The Mahoning Valley Railroad Heritage Association has recently announced that they have acquired property for their rail museum. Hopefully they can muster up enough volunteer support to make the museum project a success. I recently rejoined after an absence of several years. I used to be very active in rail preservation until I fell madly in love with a very large stationary steam engine. :-)

Over on the northeast side of town my project to restore a rolling mill steam engine is coming along, and recently we acquired three pieces of rolling stock, a hot metal car and two center cab locomotives. The hot metal car is being donated by the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation and is currently sitting under the panhandle bridge at the extreme upriver end of the Station Square development. It was built by MH Treadwell for the USS Homestead Works.

The two GE center cab locomotives from Ellwood Engineered Castings in Hubbard, nee Valley Mould & Iron, nee Standard Slag, nee New York Central have been promised to us as soon as two replacement locomotives are acquired and delivered. One of the units is operable, the other has been sidelined due to some mechnaical problems. These are two very historic units to the local area and ironically I operated them when I worked at EEC in 1999-2000.

My goal is to display the locomotive and hot metal car to recreate this view which I took in 1999. Here is the loco and one of EEC's bottle cars:

http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/photo/2361082710033749120wewpZC

Here is the Homestead Works bottle car:
http://news.webshots.com/photo/1355313787033749120MMmKzC

Link to our website: http://www.todengine.org

Rick Rowlands
Youngstown, Ohio