Interesting New Hope Story

tomgears · **Posted:** Fri Aug 13, 2010 9:44 pm

So as I continue to burn away time reading old steam locomotive stories on google news archives I keep finding really great old stories about the early days of tourist railroads. This one focuses on New Hope's #1533 which was worked on in St Clair, PA in preparation for service at New Hope. Somehow they convinced the Reading to allow them to run her under steam pulling a dead locomotive and seven cars all the way down to New Hope and make publicity stops along the way to display the train and drum up business.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ob ... tive&hl=en

Someone should be writing all of these stories down.

Mgoldman · **Posted:** