Theme parks are often overlooked when talking preservation. Dollywood runs real narrow gauge steam. These came through on railpictures.net. It looks like they do a good job with upkeep. I'm sure most of us would prefer different paint but nevertheless they are providing a real steam experience to young people.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 83&nseq=11

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 491&nseq=3

I like the paint job. It could be much worse.

Who originally owned that locomotive?

Last year, #70 was running with a centered headlight and a plain black scheme with simple white/silver lettering on the tender. Do a search on youtube and you should be able to find some video.

Here are some more photos from Dollywood.

The paint scheme this year is a special 25th anniversary scheme for Dollywood. It doesn't look terrible but could be better.

http://scriptunasimages.smugmug.com/Galleries/Trains/Dollywood-Railroad/11884553_g3TPP#840965728_KQrmJ

The thing I find most amazing about Dollywood is the fact that there is a LOT, repeat LOT, of earthmoving done and grading to build a Theme Park railroad in a dogbone loop. Lots of cash was spent 40+ years ago.

Folks,
Maybe I should not guess at this; bu I seem to recall that the locomotive was the US Army #190 built for the White Pass and Yukon Route during WWII. Some of them came back down to the lower 48 about 1979 or so. there is another one of them at the Tweetsie Railroad in blowing Rock, NC.

We should always remember that this kind of data on existing steam is available at steamlocomotive.com.

The owners are really good at keeping up with the movements of the locos; to another tourist railrailroad or to a museum or rarely to a restoration shop.

Ted Miles

It only became a "theme park railroad" in the later years. Originally, it was the Rebel Railroad. Only after sister operation Tweetsie decided it was more financially stable to be a theme park with a railroad did things change.

After many years of being the red-headed stepchild of the tourist railroad community, Tweetsie started doing railfan weekends fairly recently, and a lot of people rediscovered how much of a railroad it really is. Here's hoping the Dollywood management may consider something similar one day.
Kevin

Sure would like to see a photo of that!

Les

beware video quality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ykrrnBTT9Q

It's WP&Y 70, Baldwin 1938, same general class as WP&Y 73 that's still in Skagway:



The ex U.S.A. engine at Dollywood is 192

Kevin -

Actually I found the video pretty decent. The fiddle music was a bit hard to take, but I assume that was background music at the park. I liked the looks of the 2-8-2 with the headlight mounted in the center of the smokebox door and the bell mounted ahead of the stack. Kind of reminded me of a Southern engine. And markers on the rear car was a nice touch! I don't think that the current paint scheme of the Mike is too bad, but yes, I do like the paint scheme in this video a bit better. The Mikado sounds good and has a nice whistle. Might even be worth a trip down there some day to take it all in in person.

Thanks for posting the video.

Les

Here are a couple clips of video I took over the weekend. Enjoy the sounds!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwT06QYR4ak

Excellent, Walter! Neat to see the reflection of the fire -on the forward facing end of the tender, as the train passed by in the first scene. Very nice!

Stephen

Glad to see someone else that remembers that. I have a black and white photo of me posing with Jon Provost (the guy that played Timmy Martin on the TV show "Lassie") at the Rebel Railroad. I'm about 6 and he looks to be about 14 or 15 so it was a WHILE ago.

The operation went through a few other name changes including "Goldrush Junction" and "Silver Dollar City" before becoming Dollywood.

A video I'd like to see on YouTube would be a clip from Ms. Parton's TV show of many (like about 30) years ago. She sang (as I recall) City of New Orleans while riding the footboard of a steam locomotive. She looked quite fetching in her cutoff bib overalls, and only a real steam nut would be annoyed that she was partially blocking the view of the engine. The video may no longer exist, or there may be licensing issues, but I'm sure a lot of us would like to see it.