Grassroots Railroad Sports?

When the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania was being established the late '60s, there was some serious lobbying to locate the museum at the Northumberland roundhouse. Penn Central wasn't using the roundhouse for regular operation and the place was basically a time warp; in addition to the roundhouse, turntable and yard, there were still-extant water tanks and coaling tower, auxillary buildings, etc. Ultimately the decision was made to construct new facilities next to the resurgent Strasburg Railroad, which was already leasing PRR D16sb 4-4-0 #1223. There was also some thoughts about the feasibility of relocating Steamtown USA to the site at one point during the "We've got to get out of Vermont" phase. Pennsy fanatic Don Ball Jr. was likely quite aware of the possibilities of the Northumberland site during his tenure as director, when he oversaw the .

Unfortunately, there were some serious issues wth the site:

First, the roundhouse, and the yard by which it was surrounded, were in a flood plain. It's one that takes a bit of doing to flood, but it has definitely happened in the past. There are said to be photos of the turntable pit being pumped out post-flooding.

Second, the roundhouse, at the time, was surrounded by active railroad trackage and yards. The nearest road access is via approximately 1.5 miles or more of private road through a railroad yard. If this museum had been opened here in the 1970s, it would have mandated its own access road and overpasses, infrastructure costs that might have dwarfed even those of restoring a decrepit roundhouse or those of the Steamtown NHS.

Third, Northumberland itself was very badly situated and equipped for auto traffic and tourist demands.

And for what? You still don't have a track on which to operate, since PC and Conrail were still using those rails, and while it's no terribly busy today, NS still uses the yard as a switching yard for local traffic and interchange with the "Robey Family" cluster of short lines in the area. Sadly, the roundhouse, turntable, coaling tower and other legacy structures were all yanked down by Conrail in 1986.

However, the damning problem is the same: You could put the current RR Museum of Pennsylvania beside that former roundhouse, and operate in a portion of the yard Spencer-style, and it still would only attract meager visitorship on the same level as Steamtown, nowhere near the levels of the current Strasburg location. And if Steamtown had gone there, any hopes or chances of excursions would be pretty much dead and buried. 

Kind of an interesting detail is that when Strasburg Rail Road leased PRR D16sb 4-4-0 #1223 in 1960 for restoration to operation, the Railroad Museum of PA didn't exist yet. So, they actually leased the engine from the Pennsylvania Rail Road. 

They continued to use the #1223 until October 26, 1989, and so the engine was leased from Penn Central from 1968 to 1979. In 1979, as the Penn Central's assets were being sold off (3 years after Conrail's formation, mind you), the #1223, along with all the remaining steam locomotives stored at Northumberland, were donated by Penn Central to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. The other PRR steam locomotives had similarly been loaned by PRR and PC to the museum, and then were officially donated in 1979. Strasburg then continued to lease the #1223 from the museum for another 10 years, as well as leasing 4-4-2 "#7002" from 1983 to 1989.  Ultrasound testing then revealed that the firebox walls of both #1223 and #7002 were not thick enough to comply with the updated Federal Railroad Administration regulations, thus deeming the engines unsafe for operation, and the museum withdrew the lease, since they did not want to replace the original PRR fireboxes with new pieces.

So, if anyone ever asks, did Penn Central own any steam locomotives, yes, quite a few, and one of them even operated.

This one falls more under Grassroots Model railroad sports, but some friends of mine have recently started a company called Idaho Miniature Freight Media. They are recording and streaming model railroad operations at our club layout. 
 

Give them a look and a follow on the book of faces or YouTube if you are so inclined. 
 

https://youtube.com/@idahominiaturefreightmediallc?si=KqrU5xHbTBs18Kyv

On Thursday night, Metro North's New Haven heritage unit went up to Danbury to make it's first revenue run the next. Danbury Railway Museum took the opportunity to pose their genuine New Haven EP-3 "Flat-Bottom" cab door, in the same paint scheme, for a photo with it.

Marc Glucksman also got an amazing catch of the #222 with Metro North's Penn Central heritage unit, #217, at Poughkeepsie, along with URHS of NJ's ex-NYC round-end observation car Hickory Creek

I was pretty surprised to hear that Soo Line 2-8-0 #2425 will be moving from storage at the old Blueberry Mine on the Mineral Range Railroad down to Ravenna, KY for restoration at Kentucky Steam Heritage Co.'s facilities for use at the Big South Fork Scenic Railroad. This thing is roooough. After its retirement in January 1955, the #2425 had been donated to the city of Enderlin, ND, and put on display in a city park. After years outdoors, city officials became concerned about asbestos insulation leaking from beneath the boiler jacket, and unsure how to handle this, they built a structure to completely enclose the engine and tender. In 2005, Ironhorse Railroad Park in Chisago City, MN offered to buy the locomotive and move it to the museum site, but it took until 2008 to close the deal. Once at the museum, an inspection supposedly revealed the locomotive was in good restorable condition despite its age and years of outdoor display in harsh winter conditions. It then sat there, in a state of partial disassembly until Clint Jones, owner of the Mineral Range, purchased the locomotive from Ironhorse in 2018. It was moved to the Mineral Range in 2019, but Jones found that the tender was in such poor shape that it was left behind at Ironhorse Railroad Park. I don't know that any work was done in the 5-6 years it was at Mineral Range, but it certainly wasn't reassembled.

The #2425 as she looked in better days. It was a 1909 Alco Schenectady Works product for for the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie as #475, which was part of an order for six 2-8-0s numbered #473 through #478. However, at the time of its construction, Soo Line had leased the original Wisconsin Central, and the #475 was renumbered into the Wisconsin Central number series and diverted to that railroad as #2425.

Sounds like the arrival of the #2524 will be the official death knoll for the restoration attempt of Union Railroad #77/Moorehead & North Fork #14. Built in 1944 for US Steel's Union Railroad (who also owned those spectacular 0-10-2s), it was sold to the Moorehead & North Fork, where it became their #14, and operated there until 1963. A late steam operator, the arrival of 2 Alco S-1 diesels resulted in the M&NF's two 0-6-0s and single 2-6-2 being parked. 

In 1969, it was returned to it's original number and put back in operation at the Cumberland Falls Scenic Railroad, a 2.5 mile loop of track laid at the Tombstone Junction theme park in McReary County, Kentucky. Tombstone Junction had originally tried to operate with a pair of ex-USATC S-100 0-6-0Ts but the loop of track had a pretty stiff grade that they couldn't manage. The #77 ran there into the '80s, but a series of fires in the park (one in 1976, one in 1983, and a final one in 1989), the passing of the original owners, and the rise of Dollywood shuttered the park. During the 1995 liquidation of the park, the rails and cabooses would be purchased by the Big South Fork Scenic Railroad in Stearns, KY, who had begun operating on the old Kentucky & Tennessee Railway in 1982, while a scrap company would purchase the wooden passenger cars (and start a fourth posthumous fire when they accidentally set the wooden coach body on fire), and the 0-6-0Ts would be split up. A local private owner purchased the #77, to keep it in McCreary County, and around 2002 it was moved to the Big South Fork Scenic Railroad to be restored to operation, with the plan being to make it Kentucky & Tennessee #14 (K&T's highest numbered steam locomotive was #12, and most railroads skipped #13, plus it would pay homage to it's history in KY, when it was M&NF #14). 

Unfortunately that restoration would be undertaken by an operation known as Wasatch Rail Contractors. Wasatch would scrap a lot of the original pieces, like the entire tender body and cab, as well as the smokebox and lots of the plumbing, and WRC would completely botch the boiler work. The whole thing would stall out due to issues with project management, which led to the restoration effort being dropped after the expenditure of over 1.5 million dollars, with a significant portion of that being provided by public funds. The engine was placed in storage in the back of the steam shop building in a disassembled state, and those in the know say you would be better off building a new boiler than trying to undo Wasatch's work. For a long time, K&T #14 was "the engine that shall not be named", because any mention of the engine brought Wasatch's owner running to threaten legal action. In 2022, the McCreary County Historical Society actually won a lawsuit against Wasatch Railroad Contractor and were awarded an amount of $700,000. This lawsuit was due to Wastach's failure to get the locomotive operating for the agreed estimate and the fact that the work that had been completed was found to be extremely shoddy by an independent inspector. However, the group was never able to collect the awarded amount as Wasatch Railroad Contractors went bankrupt and dissolved shortly thereafter due to several other lawsuits against them. In June 2022 the owner and founder of Wasatch Railroad Contractors, John Rimmasch, was found guilty of multiple counts of wire fraud and falsifying invoices to the Federal Park Service in a federal lawsuit in relation to the restoration of a CNJ coach for Steamtown, as well as some issues with employee safety and improper asbestos disposal. Rimmasch was later sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.

From what it sounds like, whatever parts that have been shopped that can be used on the #2524 will be used on the new project, and the #14's original tender frame with new body will be used behind the #2524. The #77/#14 got shoved to the back of the diesel shed, as Crossroads Railcar pretty much fills the whole of the old K&T steam workshop building now. At best they could put it back together into the semblance of a locomotive and stuff and mount it on the property somewhere. As big as an embarrassment as the whole project turned out to be, what little is left of her will probably be kept hidden in the shop and they just hope everybody forgets about it.

Supposedly Big South Fork Scenic did try to get Kentucky & Tennessee 2-8-2 #10 back, which is stored at Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum but TVRM gave them a solid no. I'm sure K&T #12, also at TVRM was never even remotely an option. K&T #12 is much better known as Southern #4501. While the #12 was a secondhand acquisition by K&T from Southern, the #10 was built for the K&T, then acquired by TVRM after it's retirement, and then was relettered as "Southern #6910" for a single excursion in October 1965 from Chattanooga to Cleveland, Tennessee. The poor mechanical condition of the #10 resulted in it being parked afterwards, and it's been a display piece ever since. 

The #4501 while working for the Kentucky & Tennessee as their #12.

There was also an #11, which was very similar to the #10 and was also built new for the K&T. Sadly, the #11 no longer exists, although it lasted into the start of the preservation era. This engine was sold to the United States Army and transferred to Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland in 1963, where she was used to move artillery targets. In 1966, a target was missed and the #11 was accidentally destroyed in the resulting artillery fire.

There's actually another ex-Morehead & North Fork 0-6-0 in existence, and operation, which is the #12 at Age of Steam Roundhouse. Despite looking newer than the #14 at first glance, largely because of the headlight location, she's actually nearly 40 years older. The square steam chests with slide valves are the giveaway to her age. Built for Southern Railway as their #1643, she was sold to the M&NF and renumbered to #12 in 1952. When the M&NF dieselized in '63, the #12 was shoved into the engine house in Clearfield, KY, and then remained there for fifty years, even after the M&NF/Morehead & Morgan Fork shut down in 1985. Jerry Jacobson, who had seen the #12 operating in the '60s, was eventually able to purchase the locomotive from the owner’s widow and son, and it was hauled to Sugarcreek in 2012, and was first fired up in 2018, although Jacobson had sadly passed by then.

Small drive wheels look so odd on equipment sometimes.

I know they are probably still like 40" and would be monsters in size on 90% of anything road going automotive, but they look so tiny in an application like a locomotive. 

In reply to DjGreggieP :

There's a class of Chinese 2'6" narrow gauge 0-8-0s with 750mm (~29.5") that look absolutely comical with how tiny the drive wheels appear. Consider that even the tinier Maine 2' gauge engines used 40" minimum drive wheels

The Morehead & North Fork remains an obscure and interesting little shortline. In 1905, the Clearfield Lumber Company of Clearfield, Pennsylvania, acquired large timber holdings along the North Fork of the Licking River, and it's subsidiary, the Lee Coal Company, had similarly acquired the mineral rights for coal in the same region. To extract both resources, the Morehead & North Fork Railroad was incorporated on September 27, and construction of the line began at its northern terminus with an interchange with C&O's Lexington Subdivision at Morehead in 1906. The entire 25-mile line south to Redwine, KY was completed on September 27, 1908, and included three tunnels at Clack Mountain, Poppin Rock, and two short bores referred to as the Twin Tunnels. The Lenox Railroad, a 7.7 mile extension south from Redwine to the mine of the Clearfield Cannel Coal Company, was incorporated on July 3, 1918 but the Lenox filed for abandonment on October 16, 1926, after exhausting the timber and coal resources, and the line was dismantled after March 1927.

