Refresh my memory:

Just where did 142 run under NJT auspices after the last round of 614 Pt. Jervis trips? I know it ran on the Bel-Del a few times--that's different from running on the mainline, in my book.............

And by the way, I'd be perfectly willing to come right out with more specifics of the rumors I allege to, except at least one of the parties that e-mailed me mentioned a project currently being negotiated with NJ Transit that they don't want upset/disrupted with more controversy. I'll let them go on the record as to whatever they feel the real aftermath of 614/Port Jervis is, whenever they can/will.

Runbys are hardly novel, so therefore, not innovation.

As you implied-the I concur, the seats are not full, so whatever is missing, it clearly isn't runbys. There's been decades worth of them-they are what I said before- "preaching to the choir".

You can do whatever you want on YOUR railroad, but if the discussion is mainline steam on a host railroad, you need to do whatever your host demands, they are custodians of others' interests.

I stand unconvinced that runbys have done anything to advance a substantial interest, ongoing interest in preservation in the general public.

All I would like to say is "Thank you" to Ross, Doyle, Steve L, Steve S, Bob, Jerry

and Bill Purdie

and all the others who have made my steam railfanning experiences most memorable.

Dittos

Ken

If memory serves me correctly I believe the Susie Q steamer ran 2 different years around Christmas time with Santa Clauss trains on the Raritan Valley line from I believe Bound Brook to High Bridge and return. As they did not have a HEP car they must have had a NJT dismal in the consist to supply hotel power to the Comet coaches and if I recall correctly they had the dismal on the East end so he could "pull" the consist back from High Bridge to Bound Brook. I believe they did it in 2000 and again 2002 although I'm not at all sure of those years nor who was the organizer/sponsor??
That raises another issue in regards any attempt to revise the Pt. Jervis steam experience. We were able to arrange a multi-year lease of the NS super HEP car which has 2 seperate HEP generators within it. One puts out 750kva and the other 250 kva. It is set up so they can be combined so as to put out 1,000 kva if needed. To power a 24 car long train of Comet cars and PV's you need that kind of HEP. Therefore either that car ( to my knowledge it is the ONLY one of its kind East of the Mississippi??) has to be leased or a NJT dismal will have to be in the consist which to me makes it a "kissing your sister" event and why bother??
That assumes that you come up with a qualified steamer,find an angel to underwrite the operating deficits, generate the necessary political pressure to convince NJT that its a good idea and then see if you can sell enough tickets so you don't get killed financially!!
By no means impossible-just close!!
IMHO-Ross Rowland

Jim,

I got to ride one of those CSX (or was it still Chessie-Seaboard at the time?) excursions behind 614, from Charleston, SC to Hamlet, NC.

I guess the only thing that would have made them better is if they could have painted 614 metallic gray and black 2-tone, put a big ACL herald on each side of the tender, and centered the headlight!

Thanks to Ross for letting some of us get a glimpse of what the ACL mainline must have been like about 1940.

Actually, to get a 24 car train on HEP, you will need the power car, because most commuter HEP is only between 300 and 500kw, and most of them do not have the "phase balance" gear between locomotive to combine sources. To get a 24 car train some of the PV's will probably need their generators. An Amtrak P40, btw, only makes 800 Kw of HEP.

There are other high power HEP generator cars, but the ones that immediately come to mind belong to BNSF (#51,Snoqualmie Pass) or Ringling Bros., and I do not think are readily available for our purposes.

Steve
(one time half/owner of BNSF #51, when it was a steam generator car at Steamtown!)

Hugh -

I'm going from memory here, so please excuse me if I'm wrong, but didn't some of the earlier C&O J-3 Greenbrier's have their headlights centered?

Les

#142 ran trips on the Raritan Valley Line and Boonton line post-#614 and pre Bel-Del. I rode one of the Raritan Valley Line trips in what I would guess was 2004.

Rob

Thanks Steve Z for that clarification. You're correct that as I remember our search of the country for a HEP car with sufficient power to handle that long a train there were only 5 in the entire nation that could do it. UPRR had 2, BNSF had 2 and NS had the one we were able to lease.
As I said above, without that car you'd be forced to have a Dismal for HEP (and then probably have to limit the train to 15/18 cars) and at least for me, that sufficiently ruins the whole product to make it not worth the effort!
I not sure if NS still owns that car or where it is???
Ross Rowland

I might have been persuaded that the younger generation was not interested in steam at all before this past fall. And then I was in the Cuyahoga Valley back in September...

