PRR E5s Atlantic #6538 and E6s Atlantic #6513 at Lenni, PA with one of the PRR's "Off The Beaten Path" railfan trips that they ran in the '40s and '50s. Its interesting how people showed up these in the '40s through to the '60s wearing their Sunday best. It wasn't until into the '70s when passengers started wearing the denim overalls and Kromer cap like they were part of the crew.
NickD said:In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
I don't know what that thing is but it looks delightfully scary. Needs an LS swap.
Looks like a big RR service car. Submarine cars: Can you imagine forgetting to empty one and it cools?
914Driver said:NickD said:In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
I don't know what that thing is but it looks delightfully scary. Needs an LS swap.
Looks like a big RR service car. Submarine cars: Can you imagine forgetting to empty one and it cools?
Or having a leak and water gets in!
I really enjoy this thread. I am not into trains AT ALL but really enjoy this thread on a daily basis.
Thanks!
914Driver said:NickD said:In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
I don't know what that thing is but it looks delightfully scary. Needs an LS swap.
Looks like a big RR service car. Submarine cars: Can you imagine forgetting to empty one and it cools?
I imagine at that point, you just run the whole car into the furnace and melt the whole damn mess down.
Every time Illinois Railway Museum shares the link to their used book store on Facebook, I end up ordering a book from them. This time its a book on Frisco steam power, by Joe Collias. I enjoyed his section on Frisco engines in The Search For Steam, which I also bought from IRM, so a whole book on Frisco motive power should be interesting, especially as its a railroad I never particularly paid attention to.
PRR E6s Atlantic #1600 with the last running of train #685 over the New Castle Branch in October of '53. Looks like the superintendent might have wanted to go along for a ride
The K4s, and later the T1, always got all the PRR passenger engine glory, but the E6s always looked like the more athletic engine to me. Maybe it was the huge boiler over just two drive axles. They were the second largest Atlantics built, and the first engine to break the 1000hp/axle mark.
The E6s was actually designed after the PRR had introduced the K1 and K2 Pacifics, which at first glance makes little sense. They used a much larger boiler than previous E-class Atlantics, and as a result they were able to upsize the cylinders twice before they reached production. The result was an engine that, above 40mph, could actually produce more power and use less steam and fuel than a K2 Pacific. In typical PRR fashion, they were hand-fired, had no feedwater heater and no power reverser, and never had these features retrofitted.
When the K4s came along, the E6ss were downgraded to local and commuter trains but served faithfully to the end of steam
#1309 and another unknown E6s on a railfan excursion.
E6s #1600 and H9s Consolidation #3597 at Camden, NJ. Looks like a B6s 0-6-0 backed up to #3597, judging by the slope-back tender. Like the E6s was the unsung hero of passenger power, the H-class Consolidations did a lot of the work, but were overshadowed by the big M1 Mountains and I1 Decapods.
The same gentleman behind the E6s Atlantic was also responsible for the G5s Ten-Wheeler. Similarly, the G5s' wheel arrangement was an anachronism when new. PRR had a veritable armada of K-class Pacifics on the roster, but both the E6s Atlantics and the K4s Pacifics had 80" drivers. That was great for thrashing away at 80-90mph across Ohio and Indiana, but it made them slower to accelerate and reduced tractive effort, and so, while they did the job, they weren't the best choice for commuter use, with its frequent stops and starts. Instead, 20 years after the PRR had built their last 4-6-0s, they churned out 90 G5s Ten-Wheelers, the largest 4-6-0s built in the US, and I have to believe some of the last constructed. Stepping the drivers down to 68" cut into top speed but gave them plenty of starting power and made them accelerate quickly, and ditching a trailing truck concentrated more weight on the drive wheels. The result was an engine that could accelerate a train to 60mph rather quickly, although the lack of rear trailing truck made them rough-riding. The G5s were largely used on commuter service, but also saw branch line usage, hauling light freight trains, and work trains.
The G5s is actually the best-preserved PRR steam engine class. There is one at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum, PRR #5741, then a Long Island Railroad G5s, #35, at the Oyster Bay Railroad Museum, and another LIRR G5s, #39, at the Railroad Museum of Long Island. There is a plan for RMLI to fund the restoration of #39 at Strasburg, and then Strasburg Railroad will operate it on a 49 year lease once it's restored.
Doubleheaded G5ss at Glen Moore, PA. The G5s was the frequent motive power of choice for PRR's "Off The Beaten Path" excursions.
In reply to NickD :
From the brush around the depot & grass on the tracks it looks like that might have been the first train down that line in quite a while.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
They didn't call them "Off The Beaten Track" excursions for nothing. That photo was in 1940, and the New Holland Branch wouldn't be abandoned for another 15 years.
The most "off the beaten track" operations of the PRR were their narrow gauge operations. The Pennsy owned a pair of 3-foot gauge railroads that they picked up in the early 1900s: the Waynesburg & Washington and the Ohio River & Western.
