A friend brought to my attention that #31 had lost a sand dome during her time at Strasburg. I'm assuming it was not needed and simply removed. When was it removed and is there more to the story?

The rear sand dome was removed from #31 around 1989 during major boiler work. It was for sanding when the engine was going in reverse and since it always seemed to be full, we decided to take it off.
As a comical side note, I remember after we made a jacket patch to cover the opening, we had a temporary worker paint it. He went ahead and painted the front half of it and then went and sat down in the wet paint and started to paint the rear half. He didn’t even realize it until I got past the disbelief stage and pointed it out to him.

We also removed #90’s rear sand dome at about the same time for the same reason. I remember that one very well because a month or two later, a fellow showed up with a beautiful live steam model of her. He had just finished it and was rightfully proud if it. Then he saw the missing sand dome on #90 and asked where it was. When we told him, he couldn’t believe it as she had been that way forever. Life just isn’t fair sometimes!

Rick

Thanks for the information. I love that here we often hear "the story behind the story".