Grassroots Railroad Sports?

In reply to Frosty_Nimiko :

I get why SERM hasn't really done much with it, I was just remarking on the shockingly short-lived operation of the #290. Three years where it ran sparingly, and had mechanical issues pretty much every time it went out, and then it finally got fixed and had nowhere to run.

The story I heard was that the #290 had been involved in a pretty terrific smash-up at some point in her life that left her frame badly tweaked. When it was first being overhauled, some contractor was going to tram the running gear up with laser measuring. They dropped the axles and journal boxes out and a whole mess of shims, shoes, and wedges fell out of the frame, which had been used to keep everything in alignment. Nobody paid any attention to where they went, they trammed the axles, slapped it back together, and it always ran hot. In fact, that contractor went out of business before the restoration was done, the locomotive ran hot within about 5 or 10 miles while being towed dead to the New Georgia shop  It wasn't until the Bill Magee, formerly of the NS steam shop, had it moved to Irondale, realigned everything the old-fashioned way with a plumb bob, that she ran trouble free. After New Georgia shut down, the drivers were removed and turned after her return to the SRM, and the uneven wear caused by the boxes running cockeyed in the frame prior to the aforementioned work was corrected. In spite of the fact that the engine was running well when last parked and could probably make a few more miles on her current running gear with minor repairs, the long-term cure would be to true the pedestals and lay off new shoes and wedges

The #290 made a silver screen appearance in Fried Green Tomatoes, and there was talk of a sequel that she was to be used in, but Jessica Tandy's death put the end to that. Jason Sobczynski also mentioned that there was another movie being filmed and the Hollywood folks approached SERM and asked them if they could use the #290 in film. SERM said, "Well, we'd need to overhaul it." They came up with a budget and timeline for returning the locomotive to service and when the collections and preservation manager gave them the price they said, "We're not worried about that, how long will it take?". The timeline, with about 6 people working on it full time, was 3 and to 4 months, and the movie folks needed it in 1 month! All of the king's horses could not have made that happen as there was a 6 week lead time on the tube material. The movie people walked out, and he can't recall the name of the movie to know if, they found another steam locomotive, they made do without a steam locomotive, or if the movie never made it off the ground.

NS borrowed the A&WP #290 for four excursions shortly after they did the running gear work. I'm sure part of it was to make sure that they had cured the bearing issues, but part of it was also because the #611 and #1218 were undergoing maintenance, leaving NS short on steam power. On April 6 and 7, 1981, shee hauled two round trip excursions from Birmingham to Chattanooga for the Heart of Dixie Chapter NRHS and the following weekend ran round trips out of Jacksonville, FL to Valdosta for the North Florida Chapter NRHS. One RYPN user comments that a good friend of his went to Fargo for the runby on one of those trips, fully expecting #611, and as they approached, he heard NS talking about "290" over a scanner and had no clue what was coming. Followed by, "Lucky guy, I never saw her in steam once."

It's funny that NS used the #290, since Southern had tried to acquire her years before and ended up in a legal battle with the Atlanta & West Point. See, Southern had had three of those stunning green and gold Ps-4 Pacifics at the end of the steam era, that Graham Claytor, Southern's lawyer at the time, convinced Southern to try and donate. No one would take one, until they cajoled the Smithsonian into accepting the #1401, on the grounds that she hauled FDR's funeral train, and ultimately scrapped the other two. Claytor became president of the Southern in 1967, and the railroad had been running corporate excursions with 2-8-2 #4501 for the prior year. Claytor tried to convince the Smithsonian to lend the #1401 back to Southern to return to operation, which the Smithsonian refused.  In 1968, Graham Claytor would send Southern Chief Council James A. Bistline to Chicago to negotiate with Dick Jensen for the purchase of Jensen's USRA Light Pacific, Grand Trunk Western #5629, with intent to modify it into a Southern Ps-4 lookalike, but the latter asked for an unattainable amount of money and negotiations broke down.

Around the same time, the #290 was being evicted from Atlanta's Lakewood Park, and the #290 was mechanically quite similar to a Southern Ps-4. The locomotive was donated to the Atlanta Chapter of the NRHS, and Graham Claytor helped to move the locomotive into Inman Yard in Atlanta for temporary storage. Claytor then made an attempt to lease the #290, with intent to modifiy it to resemble a Ps-4. However, the A&WP caught wind, and was not keen on their former locomotive being repainted into the livery of one of their rivals, and they threatened to sue the Southern for $50,000 if their lease on #290 came to fruition. Southern dropped the idea and it was eventually moved to Duluth, GA, and Southern gave up on the idea, instead just painting the #4501 and #722 into Southern green and gold.

