Most folks here know that I retired from the MOW Side of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. One of the major track groups was the Undercutter. You really don't want to know how much aggravation was involved with running into abandoned, under track level infrastructure for track pans for steam engines with the Undercutter's chain.

Newly created not nice words were spoken.

Brian Helfrich

And I thought new horizons in bad language were caused by those awful little granite 'center posts' on the NEC north of New Haven!

Interesting about the use of 4 turbines. Someone sent me a proposal outline for a modern steam turbine electric ~20 years ago and a central feature of it was using 4 steam turbines of various sizes. Most of us know that steam turbine efficiency falls off rapidly when they aren’t operated at their design speed, so slowing a turbine down, deliberately to reduce its power output or speed or incidentally because of a grade, results in a major loss of efficiency. This was a significant problem with all turbine powered locomotives.

The idea in using 4 turbines in the earlier project is that each turbine would power its own generator and would either be shut off, or operated at its design speed. By operating various combinations of the 4 turbines, you could get 8 power settings corresponding to the 8 notches of a diesel electric throttle, while maintaining maximum efficiency.

It’ll be interesting to see if this new design uses the same approach.

The Undercutter sounds like a Wrestling finishing move.

So, a Steam Turbine Genset?

Pretty much.

I wonder if it was really 3 traction power turbines and one "system power" turbine that ran all the time.

3 turbines is all you need to get 8 steps of power from 0 to 100%. Or use the base power turbine for step 1.

Hair brained schemes that were never built for $0, Ryan.

So, here is an update on one of the steam locomotives being rebuilt.

- Arcade & Attica 2-8-0 #18 now has its boiler and cab back on the frame, and it was under steam June 11th & 12th (with only a few setbacks). The A&A is hoping to have #18 running the rails towards the end of July. Good job and good luck, A&A! Here's hoping that #18 is running again before the end of the year.


Also, here are 3 more steam locomotives being rebuilt (2 that I missed earlier, and 1 that was just announced).

- Sierra Railway {Prescott & Arizona Central} W.N. Kelley class 4-6-0 #3 is undergoing her 1472 SDI. Hopefully, the "Movie Star" will return to pulling passengers again soon.

- Dierks Lumber & Coal {Texas, Oklahoma & Eastern} 203 class 2-6-2 #207 is having funds raised for a restoration to operation by the Oklahoma Heritage Railway Association. Hopefully, we will see #207 pulling passengers again in the not-so-distant future. https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-restore ... e=facebook

- McCloud River 24 class 2-6-2 #25 appears to be nearing the end of her 1472 SDI. It will be very nice to see #25 running down the rails again soon.

Cedar Point & Lake Erie has just sent the #1 G. A. Boeckling to FMW for rebuild. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZibI8BkCCU

That’s awesome! I need to get back up there - do they run 2 trains a day?

Regarding the Poulson #2, now in Portland, OR. at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center.

There is lots of work being done on the running gear ... the previous posts are mostly correct; the boiler work (1472) was completed last fall.

Long version of the story -- the owner is not a person for half measures. When issues became apparent during last year's Christmas trains, and after investigation, he decided to proceed with a pretty complete rebuild of the cylinders, bearings, driving wheels and the like. The work is proceeding nicely as far as I can tell. (I am a passenger car guy, not so much locomotives.)

I took a couple of pictures in between running trains at the Center today ...

1: the fireman's side over the pit. There is a lot of gear removed for servicing.
2: Two of the driving axles are getting some love. Note that what I'm going to call the side bearings, which are recessed into the cast wheel, have been removed (they were badly scored) and new ones are being fabricated in the machine shop.
3: Over in the shop, on a pallet, are newly cast brasses. Our people built the patterns and they were cast in a couple of different foundries within driving distance.

I'm not in the loop for all the specific plans -- but ... once the #2 is done she will pull a few of our regular local excursions. At that point the Mt. Emily Shay will come into the shop and her 1472 work will begin. We'll obviously do anything else that needs done on the Shay as well. Once the Shay is up and running the #2 will travel down to the Albany & Eastern RR in Lebanon Oregon where she and her cousin Santa Maria Valley 205 will steam up a storm. All the timing is, of course, "Railroad timing".

-Enjoy

-David

With a new look, BSVY's Chinese JS #8419 is shown at Boone on June 15 prior to coupling onto its first train of the 2024 season.

Not normally anymore. With multiple ways of getting to the Frontiertown end of the park the only time they schedule two trains on is on the really busy holidays. I can remember when they ran three trains starting in mid June through mid August.

Are there any updates on Canadian National 5288?

Ya doesn't colebrookdale now have 3x steamers ?
I haven't seen much posted about their restoration efforts. Restoring 3 at once is a pretty big bite to chew.