What a pleasant surprise to have this pop-up in an unexpected way. Potato Creek RR? Could this be The Potato Creek Railroad in Northwestern Pennsylvania??? And the answer was a resounding YESSSssss!! A little digging in my collection of books produced some pertinent information.

Daily passenger and freight service with this engine (#8) on The Potato Creek Railroad would have included picking up and dropping log, bark and chemical wood cars at various locations along the route, including serving lumber camps of The Goodyear Lumber Company in McKean, Potter and Cameron counties in North Western Pennsylvania. Charles and Frank Goodyear were the primary stockholders in the Potato Creek Railroad.
Beginning at Keating Summit (North of Emporium) on present day Pa. Rte 155 on the Eastern Continental Divide, the railroad ran downgrade for 2.8 miles with an average grade of 1.4% to Liberty where it turned west up the Scaffold Lick Valley. The rise from Liberty to the top of the ridge between Scaffold Lick and Potato Creek Valley is 528 feet accomplished in just 4.2 miles or an average grade of 2.4%. Once over the summit, the pick-up of logs and chemical wood would be greatly increased. Tom Tabers book, An Empire in the Hemlocks, mentions inbound trains to Norwich (Lumber Mill) with as many as fifty (50) cars. The typical train also carried chemical wood for the retorts at Keystone and Beech logs for the Stave mill at Betula. The Pennsylvania Stave Mill at Betula produced large quantities of barrel staves for wooden kegs and tank sides for the booming oil businesses in Northwestern Pa. Bark cars would have been moved up the Potato Creek valley and across the summit to be exchanged with the PRR at Liberty, and from there taken to The Elk Tanning Co. at Port Allegheny, Pa. Along with the bark cars would have been Acetone, Wood Alcohol, kindling wood, and some lumber heading down the Susquehanna Valley on the Northern Division of the PRR.
There was a regular schedule listed for this train, making two trips per day from Keating Summit to Betula and return. An extra was scheduled for heavy freight times such as bark peeling season in the early summer and it ran in the middle of the night. The information from Taber indicates a normal train size was 15 cars, and assuming that average loaded weight going east at 75,000 lbs per car on a 2.5% grade, this brings the tractive effort needed right up to near what one would expect from that vintage locomotive at around 30,000 lbs. No wonder the comments that were made about the locomotive being worn out when delivered.

Doug,
The biggest problem with the history of this particular railroad is that the early writers used a very, very limited amount of primary source material and a lot of speculation. To this day article after article use these early flawed articles as primary sources.

For instance, one frequently used source, which is supposedly a first-hand account by Laurence Breed Walker, is absolutely laughable – particularly in his comments on ownership and rolling stock yet to this day it’s still cited as a primary source time and time again. In fact there is a book in print about the EL&WB that uses the Walker material quite heavily.

Then there is the myth that both locomotives operated simultaneously. Granted that with two locomotives on the property that would be an easy assumption. I believed it too until I realized that all these stories I was reading were regurgitating the same information. So I started digging for primary source information and sources.

When I asked one elderly gentleman who was there as a kid when the railroad was built in 1927 and was on the payroll in 1933 about this he was adamant that only one locomotive was operated at a time and that the primary locomotive was the 2-8-0 with the 4-6-0 serving as the backup.

Subsequently another former employee stated same. Later, this was verified by analysis of the production record, letters and oil consumption reports, and on the ground physical evidence yet…….I cannot even get the Bureau of Parks & Lands to correct their history on their website!

Anyway, the tragedy is that when many of these early articles were written the key players were very much alive. Of course it didn't help that the vast majority of employees came from Quebec and drifted back to Quebec or melted into the various Franco-American communities in numerous Maine and New England mill towns after the operation closed.

Of course to them thier feats and thier story - which seem remarkable to us today - were considered "all in a day's work" to them and thus unfortunatly told to few.

Here is another gem from the archives:



"Your fuel usage report of September 3rd states you have
a new locomotive engineer named Mederic Roberge; he
burns much more fuel than Thomas Lamberts, who in turn
uses more fuel than Vilbon Vachon.

In a preceding letter, I told you that Lambert is costing
us $4.50 more per trip than Vachon, and at the present
time Roberge is costing $5.40 more than Lambert each trip;
this totals $9.90 per trip for Roberge versus Vachon.

I think that, in the History of fuel consumption, the
more we study the matter, the better we can manage fuel
usage.

We must without fail employ more experienced and cost-minded
engineers, and scripulously observe individual fuel usage.

It may cost us $6.00 a day compared with the present rate
of $4.00, but potential,savings exceed by far the difference
in salary."




Are there any photos of No. 8 in operation on the Potato Creek?

I fully agree with the "early references" being cited even though they are incorrect.

I found several in my research on the Gainesville & Northwestern (many cited only 3 locomotives and one cited 4) Going through builder's records, I found 8.

On the Roswell Railroad, there is "Common Wisdom" come "fact" that there was only one locomotive owned by the railroad - even though it was not acquired until about 14 years after the railroad started running, and not only were builder's records locating mentioning two locos, but a detailed report about President Teddy Roosevelt's travel on the short line said that both engines were used to move the train over the line (after the line was standard gauged).

I just enjoy the laughs.

Doug vV

Terry:
On page 569 Taber states, "Good photos of Potato Creek locomotives have not been located." Most of my local contacts are well versed in the PS&N and the B&S, but not much in the way of the Goodyear operations. I will ask, but do not expect a positive outcome.