Ozark Mountain Railcar just listed a operating narrow gauge Porter steam locomotive

http://www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com/nar ... amloco.htm

Interesting gauge - 3.5'

Doug vV

The only operation I can think of using that gauge is the Pioneer Tunnel and "Henry Clay" in Ashland, Pa.

Any others?

Hmmm, 42" gauge? Interesting.

There is a 0-4-0T Porter on display in Carillon Park, Dayton, Ohio that came from Armco Steel. It is a 30" gauge engine as I remember, was this at all common in industry?

David Farlow
Whitewater Valley Railroad

Look at the front view in the ad, if those ties are 8 feet long than the gauge is 3 1/2 feet or 42 inches!

I believe the Newfoundland Railway was a 3' 6" gauge line and was well over 500 miles long. Eventually it became part of the Canadian National system. Only one of the 42" gauge steamers was preserved; CN class J-8-a # 593, originally built by Baldwin in 1920 as Newfoundland Ry. #193.

Les

Los Angeles Railway (the yellow streetcars you never hear about that carried more passengers than the PE) used 42" gauge, but did they have a Porter? I don't think so.

As noted by the previous poster, 42" gauge was common for street railroads in the west including the Los Angeles Ry (well represented at Orange Empire Railroad Museum) Denver, Portland, early lines in Santa Barbara, and is still in use today for the San Francisco cable lines.

I believe some of the steam dummy operations may have been 42" gauge as well.

My understanding is that 42 inch gauge was offered by American locomotive builders in competition with European meter gauge for business overseas. Australia still has extensive 42 inch gauge railways. All lines north of Brisbane are 42 inch gauge.

Also not unknown in mining either - Glover built some equipment to that gage. A skeleton car with 42" wheelsets was left in the Marietta plant.

dave

Putting 2 plus 2 together, SteamLocomoitve.info shows it to be Roden Stone #3, a 42" gauge Porter hacked into a tender engine. Shown as part of the Morrison Estate.

http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=1753

There are other 42" ga steam ops besides Ashland. Poway-Midland is one, I believe.

Rob

Carbon Limestone, on the Ohio-Pa border near Youngstown is/was a 42 in. ga. mining operation. Cedar Point Porter George R (nee Victoria) came from there and was re-gauged to 36". I got to run it when it was Victoria in the late '70's. It's CP's largest operating loco, with a good-sized cab for a narrow gauge engine. At the time it was fitted with a Southern 3 note chime whistle and really sounded like a bigger engine when starting a train. It was renamed George R. after George Roose, the late chairman of Cedar Point, and the man who rescued the park from becoming a real estate development.

some of the mining railroads in Pennsylvania used the 42 in gauge.

I may be thinking of 48" but I think one of those tank engines wound up on a tourist railroad and was equipped with a tender.

It was called the Caroll Park & Western, complete with home built passenger cars and the mandatory
Hold Ups.

I think the locomotive would up at the Adair Park Operation in New Jersey. If I recall it was not until years later that they got the cars that went with the locomotive.

42" gauge is a British Colonial gauge so the folks in South Africa or Australia have a lot more of it than
any US railroads did.

And our Cable Cars use it here in San Francisco.

Ted miles

no mention yet of the Huntsville and Lake of Bays up there in the North you know. They have been running 42" steam for some time now.
o anderson
http://www.steamtrainhuntsville.com/pictures.html