looks like they will have a 28 mile round trip ride on sat and sun july 14 15
and 3 short runs on ther in town line

Thanks for citing your source for this information.

Ok Mr. Smartypants, if anyone decides to go to the Oil Creek and Titusville's website to check for themselves, they'll see a link to this:

http://www.octrr.org/Steam%20Poster%2003.30.12.pdf

I do wish the Oil Creek had used something other than apparent stock shots, including some other road's engine (looks like a 2-8-0); the reality is it will be Flagg Coal 75 and American Viscose No. 6:

http://www.haveenginewilltravel.com/events

Still will be a fun event, though, and I wish I could go there!

The "stock shot" is from the Arcade and Attica in upstate NY, the engine on the front is the Viscose engine. Every year, for a weekend, they doublehead their steamer and the Viscose engine.

It makes it rather problematic to put up a 'real' photo when anything with steam hasn't been on the line since about '53, and Viscose 6 doesn't go on the road anywhere near as often as Flagg Coal 75. They have doubleheaded before (including at Railfest in Owosso) but OCTL steam is a first.

Kind of odd that they would advertise "two steam locomotives" but show one that will not be staring...

Hope they have a successful event - get the word out!

(Brings a whole new meaning to the term "Flagg Stop", lol!)

/Mitch

I"ve reviewed the contract and plan that Gramblings put out on Flagg Coal, and also met all of them up to the A&A with Scott S on Viscose 6.

It appears to be a valid and sustainable business plan for everybody. Your railroad museums and smaller operations that can't sustain steam can use this as a very nice special event without having to call in the National Guard and every volunteer within 500 miles for crowd control. Gramblings understand that a significant part of the plan has to be on licensing retail, and they've formalized that.

I haven't talked to anybody that's done this and complained that they've lost money. I can't necessarily say that about some of the other well-known programs.

Thank you Randy for the kind comments you make it sound like we (Barney and I) knew what we were doing. I would like to say that what we are doing is following some master plan but that is not the case. The only thing that we started out to do in 1991 was to get an engine to run. We didn’t even know what we were going to do with it other than build a little bit of track at home and chug back and forth when we needed a steam fix.

By the time we got it to run there were a couple of museums interested in having it at their place. We thought that this could be a good thing. We could lease it to a museum for a dollar. They could take care of it and we could go see it and run it if we wanted to. To do this the engine had to be approved by the FRA so we kind of had to start over. We cut out the flues that we just put in, did the ultra sound and two corners in the firebox along with 267 new staybolts. It had steam brakes so we put on a compressor and breakstand and did a few other things to make it comply.

After a year or two the museum leased the engine out to a couple of places for a weekend event. We were not about to have the engine go without someone to look after it so we went at our own expense to take care of it. After the second time we decided that from then on if the engine went somewhere it would be us doing it rather than the museum. So that is how it all got started --- not much of a “plan”.

John