Timber resources were exhausted by the early 1920s, forcing the Clearfield Lumber Company to close in 1922, and in 1925, the site was converted into Lee Clay Products, a refractory brick manufacturer, which acquired its basic material, clay, from nearby Clack Mountain. The M&NF moved clay to the plants, and completed bricks to the interchange with the C&O. In 1933, the line was shortened by 21 miles, leaving only the northern 4 miles south from Morehead to Clack Mountain. While this would seem to be the beginning of the end of the M&NF, losing the excess trackage resulted in a railroad that was actually fairly profitable. I can't find an official roster, but I've seen photos of an 0-8-0, #10, and there was an ex-Kanawah, Glen Jean & Eastern 2-6-2, #11, in addition to the pair of 0-6-0s, #12 and #14. David Page Morgan and Phil Hastings visited the M&NF during their mid-50s steam safari, chronicled in The Mohawk That Refused to Abdicate, and came away impressed with the well-maintained shortline.

Steam, in the form of the #11, #12 and #14, reined until July 1963 when two Alco S-1 diesels took over, but things remained otherwise the same. In 1970, Lee Clay Products closed down and the M&NF lost it's only real customer. The railroad was sold to a private owner not long after, and it reorganized as the Morehead & Morgan Fork Railroad.  In 1976, three used Baldwin RS-12 diesel locomotives were acquired for the railroad from Durham & Southern, replacing the Alco S-1s. The railroad remained operational for its sole customer, a lumber yard that opened on the site of the former brick plant. Kind of a funny full circle situation, since Lee Clay had originally been the site of the Clearfield Lumber Company's lumber mill. 

The M&MF found that Chessie wouldn´t set up any exchange rates after a few years and by 1976 the railroad was nearly closed again, and the railroad did sporadically shut down through the late '70s. This is believed to all be part of discouraging business so that Chessie System could file an abandonment petition for the Lexington Subdivision .In 1982, the drying kiln at the lumber yard burned down, and while that was a huge loss, it wasn't the definite end of the Morehead & Morgan Fork. That came in 1985, when CSX finally abandoned the Lexington Subdivision, leaving the railroad completely landlocked. According to someone familiar with the railroad, the M&MF owners believed that the Lexington Sub would stay intact for some years and that they would be able to get the equpment off the property. And then one day, without warning, a CSX rail train came through town and lifted the mainline.

The Baldwins sat unused until 1989 when the internal organs of the #1202 was sold to Jimmy McHugh to be used at Laclede Steel in one of their S-12s. In 1990 a couple of locals began working on the remaining operable Baldwin and #12, and were successful in cleaning everything up and having some railfan days on the still-intact M&MF until 1995. The rails were eventually lifted in 2001, and the three Baldwins were cut up in 2010. Especially frustrating in that all of them had been stored inside or under an awning, one of them was noted to be complete and easy to made operation, and SMS Rail Services expressed interest in them and made numerous attempts to buy them. The enginehouse, now empty with the salee of M&NF 0-6-0 #12, remains, as does an awning with a wooden M&NF boxcar underneath it.

The M&NF 2-6-2 #11 still exists and is on the site of the Everett Railroad in Everett, PA. This gets really confusing because the Everett Railroad doesn't own 2-6-2 #11, but does own a 2-6-0 #11, and the Everett Railroad no longer goes to Everett, PA. There was a railroad in Everett, PA known as the Everett Railroad, which was established in 1954 and ran on 4 miles of former Huntingdon & Broad Top Mountain Railroad between Tatesville and Mt Dallas, PA. The 1909 Baldwin 2-6-2 on display was built for the Kanawah, Glen Jean & Eastern RR in WV, then was later purchased by the Morehead & North Fork Railroad, in KY before being sold to a dealer named George Silcott. Everett purchased the locomotive for excursion service in 1965, and moved it up to PA. Unfortunately, the line ceased operations in 1982 when Conrail abandoned the then-Mt. Dallas Secondary in October 1982, severing the Everett Railroad's ties to the outside world and forcing its abandonment. Everett's line was then sold, scrapped and divested with proceeds going towards the formation of the "new" Everett Railroad which now operates further north on the old ex-PRR Bedford Secondary and uses 2-6-0 #11 from the Bath & Hammondsport. The 2-6-2 #11 went to Williams Grove, and I don't think it ever ran there, and then in 1997 the Bloody Run Historical Society purchased it and moved it back to the old depot in Everett, PA and placed it on display.