The idea of making another engine into a Southern Ps-4 did resurface many years later, but not on a corporate program. Bob Sproule, who had partnered with Paul Merriman to save Southern #4501 and was former president of TVRM, had a longtime dream of having a green and gold Pacific. Steamtown had Canadian National 4-6-2 #5288 in their collection, and Sproule worked out a deal to trade some wheel work on one of Steamtown's engines for the #5288, which he planned to doll up like a Southern engine, even if it was only about 7/8ths the size of a real Ps-4 and looked totally different from an earlier Ps-2 or Ps-3, and restore to operation. Sproule passed away not long after, and the project lost it's champion.

Yesterday, I braved single-digit temperatures to go catch the Adirondack in action, hoping that the forecasted extreme cold would result in clear skies, like it often does. No such luck. But the heater works in my car, there had been snowfall since the last time MA&N had gone north and there had been no plow extra to clear it, and the #2400 was hooked up to the train when I swung into Utica. The #1845 was sitting about where it was a couple weeks ago, when it was supposed to lead and then was removed, and the #3573 was nowhere to be found, likely in the engine house receiving work. So, gotta get all the photos of the #2400 that I can before the #3573 returns to service.

This was north of Utica Marsh, in Marcy. After running relatively slow through the marsh, to give people a chance to spot wildlife, they open it up once they cross over the Barge Canal (the through-truss bridge in the background) and they're hustling once they cross River Road. There was a couple inches of snow on the rails, so they were kicking it up pretty good as they roared by.

Alvord Road in Stittville, and they're really kicking up some snow here. I just wish the power was pointed the right direction.

I then hopped ahead to Mapledale Road in Holland Patent, got all set up, and waited. And waited. And waited. They had passed me at Alvord Road, I had gone under them at Miller Road in central Holland Patent, and they had been moving along at a good clip. Wood Road crossing is less than a mile south, so you can usually hear them blow for Wood Road, but I heard nothing. Did they hit a snowmobile stuck on the track? Derail on an ice-filled flangeway? Just get stalled on the snow? Risking doubling back and missing them, I went to Wood Road and arrived as they were creeping towards the crossing. A combination of possible ice in the flangeways and a crossing gate that wasn't working had brought them to a halt so that a crew member could get down and flag them across.

I then tried to beat them to Mapledale Road as well. Usually you can't because you have to head the wrong compass direction on Wood Road, and then head back the proper direction to Mapledale Road, but I figured it was worth a shot since they were moving slow. Maybe they'd have to stop and flag this crossing as well. Nope, they had speed up, and they weren't slowing for anything. After all, it's only 2 miles from here to the start of Remsen Hill. Maybe not the shot I was hoping for, since I wanted to be the other side with milepost U15 in the frame, but not awful.

Having reached the top of Remsen Hill, they are on the final stretch. You can see that there is a tall fill here, and there was actually once a long wooden trestle that made the climb from Barneveld to Remsen. As the wooden trestle got older, it was filled and covered with earth and gravel to make a solid fill, which was standard practice in those days.

The second Plank Road crossing. If you drive quickly, you can usually catch both, but they were really crawling this time, giving plenty of time to get set up

Arriving in Remsen.

Once again the runaround track was snowed in, so they had to plow it out.

I particularly like the crew all watching to make sure that they don't derail on ice that might be packed in the flangeways.

Hooked up to the train to head south. The southbound trip would go much quicker, since they are no longer fighting an uphill grade and they've plowed out all the tracks.

Slithering out of Remsen.

Blasting through some snow on their way down Remsen Hill, at Prospect Depot Road. Half of the depot is off to the right of frame, and it actually sat on the other side of the tracks when it was still a depot. There's also a whistle post there, despite the tracks now crossing over Route 365 on a bridge. Once upon a time though, this there was a grade crossing, with the depot intact. The road was later dug down to eliminate the grade crossing, and the depot was sawn in half, half was moved to it's present day location, and the other half vanished.

Passing the legion in Holland Patent.

And passing back by Old Edic Road in Marcy

NickD said:

The idea of making another engine into a Southern Ps-4 did resurface many years later, but not on a corporate program. Bob Sproule, who had partnered with Paul Merriman to save Southern #4501 and was former president of TVRM, had a longtime dream of having a green and gold Pacific. Steamtown had Canadian National 4-6-2 #5288 in their collection, and Sproule worked out a deal to trade some wheel work on one of Steamtown's engines for the #5288, which he planned to doll up like a Southern engine, even if it was only about 7/8ths the size of a real Ps-4 and looked totally different from an earlier Ps-2 or Ps-3, and restore to operation. Sproule passed away not long after, and the project lost it's champion.

