Midweek Photos 10/5/2016

Tim O'MalleyOGR Forum Member

Hello, once again. Wednesday is here, and a chance to share some of our chance encounters with the railroad scene. The sun and the trains the past few days have not been very friendly in my corner of the world. But I had to pull over to catch this consist yesterday:

On a lunchtime drive, I saw the tail end of a coal train on the Norfolk Southern Route in Scranton, PA. I don't often see coal trains, and don't remember ever seeing them on this line when it was owned by Canadian Pacific Railway. The first unit is 9159

followed by 6768...

then 1070 and 1003. I was really surprised when I noticed the Wabash unit in the line-up.

This route dates back to 1851, when the Liggett's Gap Railroad built a rail line from Slouch's Hollow to connect with the Erie Railroad in Great Bend, PA. The Hollow is now Scranton, and upon completion of the route, it's name had become the Delaware Lackawanna & Western.

The Eastern side of the route out of Scranton is a bit newer. The Delaware & Cobb's Gap Railroad began construction in 1853 It eventually reached Hoboken NJ. Two "heritage units" of a different kind were utilized on a Steamtown excursion to Gouldsboro, PA. The units are F3 no. 664 in Lackawanna stripes, and Central RR of New Jersey RS3 no. 1554.

Your turn. If you have any cool pictures of passenger trains, freights, trolleys or other neat items of the railroad in real life, please share. See you next week. Columbus Day is coming up this Monday. It is also Canadian Thanksgiving. Have a good time.

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10/5/167:32 AM

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SantaFe158OGR Forum Member

October 1st was the first day our 1873 Mason 0-6-4T "Torch Lake" was back out pulling trains after our other two engines worked most of the summer. Due to the nature of the Mason Bogie design (semi articulated) the firebox is essentially inside the cab with the crew next to it, so it's typically our early spring and fall engine when it's a little cooler outside. Torch Lake is my personal favorite to run and fire out of our three operating engines, so of course fall is my favorite time of the year.

Torch Lake is one of only two surviving Mason Machine Works built locomotives and the sole survivor of the locomotives built to William Mason's "Bogie" design. Essentially it is one of the earliest articulated locomotive designs. The boiler actually sits on a swivel casting located above the center drive wheel, so basically everything under the running boards is able to pivot into curves. They were pretty well suited for tight curves on mining and other industrial railroads. Calumet and Hecla Mining Company once owned three locomotives built to similar specifications as Torch Lake (amongst many others) but they were all scrapped during WWII. Torch Lake somehow survived until it was donated to Greenfield Village in 1969 where it's been working since. Today it's known to be the oldest regularly operating steam locomotive in the U.S., if not the oldest operating overall.