry of guesses. A bunch of people were saying B&M #3713 or MEC #470, but neither of those engines are even remotely ready for operation. Like, still a thousand scattered pieces. Some people were saying that the (E) resembled the Erie logo and that it would be an Erie-themed event (NKP #765 or PM #1225 done up as an Erie Berkshire, maybe) but that didn't make a ton of sense to me. Seemed like you would go Maine (E)vent in that case.
Well, today the event details were released and the charter is going to be Strasburg Rail Road 2-6-0 #89 done up as “Boston & Maine B-15 Mogul #1397.” The #89 will receive an extensive cosmetic overhaul to resemble #1397 (I'm guessing graphited smokebox, B&M oversized headlamp, maybe the weird handrails, paint and a B&M whistle) making it the first B&M-lettered steam locomotive to operate in nearly 70 years. There will be freight, mixed, and passenger consists over the two days. I have complained that the #89 has long evaded my camera, so I bough a ticket
A B&M 2-6-0 for comparison. It's leading a short freight on the Hillsboro, NH branch at Elmwood in 1949. The B&M had 140 B-15s turned out by various Alco works in 1903, roughly half of them were superheated and became B-15bs and B-15cs in 1918 by the B&M, and they held out on the B&M basically until the end of the steam era.
The #1455 preserved at Danbury
The #145 working the Danvers Branch in 1937
And the #89 for comparison
It's been a pretty rough week for heritage railroading. In addition to the aforementioned Woodstown Central #9 axle issue and the Mount Rainier bridge burning:
1959 documentary on the Big Boys and the 9000 Series.
In reply to 914Driver :
UP 2-10-2 #5511, now undergoing restoration in Silvis, IL, makes an appearance. Funny thing was, by that point it was out of service and had had it's piston rods cut to be moved to Green River as a stationary boiler. So if you watch, it's crossheads aren't moving because they aren't connected. It was made to look like it was running by hooking it up to a cut of freight cars, with a diesel pushing on the other end, and then they tossed a bunch of tires in the smokebox and lit them on fire to generate smoke.
So, this weekends adventure:
Sunday morning I woke up and made the 3 hour, 15 minute drive to Arcade. Weather was pretty poor the whole drive out; gray, gloomy, rainy, windy, low-50s peak. I got there early, thinking maybe I could catch the #18 being turned on the wye, but when I drove by the shops, it was already turned. I learned from the crew later that day that the east leg of the wye is too tight for the #18 to negotiate while hooked to the tender, so they had to split the locomotive and tender and tow the tendere through with a diesel and then push the locomotive through. Dynamo had actually asked if they could start the day with the locomotive facing one way for some shots and then turn in later on and the A&A crew said, "We would be willing if it was possible, but it's a whole ordeal."
Went and parked and checked out the display of A&A 44-tonner #110, an A&A boxcar and one of the cabooses that the A&A acquired secondhand from the Susquehanna & New York. The #110 is a very early 44-tonner and is credited with saving the A&A, which was in poor financial health when they decided to dieselize. According to conductor and engineer Pat Connors, the #110 was an early build and GE used the A&A heavily in their promotional material of the era, kind of a "See how much money your shortline can save with our diesels" boast. He said that GE even filmed a 8mm video of it being delivered and that GE/Wabtec reportedly still has it in their archives and played it for GE emeployees years ago, but his attempts to get a copy of it have not succeeded.
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