I'm curious what the status is on the #5288. She was moved up to Colebrookdale Railroad in Boyertown, PA in June of 2023 and since then, it's been radio silent. There has never been a ton of news on the whole Colebrookdale steam program, other than announcements about engines that they're acquiring. The Maguire Foundation purchased LS&I 2-8-0 #18 from the Iowa Pacific Holdings liquidation in 2020, moved it up to storage on the Colebrookdale and is said to have been working on getting it running again (it last ran in 2013), with an agreement with the Colebrookdale Railroad to eventually operate the locomotive on their line. It was moved up there in March of 2021, and at one point there was a donation tab on Colebrookdale's website, which has since vanished. In January of 2021, Colebrookdale announced they were purchasing GTW #5030 from Jackson, MI to move to their railroad to restore to operation. Nothing else has ever been said since. And then almost two years ago the #5288 moved to Boyertown as well, and other than some posts about it arriving from TVRM, there's been no mention of it ever since. Lots of posts about passenger cars, and there was even a post that they had put their old ex-SOU/NS GP38-2, #5128, (which I ran back in 2022) in primer to paint it, but never a post to show the painted locomotive.

URHS of NJ has announced that their 12-trip run between Valentine's Day and March 2 with Hickory Creek, Swift Stream and Tavern-Lounge #43 will be the only times those cars will be used in 2025 for the Hudson River Rail excursions on Amtrak. The impending East River Tunnel reconstruction project is forcing a lot of operational changes, like merging the Capitol Limited and Silver Star into the reborn Floridian, and unfortunately the logistical changes have forced Amtrak to put the Hudson River Rail excursions on hiatus.

Its unfortunate to see that Catskill Mountain Railroad is again fighting with the rail trail crowd and at risk of losing more trackage.

On August 9, 1982, CMRR began operations out of Phoenicia, NY using track cars and trailers to haul tourists and tubers three miles along Esopus Creek to Mt. Pleasant station on the old Ulster & Delaware. In 1986, Ulster County reconnected the line with Conrail at Kingston, the railroad purchased a variety of second-hand locomotives, coaches and freight cars which were shipped by rail to Kingston. They then began operations on both ends of the segment, Phoenicia and Kingston, with hopes to connect the full length.

In 1991, he railroad entered into a 25-year lease with Ulster County in and began working to restore the crossing over Route 28 in Mount Pleasant to extend their operation. The project received approval and after about ten years, public funding was provided to complete reconstruction of the crossing and installation of warning lights and gates. The new crossing was put into service in October 2004, offering the railroad its first significant expansion. In 2007 the railroad began track repairs in Kingston to Washington Avenue in and in late 2009, the railroad opened more track west of Washington Avenue and offered additional seasonal service throughout that year. From 2007 to 2009, close to two miles of track had been rebuilt in Kingston, from Cornell Street to the foot of Bridge C9. For three years, the CMRR worked to complete the rehabilitation of Bridge C9 over Esopus Creek in Kingston. The bridge was opened for service on December 7, 2012, enabling track rehabilitation westward with Route 209 being the first destination. Route 209, MP 5.42, was reached on September 21, 2013, and Hurley Mountain Road, MP 5.94, was reached on November 16, 2014. 

Things started to fall apart in the 2010s though. In 2011, Hurrican Irene wiped out Campground Curve on the Phoenicia end of operations, as well taking out three of the four spans of Boiceville Trestle on the non-operating segment near Cold Brook. The washout was repaired but disrupted operations for the majority of the 2011 seasons. On November 2012, Ulster County informed the CMRR that several repair projects had been approved by FEMA, including restoration of the Boiceville Trestle, but the county informed CMRR that they were holding the funds hostage unless the railroad agreed to terminate its lease from Kingston to the Ashokan Reservoir. The county also began trying to terminate the CMRR's 25 year lease early in 2013.

