By this time most people will have heard the next stop on the tour for 0-4-0T Flagg Coal #75 is the New Hope Valley Railway in Bonsal, NC (just a few miles southwest of Raleigh). You may not know about the special Railfan/Photographer Tickets available.

Our crews here at the NHVRy have constructed a series of platforms and cleared areas along the track for photographers wishing to get action photos of the #75 and our #17 running double-headed on all trains during the event. These areas are inaccessible by road, but we have special tickts available to allow access to these via the Service Train we will have following the regular moves. You can see what these photography areas look like at the link below:

http://www.nhvry.org/railfan.htm

I shall leave further details about the event and these special areas to what you will find on the website. I hope many of you will join us during the first two weekends in November for our Double-Headed Thunder event!

A photo of the two Vulcan 0-4-0 Tank Engines preparing for a test run on Tuesday Oct. 30, 2007 at the New Hope Valley Railway. It sounded pretty neat hearing the two bark up the hill at the North end and the hill at the South end of the line.

Just left and got to the hotel - fine day, great weather and a wonderful steam trip through the piney woods. I'd encourage anybody nearby to come and ride.

dave

My wife's kids are with their dad this weekend, so we made the drive up Bonsal way to see the 17 and 75. Good seeing you again, Dave, it's been a while.

The ride was wonderful! The only flaw was an engineer on the 75 who insisted on using that $#@& air horn instead of the whistle.

For some reason they kept swapping engines around so the 17 was always leading, I didn't catch exactly why -- I heard something about the brakes and something else about insufficient steam?

Plenty of steam on both - it was 75 leading. 17 had a leak develop in a copper fitting on the automatic brake valve during the second run, so 75 led to provide head end control. 17 was repaired between the theird and fourth trips.

Can't say enough about the Gramlings ability to make things happen, and the great improvements that have happened NHVRR since my last visit two years ago.

dave

How many miles is this run? Do they have to take on water during the trip?

Smokebox

We run an 8 mile round trip, and the steamers each have enough water to go about 16 miles (~1200 gallons). 17 can hold enough oil for an all day adventure on the railroad. 75 takes coal between each trip just in case; although she could probably make two trips on one load of coal.

The 75's steam whistle had issues on the first day, they were fixed that evening. The engineer on 75 (me, actually) thought the air horns sounded better than a broken steam whistle; but now that the whistle problems are fixed, the air horns have been silenced.

Rest assured, any engineer using the air horns while there is a good steam whistle available will be given a very stern look.

My thanks to everyone who came out last weekend. We were blessed with a great crowd and amazing volunteers. If you missed it last weekend, I invite you to Bonsal next weekend for more double-headed tank engine fun.

Mike MacLean
Manager, Steam Operations
New Hope Valley Railway
www.nhvry.org

I respectfully beg to differ. Even a screechy steam whistle sounds better than a properly-functioning air horn any day!!

FWIW, we ran the 75 with the whistle from our Hampton & Branchville #44, except for one trip with a small factory whistle of mine. Sounded beautiful.