Hi All
I was just up on another website, and there is NEW,,,NEWS on New England own Flying Yankee.
The locomotive is still owned by the State of New Hampshire, and it is still located at the Hobo Railroad and Lincoln, New Hampshire. For many years the locomotive in Lincoln was under restoration by another group then stopped.
Since the State of New Hampshire owns the locomotive, the state would like to see fully restored. The state has undertaken looking for a new group to lead in the Flying Yankee Restoration.
I tried to Attach the press release but the file is too large so I suggest that you go to the Flying Yankee website
http://www.flyingyankee.com to read the press release. Thank you Pat.

The Flying Yankee was talked about here a few years back: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=43376

There is skepticism on the Flying Yankee closed facebook group page https://www.facebook.com/groups/195388914553494 , one comment: "With no charter or detailed outline/direction for this project I fear it will lead to the same results as last time."

The first restoration attempt tried to restore it to modern Amtrak standards for operation on main lines, the question now is whether to use the existing Winton and run occasional excursions somewhere with a wye to turn it at each end (which does exist on the CSRR for example) or install a modern genset type prime mover..

If the train is to operate at all I think Preston Cook is correct: the existing Winton should be preserved as a 'runnable' display and a modern powerplant 'module' (for some reason I recall some proposal to substitute an ex-switcher 6-567 in place of the eight-cylinder Winton, which sounded strange to me) made compatible with the 'historic fabric' for the actual running.

Again, yesterday is over and today is a new start. The people working on this project are savvy and have considered their options. Give them your vocal support, if not your financial, and watch to see if something positive comes of their efforts.

The past is also an excellent teacher. You can't find where you're going if you don't know where you've been. I think it's also safe to say that some of the ongoing thoughts and work with the Mark Twain Zephyr might be easily translated to the Yankee. The fact is that if someone hadn't been putting some thought into "what now?" the Yankee could easily sit with no effort for another decade.

I did a complete inspection of this train and furnished my recommendations when it was at Edaville and a group was advocating to resurrect it. I was asked again when it first went to NH and provided technical materials and recommendations. When the FYRG and the state made their decision to go with the Winton 201A, I did not agree with it and told them why but nobody listened. When the Winton rebuilding bogged down, I was again asked for my input and I went to several meetings and presented my views, but by that time nothing would have made any difference.

Any attempt to resurrect one of these trains that would re-use the original trucks and air brake hardware would need to pay great attention to the distribution of weight and the loadings on individual axles. They were a marvel of 1930s mechanical and pneumatic system design, and the original air brake system is proportioned by using different size brake cylinders and different leverage on various trucks to achieve balanced brake application. If you move equipment around or "drop in" something totally different without any study, you are likely to have some nasty surprises when you start running.

In the more than 40 years that people have been discussing resurrecting this train, the entire political and economic landscape surrounding it has changed. For example, would you even consider putting an internal combustion engine into this equipment now, in a region where local politicians are likely to mandate electric-only cars, trucks, and buses very soon?

PC

I would be 'all for' seeing if a set of Ballard fuel cells and appropriate traction batteries could be rigged on a sled for this train. Might even be development grants for it. Note that it should be possible to balance the components, including the necessary cooling for both fuel and battery cells, with sensitivity toward weight distribution.

A plant to produce blue hydrogen with sequestration from 'natural gas' is not a technically difficult thing to design or build at the necessary scale...

Assuming that this is a preservation project, then retaining the Winton 201 (1938 ) for preservation, but using a EMD 567 (1939) for propulsion is a good call…

Using Hydrogen cells, or batteries would be remaking the artifact, and creating something which is nether historic or current…

Issues of proportional braking… and other technical discussions would could also be preservation, or “new thinking” and remaking the artifact. And preservation is not about remaking the artifact.

The propulsion system choices are made even more diverse by the recent understanding that Electro-Motive did not exist at the time this train was being designed and built. EMC was dissolved in Ohio the end 1932 and re-established in Illinois the beginning of 1935. Everything that happened in the two missing years was the work of the Railway Division at Winton Engine, as demonstrated by examples of surviving correspondence relating to this train which was issued through Winton. Association of EMC with this Budd train was a product of creative editing by GM Public Relations to make Electro-Motive's corporate existence look continuous since 1922. This is fully documented in R&LHS Railroad History issue #226, Pages 27-29. A list of industry events that took place while EMC was missing, is shown on Pages 47-48 along with a multiple sourced documentation of the corporate announcements that Electro-Motive was being "re-established" in 1935. It was all in the trade press and newspapers at the time but most people never noticed it.