What followed was an ugly saga, as the county tried to oust the CMRR out of both end of the line. They refused to release the funds to rebuild the western end unless they agreed to terminate the lease. They made claims that the railroad wasn't performing appropriate track maintenance (volunteers cut brush and fixed tracks to extend their rail rides, and also rehabilitated a bridge at a fraction of the cost that the county estimated, but were prevented from performing flood repairs due to the funds being held hostage), was operating without insurance (no validity to the claims, as proven repeatedly by the railroad's lawyers), that the railroad was going to move a passenger car into Kingston and sand blast off the lead paint in the middle of town (said car was stored well outside of Kingston and there weren't even any intentions of performing a restoration on the car). At one point, Kingston mayor Shayne Gallo went down to the city highway deparment and parked a dumptruck on the train tracks (a felony that he didn't even get a slap on the wrist for). The whole time, County Executive Mike Hein was pushing for conversion of the entire line into a trail. Of course, in typical fashion, the politicians tried extending a "compromise" that really wasn't a compromise for the county, but was just to make them look good and force CMRR into an untenable position that would set them up to fail (CMRR would lose the Phoencia end and trackage in Kingston, a new operator would have been sought for the Phoenicia end and that operator would have been financially responsible for removal of the tracks between Mt. Tremper and Kingston, as well as conversion to a trail and maintenance of the trail) In the end, CMRR won a bit of a pyrrhic victory. They held onto their lines in Kingston, and have continued to extend that, but they lost the Phoenicia end, and the rails through Ahsokan Reservoir (considered the most scenic part of the line and long the goal for CMRR to return to operation) all the way to Phoenicia were lifted to be converted into a trail.

Still, CMRR has been holding strong, with ridership having gone from a total of 8,039 in 2008 to 60,653 last year. They experience 17.5% growth in ridership just from 2023 to 2024. And last year they were voted Tourist Attraction of the Year (pity Mike Hein wasn't re-elected in 2019 so that he could be forced to present the award). All along the plan has been to extend rehabilitation of the rails another 6miles west to where the trail takes over in Ahsokan Reservoir, and the NYDOT even gave them a $4.5 million grant to continue work, in hopes of providing train trips to the trailhead and back.

Well, now the rail trail folks are back at it again. The 1.67 miles that CMRR has been planning to rehabilitate has been targeted for elimination by the Woodstock Land Conservancy and the Friends of the Catskill Mountain Rail Trail. The best use of the 1.67 mile from Stoney Hollow to Basin Road is now to be determined by the U&D Corridor Committee which was created by the Ulster County Legislature, already unfriendly to the railroad, and even though the CMRR has long advocated Rail-with-Trail for this section, the trail folks are refusing to work with the railroad and have just released a website pushing trail only, as well as the total elimination of the railroad back to Kingston.

It's honestly mind-blowing, and infuriating, at how the rail trail crowd absolutely refuses to ever compromise, has no end to their greed, and hides it all behind hard-to-quantify claimed economic gains. When you already have an 80-mile trail system, how much more do you need? And is that extra five miles going to bring in that many more people that aren't already using the trail? And why is there always refusal to even consider a trail alongside the railroad? It can be done, and quite successfully in many areas (WMSR and the Lehigh Gorge Scenic are prime examples). It's like watching the whole Adirondack Railroad debate all over again.

Aaand fired off a bunch of emails this morning.

Everett Railroad posted a glimpse inside their shop of work being done on 2-8-0 #38. This was the old Huntingdon & Broad Top engine, which then went to Rail City, then Gettysburg and then Knox & Kane, where it was burned in a roundhouse fire around 2008. Everett Railroad purchased it and moved it to their shops but it's a rainy day project, so progress has always been a little slow. This little update was that their shop forces have been preparing holes for flexible staybolt sleeves and welding the staybolt sleeves in place, bringing it one step closer to completion. Funny little coincidence, their other engine, 2-6-0 #11 was also at Rail City, the earliest steam-operating railroad museum in the US located in Sandy Creek, NY, after Rail City's founder purchased it from the Bath & Hammondsport. The two engines parted ways when Rail City shut down in the '70s, only to end up together again at the Everett.

The #38 as she looked back in her Huntingdon & Broad Top days. Not a bad-looking engine, but I certainly like her Everett stablemate, the #11 much more.

The #38 as she looked after the Knox & Kane roundhouse fire. The K&K had already shut down by that point, as a result of it's main draw, the Kinzua Viaduct, blowing down in a tornado in 2003. When the State of Pennsylvania, which owns the viaduct, could not afford to repair it, the railroad lost its major tourist draw, ridership tanked, and the whole thing shut down. There was hopes of maybe reorganizing and reopening, only for arsons to burn the roundhouse down on March 16th, 2008. Everything that was intact was put up for auction in 2011, and Everett Railroad was the lucky winner of the #38. Coincidentally, the buyer for the actual property was Kovalchick Corporation, the same scrap company that bought the East Broad Top in 1956 and preserved it. There was no repeat of the Kovalchick's little narrow gauge adventure, and according to an article published in the Bradford Era newspaper immediately following the auction, the Kovalchicks reportedly had "little interest in resuming tourist rides along the rails." They probably knew that without Kinzua Viaduct, the railroad had little chance of success, and so they yanked up the rails.

