EARLY real trains musing

Too bad SMR closed down, type of locomotive model they would have done.

@colorado hirailer posted:

Paging through auctions, l saw an offering of a kit for a "Pioneer" locomotive, TWO drivers, as part of a "Confederate attack on Chambersburg".  I'm thinking, " There's a Chambersburg in Pa., that Chambersburg?". I have visited a very rare auto collection in THAT Chambersburg west of York, that York. The auction pictured a  model of a very early two driver loco lettered "Pioneer".  As a kid l had built a Strombecker? wooden model kit of a Pioneer that l remembered as being the first loco on the C&NW outta Chicago,  The pictured loco was similar.  It chugged from Chicago to central Pa. on two wheels in time for the Civil War?  Sounds like a history of a unique loco, and the first l had heard of this battle and loco's presence in Pa ?

There are two different Pioneer locomotives documented.  The Cumberland Valley Railroad Pioneer is different than the C&NW Pioneer.  Seeing the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad was in operation during the Civil War, I seriously doubt the G&CU/C&NW locomotive wound up in Pennsylvania.

Rusty

Rusty, You're correct.

Pioneer was an 8-ton 2-2-2T locomotive built by Seth Wilmarth of the Union Works of South Boston,Mass. in 1851 for the Cumberland Valley Railroad (later PRR). It now resides in the Smithsonian. It is an entirely different locomotive than the Pioneer of the C&NW.

This info was found in "History of the Cumberland Valley Railroad", by Paul J. Westhaeffer (1979, Washington, D.C. Chapter NRHS).

Chambersburg was not a battle site per se, but was the location of numerous Confederate raids and occupations during the Gettysburg battle campaign.

While not the same machines, it is interesting that they shared the same time period although a great distance separated them.   Don Francis