Instead of the York 17 steam locomotive, today our train is pulled by our #10, a vintage diesel-electric 44 ton locomotive. Built in 1946 by General Electric, the same GE that once made your lightbulbs and alarm clocks, it helped drive the post-WWII American economy toward an unprecedented standard of living.

Due to issues that took place during a routine inspection, the steam train is being worked on. It is our hope that the #17 will be up and running in the near future. This is just taking a bit longer than expected.

The engine is parked a block south of the gift shop and still available for viewing and photographs.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you. We strive to keep our customers happy.

This is disappointing.......I had expected a newly built product made with proven design and materials to have more robustness and reliability. Have they opened up about what the problems seem to be and done a root cause analysis? I'd be very interested........

dave

Dave, is it really a proven item in this case?

We have the two engines in Utah that have been making light engine moves only for the last several decades and the Leviathan that operates sporadically. The York is the first of these units that has been placed in regular service, with a train, to operate over a substantial distance.

Is this a case of the locomotive not being up to the task assigned to it or just case of growing pains?

Time will tell.

Other Dave

It hasn't Other Dave, that's why I'm asking.........considering Jupiter and 119 have decades of use, just not as intensive use. If the basic design isn't suitable for daily tourist railroading it would be nice to know what its deficiencies might be and how they are rectified, lessons which we could probably put to use elsewhere.

dave

Dave

Agreed, that was my point as well. Will be interesting to watch unfold.

Other Dave

I remember the first day this happened. We had to trek to Strasburg while making our way over to the railroad unfortunately...

"This is disappointing.......I had expected a newly built product made with proven design and materials to have more robustness and reliability. Have they opened up about what the problems seem to be and done a root cause analysis? I'd be very interested........"

I'm inclined to encourage people to give them a lot of latitude on this-it might be new, but it's "craft-brewed" by a shop that is still ascending the first rungs of the learning curve, attempting to portray archaic technology in a modern environment,
rather building than a the most recent iteration of a routine design (Alco, Baldwin or Lima or Davenport, Porter or Vulcan for that matter) that has house institutional knowledge accrued over decades. I'm assuming that the operating and maintenance folks are learning as well, and being very cautious as they learn.

I given them credit for making a public announcement in advance. They could have just referred people to the standard right of substitution disclaimer on most ticket stubs and flyers.

# 17 is a design proven in several thousands of locomotives in the 19th century, and these predecessors then often had to deal with quite unexperienced personnel.

The craftsmanship of # 17 is state-of-the-art with cnc-milled parts, surely better than the originals, in no way worse. A train ride with three coaches in one direction may take about 25 minutes. And what can be so new or delicate with a 19th-century design?

I don't know the reasons, I can only suspect, but what we actually saw in June was a brand new 3 million $-locomotive without any suiting servicing or housing facilities. They didn't even have a pit to work underneath the engine.

We were on place when the locomotive broke down on the saturday the big opening was planned. The problem occured before noon, yet in the evening the workers obviously hadn't removed one single bolt just to find the cause and the exact spot of the problem.

I have done my share of active railroading in a museum rr, with a few years as a fireman. And so much seems clear to me: If we had a problem on a saturday, knowing that the train was to be running on sunday and in the next week, we would have taken a decent approach to fix it, at least to find out if we could repair it.

Instead, when we returned to New Freedom three days later, the guys just began to remove the brass casing of a slide valve. We just felt there were enough people but not enough activity.

Some wise words were written in this forum not too long ago, that prior to restoring an engine (or, I like to add here, buying a new one), one should have a good plan how and where to run it. They do have a superb engine, a nice place to run it, but no "plan b" just in case..

Mike

I received a report from a usually reliable source:

Supposedly the loco had been prepped for a monthly boiler wash/blowdown, and it was then found that the plug, instead of being the usually specified brass, was steel, and had firmly seized in place. Supposedly, they were going to deal with it via a torch of some sort. The original projected downtime was one day.

I happened to drive by today (two days after that report/rumor), and saw three chaps working on it at their "pit". Supposedly one of them was from Kloke..... and the one guy who I could talk to after the other two drove off basically didn't feel qualified to confirm or deny the report when I asked him.

Yes they do, the GE 44 tonner.....

Like Mr. Lathrop and Mr. Crosby (the two Daves), I would be interested to see what the actual problem was before passing judgment. In this case and the incident you highlighted, they may have waited for a builder's representative to appear on site before doing any work. After all, raise your hand if you've ever worked on a new steam locomotive with a warranty. Anyone? Didn't think so.

The problem here, is that many on this forum are pontificating without knowing what the real story is. It's easy to condemn this group as a bunch of idiots, Keystone Cops, who don't know what they are doing. However, if THE POSTERS on this FORUM were in charge, things would be different, as they immediately know better. It's easy to condemn, judge and Monday-morning quarterback something you aren't involved in, or do not know the entire facts of.

The group at issue was savvy enough to raise significant sums of money to buy a new steam locomotive, is having two replica passenger cars built, and will eventually hopefully build a shop building. While they have teething problems, I think we have a lot more facts to learn before we condemn them.

The Third Dave

I'd definitely say give these guys a break. They've started running a brand new operation, of course these things are bound to happen.

(I'm not a Dave...)

Not in any way trying to "pile on" or denigrate them, but their bad luck apparently continues. Their Facebook page reports vaguely on a "car that had contact with our train today"; driver reported as doing OK.

I was fortunate to spend 3 days in New Freedom earlier this month. I rode the train, chatted with the SIH folks, and did some photography. I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

My observations are as follows:

--The folks in key positions (Engineers and Conductors) are all experienced railroaders. In the case of the Engineers, they are experienced steam people who came from other operations that most would recognize.

--The SIH Team is going through what any new start-up goes through. They are ironing out procedures, which takes practice and time. They are trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. They are also trying to understand what the market wants in terms of excursion times, etc.

--The SIH Team also seems to be very focused on safety. They realize that as a start-up, they don't have any "mulligans". They also have FRA looking over their shoulders...the Feds were there on at least one of the days during my visit....which is as it should be.

--Lastly, they have a lot of great ideas and they all want the operation to succeed.

I don't share the view that might be out there that turning up an operation like this should be easy. When was the last time anyone tried to turn up a new steam operation with a brand new, scratch-built locomotive? Heck, when was the last time anyone tried to turn up a new steam operation....period? Everytime they run into a new "first", there will be things they have to iron out. The first 31-day inspection is obvously one of them. As for the lack of a state-of-the-art shop and a team of mechanics, I can only say that I understand how it would be difficult for these folks to establish such a facility without an operation in place to generate revenue and support it. It's a chicken and egg scenario.

All I can tell you is that when this operation was first proposed, my reaction was the same as most others....."yeah, right!". Well, I've just had a heapin' helping of crow, because I never thought I would ever see this in my lifetime:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=444270&nseq=2

Pretty cool!

/Kevin

Here's a link to the article:

http://fox43.com/2013/07/25/excursion-t ... z2a5r9Mt5a


Knee injury to a 66 year old woman at a private
crossing while train was moving backward.

/Mitch

I took a "bus man's holiday" and rode the 3 p.m. trip with my wife on Sunday, July 14th. The engine performed flawlessly. No unusual sounds, etc. We sat in the coach immediately behind the tender. At the end of the trip the docent on board told us the 17 would not run on the following Tuesday due to "routine maintenance". They do not operate on Mondays. I speculated at that time that the 31-day inspection was about due. So it must have been something discovered during the 31-day inspection. I will say I thoroughly enjoyed my visit and the employees and volunteers were all courteous and professional.