Interview with Mike Gresham about the 1309 and a couple of other things:

http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/staff/archiv ... -1309.aspx

Of course, the question of paint had to get in there!

My job recently took me to Ridgeley, W.Va. Before returning home late in the afternoon, I got the visit the shop area of the Western Maryland Scenic, hoping to see how early work was coming on the 1309. I didn't get to see the "new" locomotive--the mechanics had already gone home by the time I could get over there, and the locomotive was locked up inside the main shop building. Did get to notice a second new shop building, which is currently the home of the WM office car that had been used as a summer cabin in the mountains, and which now back on rail where it belongs, with its own trucks!

The big surprise was that the railroad was operating that day! It's leaf season, and the railroad is running an expanded schedule. Oh, it is great for a steam fan like me to catch a coal burner moving around on its own, even just in being serviced and turned on the wye.

The train this day had 16 cars, enough to require beefy 734 and two GP-30s to go up the last three miles of 3% into Frostburg.

One of the diesels was doing the switching with the passenger consist, while 734 was being turned on the wye. While all this was going on, I got to look around at parts of two other steam locomotives.

One fairly large part was the tender of B&H No. 11, a very small Alco export 2-6-0 that is under restoration under contract for another road in Pennsylvania. The tender is well along except for some woodwork (rear footboards), and looks quite nice. The employees there told me the boiler is the current job on this engine, and is progressing along. The cab for this locomotive was under a shelter-like structure nearby.

Sharing space under the shelter and on another slab on the ground were a lot of parts from the 1309. This included valve gear parts, main rods, sanders, the boiler front, the exhaust stand and nozzle, the turret cover, sand domes, steam dome cover, and some other things.

A number of new things I found out about the 1309:

1. By far the biggest one was the realization, with the main rods off the locomotive and sitting on the floor of this shelter, that the rods between the front and rear engines were NOT interchangeable. These rods were lined up with the big ends all adjacent, and the wrist ends of two of them were probably four to six inches longer than the other two! You would have thought they would be the same length--the two engines share the same driver diameter. driver wheelbase, and cylinder stroke--but they aren't!

2. That exhaust stand is actually two in one, with one mounted inside the other, or more properly, one wrapped around the other. This locomotive is a true Mallet, in that it is a compound. Normally, it would operate with high pressure steam in the rear cylinders, and the exhaust from these cylinders going to the larger low pressure set. From there the low-pressure steam is exhausted through the "inner" nozzle and up the stack.

However, like most such locomotives, this engine can be started in "simple," with high pressure steam to all four cylinders. When the engine is running in simple, the low pressure cylinders exhaust up the stack--and the high pressure cylinders do, too. That's the second exhaust system that surrounds the low pressure exhaust. This comes in from behind the exhaust stand, and goes into a portion of an expanded nozzle that vaguely resembles an asymmetrical bowl around the top of the low pressure nozzle.

The low pressure nozzle itself also has a heavy metal "X" member across the top. This is to break up the exhaust, having it come out in four streams. This increases the surface area of the steam, and helps the draft, although it also adds to the back pressure. Some later locomotives with more sophisticated exhaust systems used multiple nozzles and sometimes multiple stacks to do the same thing with less back pressure.

After all that, finding that the sand domes still had sand in them from when the locomotive last ran in 1956 was rather pedestrian.

Despite this sort of thing, the crews are enthusiastic about the new engine, noting it is in excellent condition. One of them said the locomotive was virtually like a new one, with a clean boiler and only seven years' service.

This road is likely one of the few to actually require the power of something like this. The line's management plans to extend the passing track at Frostburg to handle longer trains, and they also anticipate the end of diesel helper service with this Mallet.

I'll be looking forward to seeing this engine run, riding behind it, and especially listening to it, particularly where it will start in simple and then shift into compound at about 10 mph or so. I've heard recordings of N&W 2-8-8-2s doing that, and it's something I've never experienced "live."

I am definitely looking forward to that!

Finally, I have to say "thank you" to the crews and management of WM Scenic for being railfan friendly, and being willing to speak of personal stories about railroading to a stranger who shows interest in their road.

That is something from the old days that's too often not around on either the "real" railroads, and on some heritage roads as well.

Some of the recently removed Flues and Tubes from 1309.

Couple of shots from the rear engine under the locomotive.

a lot of those flues look pretty good, but can't examine up close, some of those look rolled in on purpose for a reason (looks like major pitting which I doubt is the case here otherwise you'd already have a failure here.)

cylinders look totally restorable in good shape.

I'm looking forward to seeing this engine back in service. It will be in a perfect environment there.
Frankly I'm more excited over this than the Big Boy. Given all the drama and non action in Cheyenne, this will be the star of the show long before the 4014.

I too look forward to the 1309 being put in service by WMSR. I kind of wonder if any cosmetic changes will be made to her. When they acquired LS&I 2-8-0 #34, she was made into a Western Maryland looking engine with the headlight mounted in the center of the smokebox door, given a WM number for Consolidations and WM lettering on the tender. The original Western Maryland had two classes of 2-6-6-2 compounds (although with slide valves, not piston valves); two class M-1 locomotives numbered 951 and 952 and seven M-1a class numbered 953 through 959. Built 1909-1911 by Baldwin, the WM rebuilt them in 1927 apparently with headlights moved off of the pilot deck to the center of the smokebox door, similar to the WMSR 734. A number of the 2-6-6-2's appeared later in photographs with the headlight mounted up at the top of the boiler front with the number plate on the center of the smokebox door surrounded by a pair of air pumps, such as on a number of C&O locomotives. Just wondered if there had been any scuttlebutt as to possible WMSR cosmetic changes.

Les

That's quite a booster on that center-cab Plymouth.

There's been plenty of speculation and such, but the management has made no comments, other than that getting the locomotive to run is the main priority.

Personally, I wouldn't change anything (and I have to admit to being a C&O fan), but I won't squawk at Western Maryland on the tender. . . .except in kidding, maybe.

Sorry, alas a very common misconception!. The single orifice can be replaced by more that, higher up in the smokebox, could have an identical surface but will show superior performance. The transfer of momentum from the jet(s) has little to do with surface but everything with differences in velocity/momentum.
Kind regards
Jos Koopmans

Just something to watch in Ridgeley:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCb7bTj ... e=youtu.be

It might become a good money-maker to cut up a few of the old flues, make souvenirs out of them. Then people could own a piece of the locomotive, a piece of history.

Better than letting 'em all go to scrap.

I agree they should ebay the old flues make some coin toward restoration

A bit of speculation--this locomotive was only seven years old when it was retired in 1956 (as was surviving sister 1308 in Huntington). If I recall correctly, flues had to be changed out every five years under the old I.C.C. regulations--but you could also get up to two one-year extensions. That's a total of seven years, with the two extensions--which makes me wonder, is it possible this locomotive, built at the end of steam, coming due for new flues in 1954 with dieselization well in progress, may have operated its last two years on extensions? If that's so, how possible might it be that the tubes recently pulled are the original set from Baldwin in 1949?

Seems quite plausible but did tubes & flues normally run out their maximum legal time or did they sometimes get replaced sooner from hard usage?