I wonder how these are going to do in a commuter setting with lots of stops/starts. 
 

I don't think that Harbor Freight makes these Jack stands...

mtn said:

I wonder how these are going to do in a commuter setting with lots of stops/starts. 

On paper, 4300hp powering four axles (so 1075hp per axle) should make for snappy acceleration, and with modern wheelslip control, thte HTC-R trucks, and AC traction motors, they shouldn't be too slippery. The F40PH only had 750hp an axle, and the GE P42DC did fine with 1062.5hp per axle and DC traction, although the SD70MACH is a lot heavier. Like 415,000lbs versus 268,240lbs for a P42DC and 260,000lbs for an average F40PH. They're definitely an interesting concept, and unlike Alaska Railroad's SD70MAC HEPs, the Metra models don't derate power to provide HEP. They provide a constant 4300hp while generating HEP.

For those not familiar, Metra in the past couple years decided they needed newer, bigger power, since they were having to doublehead their F40s and MP36s. The idea for the SD70MACH was conceived by Progress Rail, who took ex-Kansas City Southern SD70MACs, upgraded them to Tier 3 emissions, added 80mph gearing, and then configured them to generate Head End Power for passenger cars. Rather than add a standalone HEP skid (not enough room) or run an HEP generator off the prime mover like an F40 (required them to operate in Run 8 all the time and adjust acceleration off field excitation, which makes them loud and thirsty), they decided to depower the two axles towards the center of the unit, giving them a B1-1B wheel arrangementt. EMD uses one inverter per two axles, so one is now set up for providing HEP instead. They certainly look impressive, and I'm glad Progress Rail didn't give them those ugly UltraCab II noses.

Alaska Railroad's SD70MAC-HEPs predate the Metra SD70MACHs by nearly 2 decades. In the early 2000s, Alaska Railroad was handling oil trains from the Flint Hills refinery at North Pole, Alaska to Anchorage, coal trains from the Usibelli mine near Healy to the port of Seward, and interchange cars from their barge operation in Whittier, and three trainsets of SD70MACs with hopper cars were moving aggregate from quarries in the Palmer-Wasilla area for construction in Anchorage all summer long. Cruise ships were also driving tremendous growth on the passenger trains.

HEP for the passenger trains was first handled by 2 parallel 150-kW generator sets slung underneath the baggage car. Then, later in 2000 and 2001, six GP40s were rebuilt into HEP-equipped units for passenger service, with #3009, #3010 and #3011 equipped with 300kW Detroit Diesel generator sets and #3013, #3014 and #3015 with ex-Amtrak 800kW gear-driven generators.  Each had their disadvantages though. The baggage car gen sets had limited capacity and were susceptible to clogging with cottonwood lint, the 300kW Geeps were noisy and again had limited capacity, the 800kW Geeps were VERY noisy, had very small fuel tanks and were not at all fuel-efficient, and all the equipment, though recently rebuilt, were getting old. And since Alaska Railroad is in, well, Alaska and not connected to any outside rail network, leasing equipment was not an option.

Alaska Railroad reached out to EMD for suggestions, and EMD recommended the F59PH, basically a cowl-body passenger variant of the GP59, but Alaska Railroad wasn't keen on the idea of expensive new locomotives that could only be used for summertime passenger service. Robert Stout, Alaska Railroad CMO at the time, basically said to EMD, “We like what the SD70MAC does for us, what’s the possibility of putting HEP on one?”  Such a dual-purpose unit would be flexible for both the short passenger season and then useful the rest of the year as a freight locomotive.

