The Great Locomotive Hunt of 2014

A week ago Saturday I left home for five days working on a construction project in North Carolina. I made it a point to find as many steam locomotives that I could on the way down and back. Thanks to Steam Locomotive dot Com the task was a relatively easy one. I found 11 locomotives, ranging in condition from immaculate to utterly destroyed.


The first was a small Vulcan 0-4-0T at Warthers Carvings in Dover, OH. Recently had a bit of attention and a paint job. The new cab is the size of a garden shed, and built like one too.


The second is Baldwin 0-6-0 No. 3 at the Hocking Valley Scenic Railroad. She was getting a staybolt replaced that day and a hydro test. She will be running next year on the HVSR.


This is a Vulcan 0-4-0T at Beckley, WV. Yes she is derailed on her display pad, as if someone was trying to roll it down the hill. Probably good that the cylinders are stuck! Nice small loco that could be an easy restoration candidate, but instead she sits here and has to bear all sorts of abuse from the neighborhood children.

More photos coming later. I have to resize them for the PM photo uploader to accept them.

Thanks for posting these Rick.

I recall dimly that somewhere up in the northeast, perhaps Maine, that there is a large island off the coast that had several locomotives that had been abandoned 100 years ago or so. Been used to haul logs out of the forest, and just left there when the company moved on. Too expensive at the time to ship them back to the mainland.

Here it is, and it was in the late 20's.

Old locomotives sit abandoned in the middle of Maine ? Outdoors ? Bangor Daily News ? BDN Maine

Those Locomotives in JD's link remind me of some that Terry Harper had worked on to stabilize .
I think he posted about them on this forum a couple of years ago or more but I can't seem to find the search terms to bring up a link.
Maybe Terry or someone else will find it .
Regards,
Jim

Those are the locomotives Terry worked on.

N&W 2-8-0 Number 7 in Bluefield, WV. She must have been an alcohol burner given all the empty beer bottles in the tender.

Without a savior coming along to start taking care of her, I am afraid that she will dissolve into the earth.

Norfolk and Western 2-6-6-4 1218 at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

Ever checked out the railroad museum in Baltimore? I was in the area a few weeks ago and stopped in there. I was very glad I did! The place has a ton of rare cool stuff.

Rick Rowlands said:

Norfolk and Western 2-6-6-4 1218 at the Virginia Museum of Transportation.

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Thank you for the pictures of 1218. Your pictures inside the firebox certainly show it was in the middle of a rebuild. Too bad David Goode of the Norfolk Southern killed the steam program when he did in 1994. Now it would be very difficult to pick up the pieces to complete the rebuilding of 1218.

+1 on the B&O RR museum. Be sure to give yourself a full day there, as the exhibits include the roundhouse itself, at least one other large shed, and a sizeable outdoor display area.

Among other things, the B&O museum has a camelback or "Mother Hubbard" locomotive from the Central RR of NJ. This is a very wide firebox design meant to burn some sort of low grade coal fuel. The engineer was in a cab straddling the boiler ahead of the firebox. The fireman was of course at the back of the boiler, with a simple roof over his head, rather than a true cab. Of this design, it was said "In the summer, the engineer roasted; in the winter, the fireman froze."

One of their displays sort of brought a lump to my throat; a World War ONE French "40 and 8" boxcar. The nickname refers to its stated capacity: 40 men or 8 horses. The French gave one of those cars to every US state then existing, in gratitude for the service of the American doughboys who turned the tide of that war. The US troops rode to marching distance of the front in that sort of box car. Our troops nicknamed them "side door Pullmans", a grim way of saying that they weren't all that comfortable with 40 men inside. I just recently heard another bit of doughboy humor; observing the stencil on the side of the car that said "Hommes 40 Cheveaux 8", a soldier said something like "I don't know when or where that game was held, but it must have been a real donnybrook!"

Getting back to steam locomotives, yeah, really, the B&O museum has got a great collection going back to "grasshopper" vertical boiler/vertical cylinder models.

John Ruth

MAMaxwell said:

Thank you for the pictures of 1218. Your pictures inside the firebox certainly show it was in the middle of a rebuild. Too bad David Goode of the Norfolk Southern killed the steam program when he did in 1994. Now it would be very difficult to pick up the pieces to complete the rebuilding of 1218.

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Goode wasn't!

Believe this is the remains of one of the "40 and 8" cars.

Look at this on eBay:

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=360403131402

Vtg Wood Railroad Train Boxcar WWI 40 & 8 Narrow gauge

When in the South you need to make a side trip to Spencer to see the North Carolina Transportation Museum. The site was Southern's largest repair facility.

NC Transportation Museum - Home

The Heritage Museum here in town (Libby, Montana) has a Shay they are working on getting back "on track", and an old passenger car that supposedly dates back to the Civil war. The passenger car was a relic of Ringling Bros. circus and was savaged from Ringling, Mt a few years ago. The plan when they are refurbed is to put in some narrow gauge track around the old J Neils mill site here in town and run tourist rides. I wish them all the best and probably should donate a little cash. If I wasn't working so much I'd love to help.
kootne

Rick Rowlands said:

I am afraid that she will dissolve into the earth.

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I say let'm all dissolve.

They're a constant reminder of corruption, deceit, extortion, heavy-handed eminent domain, greed - just about everything that is bad about the human race.

These engines were merely tools of the trade and don't deserve to be glamorized, any more than we should glamorize Hitler's gas chambers or Jeffry Dahmer's knives.

SLG said:

I say let'm all dissolve.

They're a constant reminder of corruption, deceit, extortion, heavy-handed eminent domain, greed - just about everything that is bad about the human race.

These engines were merely tools of the trade and don't deserve to be glamorized, any more than we should glamorize Hitler's gas chambers or Jeffry Dahmer's knives.

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Wow ! I think someone needs to take a nap.

I think someone needs professional help!

kenh said:

I think someone needs professional help!

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Could be...but my guess is you can never fully understand being "railroaded" by wealthy and powerful crooks and thieves until it's happened to you.

Professional help is not going to right a wrong nor change history.

Fabworks said:

Wow ! I think someone needs to take a nap.

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To H*ll with the railroad industry - it's ill-gotten goods.