I was in Utica this past weekend, and used stealth technology* to photograph the severely vandalized steam loco t the Utica station. I want to share some observations with you guys, since this tragedy might resonate in a number of ways.


Engineer's side. I noted the crosshead guides were smooth and actually had seen some lubrication at the time 6721 was displayed. The rods and pistons had obviously moved.


Fireman's side, showing break in frame ahead of the steam chest.


Tender is damaged, but it appears to be pipe and sheet metal, and little irreversible damage.


Close up of tender and locomotive entanglement.



Locomotive cab was pushed back, destroying the foot plate and wood portions of the tender. A lot of sheet metal damage here, and possibly worse, but I hesitate to speculate until the two units are parted.

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This is where it took the worst battering. The "S" shape is the draw bar. In bending the draw bar, a great deal of shock was disipated, but it lifted the tender upward.


Forward tender truck is loose, while the pin is clearly seen above the bolster. The trucks do not appear to be damaged.



This is the pilot beam in fragments, along with the footboards. I don't know if it's possible to weld this mess back into a pilot beam, but smart people are out there. It's a massive reconstruction.


*Sadly, this means a camera phone.

It's not quite a bondo and duct tape job, but nothing we can't fix, if the resources to make the repairs are made available. Thanks for the reality, Dick. If I still had a shop and this was in it, we could do it in 3-4 months.

Well...

In the fourth photo it sure seems like the tender tank lifted up off the frame, but the frame appears straight, not too bad to fix.

Given the apparent fact that the pilot beam bent before breaking it should be cast steel ? A cast iron part would have likely fractured before any bending could happen.

That pilot beam could be (with big enough torches) warmed up and straightened out. Then the loose pieces could be welded back on.

That drawbar ? Let's just order a new one from Alco....

All in all not too bad, it was a cosmetically restored display engine, no reason it cannot be that again. I just hope they don't "patch in" some modern I beams and call it a "restoration".

Operational ? Well it was not operational before this unfortunate incident, it is probably too much to expect it will be afterwards.

All in all a sad day, but it can likely be made "about as good as new" (well REALLY OLD actually) so it looks like it did before this happened.

Cheers, Kevin.

I think we've seen some real disaster engine wrecks in the real world during the steam era yet the engines were picked up, fixed up and returned to service. Recall 611 was such one engine.

Definately looks fixable.