I'm headed down to Reading this Friday night to chase Reading #2102 from Reading to Jim Thorpe and back on Saturday. The weather looks decent Sunday (better than Saturday, actually) and I don't have to be home until that night, so I was looking at other operations to go photograph. And I'm kind of striking out.

• A lot of operations are still on that Christmas-Easter shut downs. Allentown & Auburn, Steamtown NHS, Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, etc. all have not resumed operation.
• Strasburg is operating, but they're still on their light schedule (weekends only, 12:00, 1:00. 2:00) and it's in the wrong direction of home. Might be convinced if #89 is running.
• Colebrookdale is operating, but I've ridden that (it's okay), and that operation is impossible to photograph. 

So, the options are:

• Hang around, since Reading & Northern is running a bunch of stuff on Sunday. There's the regular diesel/passenger car train from Pittston to Jim Thorpe, RDCs from Reading to Jim Thorpe, and QASD and PNGS and NRFF freights. 
• Go north to Scranton and see if Delaware-Lackawanna is running. Unlike GVT's other operations, D-L does run 7 days a week, but it's a bit of a crap shoot on what they're actually going to run. Could be SC7 from Scranton to Carbondale, or PO-74 from Scranton to Cresco. Or it could just be BR1 Scranton Yard switch or DL3 Taylor Yard transfer. Basically you have to show up at the Bridge Sixty Tower around 8am and see what they're up to. No guarantee.

Part of me thinks I should just go with the guaranteed action on the R&N, maybe catch the PNGS that I missed last spring. But the siren song of the big D-L Alcos is tempting. 

Yesterday, the Railroad Museum of Long Island posted a video on their Steam Up LIRR #39 page, talking about how LIRR #39, a PRR G5 4-6-0, is the largest 4-6-0 built and "is being restored for the 200th Anniversary of Strasburg Rail Road." I honestly don't really know what this is about. Back in 2013, RMLI announced a partnership with Strasburg Rail Road, where if RMLI raised a certain amount of money in 15 years from 2012, then the #39 would be moved to Strasburg, Strasburg would put up the remainder of the money to restore it, and the #39 would then be leased to Strasburg for 49 years to operate. It was a good deal for Strasburg, since they would get a PRR design (the only major difference between a PRR G5 and an LIRR G5 was that the LIRR engines used a larger tender) that was commonly used on branch lines and has relatively short drivers that make it well suited to their operations, which are also in the heart of PRR territory. Fundraising reception was honestly pretty tepid though, maybe PRR fans were in a cynical mood after the #1361 debacle, and neither Strasburg nor RMLI really marketed it much. There was also not much local (Long Island) support to the plan, since it really would boil down to "Help us raise money so this engine can take off 150 miles east for the next 50 years." The plan called for the amount needed to increase by 5% every year to match inflation, and fundraising was slower than inflation, so the engine literally got further from it's fundraising goals.

I had just assumed the plan was silently called off. Steam Up LIRR #39 hasn't made a post since July of '23 and that was just a notification for the flea market at at the museum. The last actual fundraising post was all the way back in July of '21, almost 4 years ago now, when they were selling commemorative coins. As someone on Facebook pointed out, the video seems a little disingenuous:  "The most powerful ten wheeler is coming back", "The Long Island 39 is being restored", all makes it sounds like funding is secured and the restoration is greenlit, when in reality they've have raised $287,000 in 13 years and have about over a milliion to go in 2 years. Unless some white knight has ridden in with a $1 million check, it seems unlikely it's going ahead, and if that's the case, why are they asking for our help in the video. Again, as a Facebook pointed out, in addition to not a single post, message, or update in 2024, it feels like everything is being done by someone who learned how to video edit yesterday, and the poor website looks, and functions, like it was designed in 2009 with no easy way to donate on the website. You have to really search for it. The whole thing has no direction, no momentum, no plans, no presence, no reach, and very little time. It also doesn't help that this engine has been under restoration in one form or another since 1980, with really nothing tangible to show for it. Ron Ziel led a group that moved it to the LIRR's Riverhead Yard in 1980, and they worked on it for some time, but that group was dissolved in 1993. The New York Supreme Court then awarded ownership to the new RMLI, and they secured a Federal ISTEA grant of $800,000 to complete the restoration work at Riverhead, but the federal grant meant that it fell under government oversight and volunteers could not work on it, so it wasn't until 2005 when work began again, and some work was done on the firebox and tender before A) the funds were exhausted and B) the #1361 restoration brought to light that PRR boiler design required complete re-engineering of the boiler and firebox to meet modern standards. So I can see the mentality of some older fans who go, "Jeez, I've been donating to this thing for almost 45 years and it's still not done, why should I keep throwing money at it?" 

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