Found this story about George Hart leasing his former Pacifics for use as stationary boilers. When was the last time a steam locomotive was put into that type of service?

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6R ... 1286&hl=en

Tom;

Thank you for posting the link. I had knew that the engines had served in standby service once but was not sure of all the details.

The 1238 and 1286 will forever be special engines for me... I worked for Jack Showalter during his time in Cumberland and was one of his regular locomotive firemen on the pair.

Tim Wilson,
McCoole, MD

My dad used to work for the Reading Eagle newspaper around this time. Somehow these photos ended up in his file.

Wasn't there a committment of the two engines for a High Iron Co. trip at that time? I recall that the trips (from Newark to Wilkes-Barre on the CNJ) had been scheduled, advertised and sold, and that the 1238 and 1286 were suddenly sent to Reading 15 days before the trips. HICO had to scramble around and find substitute power: Steamtown's "127" (CPR 1278) and Strasburg's new #90 (was that #90's first operation after being placed into Strasburg service?

Would Ross care to comment on this episode? Perhaps there was more to this stuation?

Howard P.

I am sure your question was in regards to the United States; but locomotives were being used in stationary boiler service in the former Soviet Union until at least fairly recently.

Several other stories ran on this incident:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=xc ... lant&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6R ... lant&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=x8 ... lant&hl=en

New Hope & Ivyland 0-6-0 #9 ran under its own power to the United States Steel Mill at Fairless, Pa., and back more than 60 days later, for wash house boiler duty. This was about 1980, and the opening post seems to be about 1968.

I know others have commented similarly in other threads here, but in reading the newspaper accounts of this series of events, I'm continually struck by references to technical railroad terms and practices that would be totally foreign to any contemporary reporter, let alone the general public - for instance, how many people in the general public today would even have the vaguest idea of what a stoker is? No explanation needed in the article back then. Since I was always taught that newspapers were written at an eighth grade level, use of this terminology shows that even into the late '60's knowledge of steam technology and railroads in the U. S. was very common indeed - at least in the coal country of Eastern PA!

In my corner of east-central Pennsylvania, not all that far from Reading, even in 2010, people know what a stoker is. It's the device that feeds coal into the furnace in the cellar. There may not be a lot of them still around, but they still exist. In 1968, there were a lot more.

One more comment regarding stokers, I often hear them referred to as AUTOMATIC stokers. There is clearly nothing automatic about them, as they are under the total control of the human stoker, and as such they are MECHANICAL stokers...

I know that there is a Polish 2-10-0 being used in the the Polish PKP steam shop in Leszno as a stationary boiler for shop heat. It's piped up in a similar way to the pictures above, but it's inside the shop.