Being a native of Akron, and having been around the Cuyahoga Valley Line/Scenic RR since near the beginning, I made it a point to be back home for the trips in September with OC #1293, a really great gesture on Jerry J.'s part, mostly to give the Akron RR Club the chance to have a fundraising trip. Along with that private trip, the engine was used on three other excursions that week, including a Thursday afternoon public excursion. That trip didn't sell out, it was REALLY pricey . However, the previous day's excursion for major benefactors of the RR made the Akron paper Thursday morning. I had planned my chase to hit several of the classic places along the line, at a pace I knew from past experience that were far enough apart I shouldn't have to push things too hard.

Well, I should have known that the article in the Beacon Journal would make a difference, I just never realized that after 17 years without steam in the Valley it would make THAT much of a difference. I walked into probably the WORST chase of my life, and that includes some really hairy chases of the New River excursions. The official NPS estimate is that there were around 6,000 people up and down the valley there to see the 1293 run that train, on a weekday, on next to no notice! I ended up in a three mile back-up, missed most of what I set out to photograph, but did manage to get to Indigo Lake to watch Tim and the rest of the OC guys put on a great show in last light for all who were there.

No interest in Steam today? I don't think so.

Les,

I believe you're right. The first J-3's originally had the headlight centered and were later modified to cosmetically match the later engines like 614.

Each Christmas season I work on the NH&I as one of thier part time engineers and am generally assigned to run 2-8-0 #40 on the Santa/North Pole trains. Thanks to thier excellent marketing efforts and years of delivering a great product (on-time,clean equipment, happy Santa, hot,hot chocolate, etc.,etc.) the trains are very well patronized (weekends,most trains are sold-out in advance mostly on the Internet) and if you have any thoughts that todays youngsters are not "turned-on" when they first see the steam loco. --you're dead wrong.
We do our best to have the properly attired loco. crew take pics next to the engine with as many family groups as possible--that's what they'll talk about each time that photo gets shown (called word of mouth) indefinitley into the future.
As with many of the better run outfits in the industry the NH&I also uses many other tie-ins to promote ridership (Halloween trains, dinner trains, photo freights, Easter Bunny, etc., etc.).
Our industry has LOTS of ways to earn the money we need to be viable. All we've got to do is be willing to think outside the box and create what the public wants for thier entertainment. It ain't complicated!!!
Ross Rowland

Hugh -

I did a bit of checking on the internet and found a C&O steam roster by class. Here's an interesting tidbit I found about the class J-3 4-8-4's:

Built 1935, Engines 600-604

Built 1942, Engines 605-606

Built 1948, Engines 610-614

The interesting thing? IF the C&O had numbered the 1948 engines consecutively behind the two engines built in 1942 (starting at 607), Ross Rowland's J-3 number 614 would have been number 611! And of course, the wierd thing is that we all know that she actually carried that number later in her career when she was leased to the RF&P and they already had their own #614 in service. The "4" in the J-3's number plate was chiseled into a "1" to avoid any chance of confusion. We'll probably never know why the C&O chose to start the 1948 engines at 610 instead of at 607, a policy they used at times and at other times did not.

Les

As far as the value of a runby goes, I have never been to an "official" event, but I used to hang around with a very cultured young woman who had no interest whatsoever in railroads or anything mechanical, but did ride Amtrak between Seattle and Portland on a regular basis.

One morning in the late eighties the 4449 was heading north on the BN, so I felt it was my duty to take her down to a remote crossing near Hazel Dell so she could watch it go by, just for the sake of comparison to her modern day passenger train.

We stood alongside the mainline about 30 feet from the track as Doyle and the boys blew by at what I believe was track speed,and her reaction was total amazement. For the next few days I heard her tell the story over and over using words like "dramatic" and saying "it was like this huge beautiful Hot Rod!"

Honestly, if that experience prompted that kind of response from that person, think of what it could do to an on-the-fence railfan/financial contributor.....I say Run by, and Run Fast....Dave

I think that's part of the problem with Mr. Rowland. Despite what the rumor mill dictated, he has done things that his betters told him were not to be done, and that he was not supposed to do.
West Chester RR has run friction bearings on S.E.P.T.A., although the last trip was almost 3 years ago, and S.E.P.T.A. has increased their charges since then.
Some of the other posts illustrate the value of getting involved with politics, so you can make your opinion and wishes better known.