The request wound its way to EMD Engineering, where they realized that one of the two Siemens-supplied Traction Converter Cabinet of a SD70MAC might be modified to provide HEP, leaving the other TCC and truck to propel the unit, and one truck just coasting.  Consultations with Siemens confirmed that Siemens could adapt the HEP transformer previously designed for the LIRR DE/DM30AC locomotive with the inverter of the SD70MAC to provide 480V 3-phase HEP. As the original SD70MAC had no room in its carbody for the additional needed HEP equipment, several different ideas were proposed, including using the locomotive roof and running board.  The only realistic hope was to dramatically shorten the fuel tank and sling the HEP equipment underneath the underframe.  As the LIRR DE30AC HEP transformer was hung similarly under its structural carbody, this didn’t seem too bad of a situation, and the real challenge would be designing cabinets for the HEP switchgear for the underslung application.  Design, cost and manpower estimates were made at EMD, but then, ARR decided not to buy locos for that calendar year

In the fall of 2002, CSX enters into this story.  They came looking for new units; more SD70MACs like they already had but with 3 important differences:

• The engines were hopped up from 4000hp to 4300hp.
• By EPA regulations, they would be required to meet Tier-1 emissions and thus needed a new split cooling system (first applied to UP SD70DC units but never applied to a SD70MAC.)
• CSX requested space be designed in the rear of the unit for an Eco-Trans APU (keeps cab lights and HVAC powered up and circulates fluids with main engine shut down)

.

By some creative re-arranging of components, a volume of 3’6”x6’x5’9” was created for the APU by replacing the 4-cylinder electric drive air compressor with a shorter direct-drive 3-cylinder compressor, rotating the #2 TCC 180 degrees so that its “blind side” faced aft (the Siemens TCC has one face with no access doors for maintenance), and moving the battery box from the conductor’s side to engineer’s side of the long hood. The design was finalized in December of 2003 and construction for 130 SD70MAC Tier 1s for CSX began. With the design complete, EMD realized that the CSX APU space could easily morph into a location for an Alaska HEP system without shortening the fuel tank and without hanging transformers and equipment underneath the loco.  This proposal was offered up to Alaska in the spring of 2003, and Alaska liked the design but had one requirement; the locomotives had to be delivered before the May 2004 passenger season kicked off. Unfortunately the lead time wouldn't make it possible to meet that requirement, so EMD made a deal to deliver the locomotives before then, sans HEP, and then retrofit the HEP equipment as it became available. Alaska RR accepted the offer, bumping the order from 4 to 8 units as well.

The results of this project were eight versatile passenger/freight locomotives, ARR #4317 through #4324.  When the HEP system is off, the unit is a 4300HP C-C locomotive.  With HEP on, it is a 2400HP C-3 locomotive with 730kW HEP generation.   Moreover, it can deliver that HEP load in Run 3 (490 rpm) and up to 270kW HEP in Run 2 (370 rpm).  An F40PH or GP40-H in contrast would run at a constant 900 rpm to deliver the same HEP. The system has turned out to be very reliable.  If the 710 engine starts, then HEP is available. There is no pony engine to service and thus no pony engine cooling system, fuel system or lube system to deal with.  The only filter to change is the HEP blower filter and the cottonwood lint at 15 feet off the rail has been very manageable. On paper having one truck unpowered would seem less than favorable, but again, modern controls, AC traction, and the HTC-R truck still give decent tractive effort. Since the Denali Star is often in excess of twenty cars, one SD70MAC HEP is used with another SD70MAC or SD70MAC HEP with HEP disengaged, are often paired up.

When it comes to Chicago commuter equipment, my favorites are still the Burlington Northern E9Ams. During the early 1970s, BN gathered up the best 25 of the E8s and E9s that were left on the roster after Amtrak's formation and sent them off to Morrison-Knudsen to be overhauled and upgraded to work with the new bilevel gallery cars. The E8s and E9s were marshalled off to Boise and had their twin 1125hp (E8) or 1200hp (E9) 567s removed and replaced with 1200hp 645s. Since they were now 2400hp, same as an E9, they were reclassified to E9Ams, regardless of if the core started as an E8 or E9. Also, to get rid of the baggage cars converted to HEP generator cars, they had their steam generators removed and replaced with a skid-mounted HEP generator set. They were also configured to work with the cab cars in push-pull service, received a slightly different light package, and a cool green, white and orange livery.

The red light under the headlight was used when in push mode, since the locomotive was now in the rear of the train and needed a marker lamp.

A trio of E9Ams wait at Hill Yard in Aurora, IL in 1988

Grimy, but still on the job in 1991. They would last until 1992, when Metra replaced them with the unusual F40PHM-2 "Winnebagos", and as far as I know, none of the E9ams ever wore Metra blue and red.