The two Maine locos are an ex-NYC 4-6-0 and an ex-Rutland 2-8-0 or 2-6-0. They are located on the shores of Eagle Lake, having been abandoned there when the loggers left in the 20's. People now meet at the engines on snowmobiles or paddle up to them in canoes. THey are popular pieces of Maine legend and while they are exposed to the elements, don't be deluded into thinking that a little work would make them operable again. They are reasonably safe where they are. Incidently, the locos arrived there by being skidded over on the frozen lake surface, many decades ago when winters were really cold! Today all that Diesel exhaust has caused global warming, and the ice is no longer think enough!

glueck@saturn.caps.maine.edu

On the subject of "miracle saves" I think that our groups Erie Stillwell coach would fall into this catagory as it has been saved from the scrapper TWICE. First time was in 1987 when it and a sister car were acquired from Conrail by the Susquehanna Valley RHS in Binghamton, NY. Over a decade later after becoming landlocked at the Binghamton station coach yard by construction of a baseball stadium, it was acquired by our organization and will moved to its new home later this week. See our website at chemungvalleyrhs.com for photos and more information. In a bit of irony, just prior to our acquisition of the car, the former DL&W Binghamton station property had been purchased by a local business man who is also in the scrap metal business!

Sadly, the other Stillwell car was burned by vandals and scrapped in 1995. At least one of the two has survived.

http://www.chemungvalleyrhs.com/
chemungvalleyrhs@aol.com

I've heard of a shay that broke down at the end of an operation and was left in the woods north of Bonneville Dam, WA. The tracks of a logging railroad show on map from the 20's i've seen, so some day I'll have to go hike in and find it and take it home.

tom_af@hotmail.com

Along the same lines we saved an office car from the WLE at Hartland. The car was a sleeper and had seen service on the NKP,NW before being moved to Hartland setoff on its own piece of track. The bottom had been skirted with corrugated sideing and insulation. The call came in the morning that it was going to be cut up, and I called out there and requested them to stop on the condition that we move it. WLE was very cooperative, called hulchers and they moved it sideways 60ft to the main (in about 15min it seemed) we checked it out on a siding and found good journals and working brake system (whew). WLE moved it down the line to Lake Junction and it now resides on the L&WV to be "renewed" into a museum office or lounge or vista car. We also were given a complete RPO car and a heavyweight kitchen car by CR. Since the merger thay are now controlled by NS and we are not certain of their fate.


lamontdc@adelphia.net

A few other scrapyard rescues come to mind...

There's Ed Streigel' B&O Pacific and Mikado that
are now in the museum in Baltimore, as well as the C&O engines saved from the Russel, KY scrap line, as mentioned in the "lost by a whisker" thread.

I've seen photos of Norfolk & Western 4-8-0 no. 475 in the Virginia Scrap Iron & Metal yard in Roanoke, the same yard that still has 1118, 1134, 1151, and 917. The 475 later went to the Boone & Scenic Valley RR in Iowa, before ending up at Strasburg where she operates today.

I've also seen photos of Northern Pacific 10-wheeler no. 328 in the NP's scrap line in Brainerd, MN around 1950. Can't remember now whether she was bought by or donated to a railfan group who gave her to the city of Stillwater, MN for display. She was later restored to steam by the Minnesota Transportation Museum.

CB&Q Mikado no. 4963, a former Dick Jensen engine that wound up in a Chicago scrapyard in 1970, was rescued by the Illinois Railway Museum in 1988, in trade for 5 of the Northwestern Steel & Wire 0-8-0's.

And of course, who can forget the East Broad Top, the entire railroad, engines and all, was acquired for scrap but then saved by Nick Kovalchick.

Another piece of railroad history, though not actually an engine or piece of rolling stock, that comes to mind is the Canadian Pacific Railway's 1907 Great Lakes passenger steamship Keewatin, featured in David Plowden's book "Farewell to Steam". When the book went to press, the Keewatin had just been sold for scrapping, but had not yet been towed to the breaker's yard. Mr. Roland Peterson was given a copy of the book as a Christmas present from his wife, and was so impressed by the ship that he went to visit her at her layup berth in Owen Sound, Ontario, and bought her on the spot. She is now preseved as a museum in Douglas, Michigan.

> The only other case in the United States
> that I know about, of steam engines leaving
> a scrapyard is the group of switch engines
> that went from Northwest Steel and Wire to
> the Illinois Railroad Museum. Too bad but
> some of them got cut up later anyway.


rjenkins@railfan.net

The existance of the 1858 - 1876 locos of the Purdue Collection is truely a very early miracle of preservation. Most unusual is the story of the Boston & Albany 4-4-0 #39, Marmora," an "Eddy Clock." After the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and its display of rail relics was over Prof. Goss of Purdue tried to collect some examples of important locomotive designs for his students to see instead of just drawings. Goss had already created the first stationary locomotive test plant in the country at Purdue (they are the "boilermakers" for a reason), and got several great old locos before moving on to the University of Illinois. Someone remembered that the last "Eddy Clock" was being used as a stationary boiler for the station at Wocester, MA. Its tender was gone but the loco was sent to Purdue. It joined Boston & Providence inside connected 4-4-0 "Daniel Nason" of 1858 (the only surviving example), B&O 4-6-0 Camel #173 of 1873, C&NW/Winona & St. Peter Baldwin 4-4-0 #274 of 1873 with two steam domes, and the PRR 0-10-0T "Reuben Wells" from the Madison Incline in Indiana. Purdue didn't add to the collection after Goss left but kept all the locos intact, even during the scrap drives of WW II. The "Nason" had only been loaned and was sent back to the New Haven in 1939. The rest of the collection was donated to the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis in about 1952-3. We later got the "Nason" in 1981 when it was auctioned, along with the B&P 1832 coach that went with it. The PRR 0-10-0T, also a loan to Purdue, is now at the Indianapolis Children's Museum.

Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

> The two Maine locos are an ex-NYC 4-6-0 and
> an ex-Rutland 2-8-0 or 2-6-0.

Both are NYC. The Rutland bit is an Internet rumour. Both engine's histories are known. One is an LS&MS.

Rob

superc@monmouth.com

Sorry, Rob. Here is the history:

4-60
Built: 06/1897 for Chicago, Hammond & Western Railroad Co. #109
Corp. consol.: 04/1898 to Chicago Junction Railway Co. #109
Corp. sold: 07/1907 to Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad Co. #109
Renum: to #115
Renum: to #15
Sold: c.1918 to Potato Creek Railroad Co. #8 @ Norwich, PA
Sold: c.1921 to Grasse River Railroad Co. #63 @ Conifery, NY
Sold: 1925 to Ferguson & Allan Co. (dealer) @ Utica, NY
Sold: 1926 to Edward Acrgia (Umbasooksus & Eagle Lake Railroad #1) @ Tramway, ME
Sold: 1927 to Madawaska Co. (Eagle Lake & West Branch #1)@ Tramway, ME
Sold: to Irving Pulp & Paper, Ltd.
Sold: to State of Maine

2-8-0
Built: 12/1901 for Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Co. #780
Renum: 1905 to #5780
Corp. consol.: 12/1914 to New York Central Railroad Co. #5780
Sold: 01/1925 to Ferguson & Allan Co. (dealer) @ Utica, NY
Sold: 1927 to Madawaska Co. (Eagle Lake & West Branch #2)@ Tramway, ME
Sold: to Irving Pulp & Paper, Ltd.
Sold: to State of Maine

steameng@att.net

> Both are NYC. The Rutland bit is an Internet
> rumour. Both engine's histories are known.
> One is an LS&MS.

> Rob

It's certainly a rumor that way pre-dates the Internet. Page 106 of "All Aboard for Yesterday" (c)1979 by Down East Books and Page 12 of "Moguls, Mountains & Memories" (c) 1979 by B&M RR Historical Society both claim Rutland/NYC. It seems more reasonable that they would be from one source, as you say, but certainly the Rutland/NYC story is at least 22 years old....

-John

mcnamara@world.std.com

I can't say if this is a "miracle save" but Dave Conrad wrote, "Saved from the Swamp" about a steam engine that was abandoned in a gravel mine in Louisiana, in an early issue of Locomotive & Railway Preservation. See volume 1 #5 November/December 1986. The engine is Louisiana Railway & Navigation Co #99 built by Baldwin in 1919.

The story tells about braving much Southern heat and worse yet, lots of wasps. Outch!!!

After the locomotive got to the Illinois Railway Museum it was cosmetically restored by an elderly volunteer, named Earl Schuler. He painted a whole locomotive almost by himself.

I guess you can say every steam engine is at least a small miracle! Ted



ted_miles@NPS.gov

This is in reference to the locomotives in the woods at Eagle Lake, Piscataquis County, Maine (not the better known Eagle Lake in Aroostook County). They may well have crossed the lake on the ice. In the logging country of northern Wisconsin, it is said that temporary track was frequently laid across lakes during wnter months. But if the locomotives crossed the lake on ice, how did they get to the lake? It is 60 to 75 miles from the Bangor & Aroostook at St. Francis or Masardis. Did the Madawaska Co that owned them have a trunk line to the outside that served various logging spurs around Eagle Lake? After all, that is what those big engines would be good for since they were far larger than those usually used in the woods (e.g., 0-4-0, 2-4-2, or geared). Does anyone know? Bob Reich

RJReich@aol.com

Good question, Bob. THere were all manner of logging railroads in the Northern Maine woods, but each succumbed in time to the price of scrap and the dwindling desire for raw timber. At one time, Bangor was the leading lumber port in the world and up to 70 ships either docked or cast off from the piers in Bangor and Brewer, Maine in a single day! There are minor traces of that today, but neither city is "world class" today in respect to export. My guess is that the locomotives might have been hauled in either over the ice or by Lombard Steam tractor. Lombards were tank locomtives with tractor treads instead of flanged wheels. The big engines might have been placed on timber sleds and hauled by these Lombards to their final location and railed at that point. BTW, there are two of three Lombards in existence today and several are operated on compressed air for display. The local story regarding the 4-6-0 and 2-8-0 is that when the tracks were torn up behind them as scrap metal, the removal or the engines seemed too expensive and basically, unfeasable. It was more likely that they'd become fish traps in teh Allagash. Instead they were abandoned in place and left - period- intact, in a wooden shed. About 20 years ago a forest ranger who misinterpreted his orders to remove dried and dangerous wood with the potential for creating a forest fire, decide that he should douse the shed in kerosene and get rid of it. He did. The cabs were burned off the locomitve and the shed reduced to cinders. The exposed locomotive were sort of adopted by the state and concerned local citizens, and given a coat of paint. I know of one Boy Scout who got his Eagle Badge for hauling ballast up to the site and placing it under the locomotives and doing minor repair work. I have yet to see the locomotives myself, but eventuall would like to get in there and photograph them in detail. Oh, the engines have been stripped of anything collectable years ago.


glueck@saturn.caps.maine.edu