Hi guys,

Anyone know how to reach the owners of this recently outshopped steam engine that visited the Lorain & West Virginia recently? I'm told it's based at New York & Lake Erie.

Best, Jim Wrinn

Jim-

Scott "Scooter" Symans is a really good guy, and is from Dunkirk, New York. Our CMO here at SRI, Barney Gramling, knows him pretty well, and he and his dad, John, helped him here obtaining certain items for the engine, as well as some of the work.

Thats not to say (and Barney and John would be the first to say this) that Scott didn't restore it himself: he did. I believe Scott and John met at Trainfest 2004 --- and the rest, as they say, is history. Scott, not unlike Barney and John, rebuilt that loco over a a multi-year period, and although I have yet to see it myself, I know John in particular is pretty proud of the work Scott did to get it back up an running. The fact that Barney has a picture of the engine taped to one of our cabinets here in the Backshop.

Jim, Email me back channel, and I'll be happy to get you the contact info.

TJ Gaffney
SRI

Jim, I can give you all the contact info. Please contact me back channel,I've been trying to get a message to you for a week or 3 now. Scott, Barney, Joe, Gary and the rest of the crew are great fun to work with and the mechanical work done on the locomotive is super. Everything went off with no problems what so ever. I'm looking forward to working with them again next year!!!

The restoration of that engine was done (and bankrolled) by Scott, with lots of help from Joe (my brother), Gary (who is an engineer for NY&LE) and numerous other rail fans fron the Dunkirk area and, of coarse the help & mentoring of John and Barney. I believe that they ran last weekend in Gowanda again. I can also get ahold of them if needed.

If anyone has a chance to see #6 they should go out of their way to see it
The paint is show car quality, and the details are outstanding
(its FRA inspected with upgraded air brakes)
It looks really cool driving thru town on the low boy

thumbs up to all who were involved
and the resto took only about 2 years, including building the shed to do it in

Scott has one more 0-4-0 (another baldwin) to restore and my bro has a H.K. porter (disassembled and ultrasounded, and currently discussing direction to go)

dr

Why do we only find out about the operation of this engine AFTER it has alreay happened? I really want to get out and support this group! My wife even asked me this weekend when we are taking our son for a train ride and my exact answer was "there is no steam running around here right now" - sadly I found yesterday that no. 6 was indeed running. I can verify that she is one "purty" engine and I would love to see her in operation again.
It sounds like this area is becoming a hot spot for tank engines!
Please, please keep us updated on all of these engines
Matt

The following link is a short thread on Railfan.net. A few pictures linked off of that page.

http://forums.railfan.net/forums.cgi?board=WNYShorts&action=display&num=1193172797&start=8#8