PC

There are two issues here, which to the preservation community are antithetical, but to "the public" much less so.

One is the preservation of both the historic fabric and the mechanical operation of the motor train. The other is the use of the Flying Yankee as a running attraction. Personally, I think any assumption that this is a pure 'preservation' project is nonstarting.

The operating model I remember seeing for the Flying Yankee assumed some kind of restoration to 1930s visual appearance, followed by as much operation as practical to recoup some of the expense of the work and the storage and maintenance costs. As Mr. Cook has pointed out, doing that with a Winton engine installed is sooner or later going to be a money pit. While I'm all in favor of a cottage industry crafting indium/silver bearings just for obsolete historic prime movers... how much of that will develop to facilitate the, ah, small market for functional 201A engines?

If I recall correctly, the Winton engine is an inline 8, while all the 567s except test engines are Vs -- in the case of a switcher, compounding the weight-distribution issues by being only 'three cylinders long'. I don't see anyone 'replicating' an 8-cylinder "567" by welding up a new crank, machining a bunch of parts, and using 567 power assemblies for this, whether it fits the historic-fabric mountings directly or not. It was brave of the original restorers to try 'rebuilding it in kind', and I applaud their having attempted to rebuild the original engine to use in the train... but even I know you shouldn't expect even a lovingly-restored 201A to hold up when regularly re-creating the Pioneer Zephyr's speeds on Amtrak lines.

We've had extensive discussions here about the needs of an operating museum railroad or tourist attraction vs. full historic preservation or restoration... the latter usually not involving full operation in service. Why there is suddenly holding of the nose over the difference between a different prime mover and a different electric power source when the DC to the traction motors acts the same is a bit of a mystery to me... but I'm concerned more with seeing the train run, with 'the rest' of its historic fabric intact, and any removed parts of historic fabric kept carefully preserved, with escrow 'rolled into' the financing so that if anything were to happen to the operation, the train could be put back to original condition for "historic" display.

I have no trouble with serious preservationists restoring the train entirely to 1930s 'mint' condition for static display. But send your checks for the work today; I doubt museum adnission fees will contribute very much toward the costs...

At the point where it was decided to not use the Winton 201A, it would have been best if the engine had been immediately reassembled in order to preserve it intact as a historic display. Several groups had donated money for the restoration of that engine, and having it available and intact would have shown that some of the donations were used as intended, and provided the FYRG a useful display item. It was not done, and the engine remains a pile of parts stored in shipping containers. When and if it gets to putting it together again, no telling what condition the parts will be in.

PC

Wasn't at least one piston auctioned off for fundraising or something along those lines?

Yes, more than one if I remember correctly. FYRG also auctioned a few items pertaining to the train that had been donated for eventual public display.

PC

The only wye at Conway is at Bartlett - Which has basically been abandoned and paved over. It would need to be rebuilt.

OK, I'll plead ignorance in advance here, this is off the top of my head, but isn't this the surviving roster...? As of now, I've seen all of them....

Illinois Zephyr - at IRM, operational, but behind an early CB&Q E-unit, but still basically the trainset in historic condition and one of my favorites.

Pioneer zephyr at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, restored, static

Mark Twain Zephyr, cars anyway, stripped, purchased by ??? and talking operation (I've been through the hulks anyway) and now at the Wisconsin Great Northern since 2020, cars restored with photos....

Flying Yankee, having seen it at both Hobo and Edaville, at various times, proposed for both restoration and operation....

So unfortunately, while these are historic/cool/landmark sets, they are not necessarily unique, reminds me of the problem with UP Centennials, lots of survivors considering the population. One of the truly remarkable things about them is the cars. I like the IRM approach, and preserving the power unit as static. Frankly, there's a good reason why you move the crew away from the windows up front for collision protection, that's one of the things that EMD did with the transition from the boxcabs to the first E units. I don't want to be in the cab at track speed in the current climate.

And I'm still fascinated by the articulated cars locked into a solid trainset, given that the apparent wisdom in abandoning that design is now re-embraced wholesale by Amtrak.