From the WMSR Facebook page.

We have more good news, as we are leasing 80-Tonner No. 1957 from McHugh Locomotive! We thank JC and Annie for all of their efforts to not just us, but the entire railroad preservation community!

McHugh Locomotive & Equipment is a fantastic company to work with as they service our diesel fleet.

A message from MCHUGH LOCOMOTIVE & EQUIPMENT, “Ann Gillaspy McHugh & JC McHugh of the McHugh Company are happy to announce that we are continuing our relationship as being a valued locomotive repair, parts, and equipment supplier to the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad with the lease of our number 1957 GE 80-ton diesel locomotive to the newly formed Georges Creek Railroad a division of the WMSR.”

My own commentary. It's very exciting to be part of getting this new project of the ground. The folks at WMSR are fine people to work with and McHugh Locomotive offers unsurpassed quality. If we can be of service to your organization please message me.

Tom Gears

Could this be a fallback option in case they have trouble in the negotiations with the government entity that owns their ROW, allowing them to relocate their operation quickly and nearby? It also could be a veiled threat in said negotiations. That said, if (as has been noted here) they can pull this acquisition off financially it will be a good thing IMHO.

Edit: https://railfan.com/wmsr-leases-georges ... ht-trains/

“The WMSR doesn’t own the railroad between Cumberland and Frostburg,” Heinz said. “The ability to expand our schedule is limited in its current configuration. The Georges Creek Division initiative allows the Scenic to craft our future as we see fit.”

I can tell you that the current WMSR administration is doing its damndest to right the ship after the previous administration (or 2) let the railroad go to waste. Wes Heinz's predecessor did not do well running the railroad.

Mr. Huhn's comment is a huge understatement. The place was days away from liquidation.

Howard P.

Hi All
Here is a photo I took of Georges Creek Railroad, of GP-7's # 25 & 39,,that I took in 2022.. Pat

The WMSR press release mentions the potential for freight service on this line. I wonder what this would involve.

Were there ever any customers north of Westernport besides some now abandoned coal loadouts?

For some perspective on the line, here's an article published in the local newspaper on August 4, 2006:

Trains in Georges Creek
https://www.times-news.com/trains-in-ge ... 95eee.html

The photo caption states: "The partners purchased 8.5 miles of track from CSX and plan to start hauling natural commodities out of the Georges Creek Valley as soon as late September."

I wanted to pass this along, in case there is anyone in here who is interested:

https://www.gunnoemedia.com/charters/georgescreek

Unfortunately for them, without a firm schedule of events and commitments, this sounds like the racket of paying for a "personal seat license" just to be allowed to buy season tickets for a team/arena's sporting events....... "change my mind....."

A press release from McHugh regarding the ex-Army GE 80-ton states: "The McHugh Company No. 1957 was originally built for the US Army and numbered B-1685 and worked with 80-ton locomotive B-1674 ( McHugh 1961 ) at the Letterkenny Army Depot near Chambersburg, PA." This is not entirely accurate. Here is the background story.

Letterkenny Army Depot (LEAD) had previously had two Alco MRS-1 locomotives numbered B2044 and B2052 built in 1953. Referring to page 285 of Diesel Locomotives: The First 50 Years by Louis A. Marre, one reads that of the 83 such locomotives built, "Fifty units were equipped with a steam generator in the short hood; their road numbers were prefixed with a B (for boiler)." The text accompanying the photo on the page notes "The boilers were removed from most of the MRS-1s that saw any service at all."

US Army GE 80-tons were never equipped with boilers and never officially assigned a B prefix to their roadnumbers.

So where did this originate? By the time I first visited LEAD in September 1996, the MRS-1s were gone, having been acquired by the Hagerstown Roundhouse Museum and later scrapped on site. They were replaced by two GE 80-tons and I noticed that a B prefix had been added to each locomotive. I asked a crew member why there were Bs and he said they believed Army locomotives were supposed to have B prefixes. Apparently their experience with MRS-1s led them to erroneously believe that all Army locomotives were supposed to have a B prefix. I and the fellow Army railroader accompanying me on the visit informed him that the B meant boiler-equipped and that it only applied to the Alco MRS-1s. In response we only received the "deer in the headlights" look. Why they thought the Army was sending them locomotives on which they needed to "correct" the roadnumbers was never explained.

Over time locomotives are rotated in and out of various posts, depots, and ammo plants, often to receive higher-level maintenance at the Army locomotive shop, a tenant activity at Hill AFB, UT (which has since moved to Anniston Army Depot, AL) and a "new" locomotive would come in to replace the one that left. For example, USA 1685 had previously been at Fort Belvoir, VA, before that rail operation shut down in August 1993. It was reassigned to LEAD where, of course, a B was added by hand.

USA 1663, which had been at Watervliet Arsenal, NY, and then LEAD, was transferred to Fort Eustis where it arrived with the erroneous B. When one of the rail schoolhouse instructors learned of the origin of the B, he shook his head in disbelief and subsequently painted over the B.

During the post-Cold War drawdown, the Army greatly reduced the size of LEAD and most of it was converted into a business park. Eventually the two GE 80-tons came into the possession of the new rail operator, the Pennsylvania & Southern Railway, which later gave both locomotives fresh paint jobs but still in their Army colors and lettering. Although the PSCC was aware of the erroneous B prefixes, PSCC preferred to keep the bogus Bs in place for apparently humorous historical purposes.

When they went to McHugh, I passed on the saga of the bogus B prefixes to the company but apparently that went down the memory hole.

The mistaken information was just repeated in the current issue of Railpace.

So, to sum it up, Army GE 80-tons do not have boilers (just in case anyone was wondering), nor are their Army-assigned roadnumbers given B prefixes. This was a silly misconception from the 1990s that has been repeated decades later and seems to have taken on a life of its own.

The two ex-Letterkenny Alco MRS-1's that the Hagerstown Roundhouse "museum" got, B-2044 and B-2052, were moved to Hagerstown, sat derelict for years, and were later scrapped in the one Hagerstown yard, not "on site."

The government auctioned both 80-ton engines at Letterkenny in February, 2018. For whatever reason, Pennsylvania & Southern failed to bid on them, with the 1674 (or B1674) sold the Everett Railroad and the 1957 sold to a contractor in Wyoming. The P&S folks woke up and scrambled a few days later, purchasing both locomotives from the successful bidders, thus keeping them at Letterkenny until sold to McHugh. We owned the 1674 for all of about a week and never made it down there to see what we had bought, and I'm sure the Wyoming buyer bought and sold sight unseen as well.

- Alan Maples
Everett Railroad

By "on site" I meant Hagerstown, not LEAD. When it took place, someone recorded the scrapping and placed a video on YouTube. I wasn't present for the occasion, but if I'm not mistaken, Hub Scrap did the job.


Thanks for the details, Alan. I remember when the locomotives were purchased but didn't go anywhere. I left that part out of my original posting because the details were still vague and my intent was to focus on the "misnumbering" of the locomotives.