The Waynesburg & Washington was chartered in 1874 and opened on 1875 and ran 38 miles from Waynesburg, PA to (obviously) Washington, PA. It was a twisty, turny route with lots of grade elevation changes and even had it's own Horseshoe Curve, named after the curve at Altoona. It had very few online industries and mostly functioned as a passenger line. Due to the tight radius turns, it never had motive power larger than a 2-6-0, and even then the little Moguls had "blind" flangeless center drivers to negotiate the curves. It was not a particularly profitable line, and the Great Depression basically shuttered the line, with passenger service ending in '31. PRR continued to run a rail truck up the line every once in a while to keep it open and "in use", and then in '44 they regauged the ends to standard gauge and mostly abandoned the center section, due to the tight radius turns not working with standard gauge. PRR used the Waynesburg end and the Monongahela Railroad operated the Washington end into the Conrail era, but Conrail ended up abandoning both segments. None of the trackage is intact these days, but there are a few stations, a single Mogul (W&W #4/PRR #9684) and a passenger car preserved. The passenger car is undergoing restoration, as it was found in terrible shape, and the #4 is also being nicely fixed up. The locomotive was actually operational on a short stretch of track in the mid '70s. There is a book exclusively about the W&W, called Three Feet To The Panhandle.
The other line, the OR&W is much lamented amongst the narrow gauge fans. Originally founded as the Bellaire & Southwestern in 1877, it then consolidated with the Zanesville & Southeastern and leased the Muskingum County Railroad to become the Bellaire, Zanesville & Cincinatti. It ran from Bellaire, Ohio into Zanesville, Ohio, using the B&O standard gauge line for the last mile with a 3rd rail. At 112 miles long, it was the longest narrow gauge line in Ohio, and it earned the nickname the Bent, Zigzagged & Crooked due to all the curves. It also had 262 trestles. In 112 miles. Yes, that's more than 2 per mile. Trestles totaled up 6 miles of the line.A 34-mile run made in about three hours. This slow speed led to jokes such as this: Joe Yeagle was walking one day from his farm to Caldwell with a basket of eggs on his arm. No. 4 overtook him half a mile from town, and Engineer Barney Pennington called to Joe, "Hop on and we’ll run you to town." Joe answered, "No thanks, I'll walk. I'm in a hurry."
Construction and maintenance of the 262 trestles bankrupted the line in 1890 and in 1903 it was reorganized into the Ohio River & Western, nicknamed the Old, Rusty & Wobbly. The PRR acquired the OR&W in 1912 and continued to operate the line. Supposedly, they tried shipping an OR&W engine over to the W&W, but it was not compatible with the W&W's curvature and derailed on a turn. The OR&W was also fraught with operational perils, thanks to mudslides and all those trestles, and reportedly they once wrecked three locomotives in one day; one derailed on a mudlslide and slid down and embankment and two more collided. Like the W&W, the OR&W was basically killed by the Great Depression and PRR shut the line down in '31 and tore up the rails. Only a few passenger cars, boxcars and cabooses still exist, but all the locomotives and most of the equipment was scrapped onsite at Bellaire.
Now, this next bit is not verified and is impossible to verify, but I found someone whose father had been in Pearl Harbor around '44/'45 on liberty. He and his shipmates went on a narrow gauge train ride to the cane fields. As they pulled out of the station, the conductor came by and their father remarked that the equipment looked awfully familiar. The conductor assured him that he'd probably never heard of the little town the cars came from...Bellaire, Ohio. The conductor told him the railroad (and he didn't remember which it was) had bought used OR&W equipment. Local historians swear that everything, was scrapped on site at the Bellaire end. However, there are supposedly pictures extant in Ed Cass' Hidden Treasures (a book on the OR&W) that show locomotives, stripped of their builders' plates and other jewelry, on southbound barges passing under the B&O bridge. The tsunami that hit Hawaii after the Alaska earthquake in 1964 destroyed at least one stretch of narrow gauge on one island and threw several old narrow-gauge locomotives back into the jungle, although where exactly has been lost to time. According to this person recounting this tale, Walt Gray, director of the California State Railroad Museum, once told them he found them but that there were no plates on them, although he didn't know whether they'd been removed after they were marooned and were beyond economic recovery.
So, is it possible that the OR&W equipment was not scrapped at Bellaire, and actually shipped down to Hawaii to use on a sugar cane plantation? Maybe. Its near impossible to verify or disprove now.
A photo of the last run of the Ohio River & Western. Motive power on the OR&W was mostly 4-4-0s and 2-6-0s, but they had a 2-8-0 that had been built for the Denver & Rio Grande and instead sold to the East Broad Top, who then sold it to OR&W, as well as a 4-6-0 that had originally belonged to the EBT.
An amusing comparison in gauges.
A standard gauge Southern Pacific Mikado next to one of the SP's 3-foot narrow gauge Ten-Wheelers, nicknamed Slim Princesses
And even funnier, a Bridgton & Sacco River 2-foot gauge 2-4-4 next to a Maine Central standard-gauge Consolidation. Keep in mind, those Maine 2-foot lines were not an amusement park line, they were living, breathing, common carrier railroads that hauled freight and passengers. They just happened to be tiny.
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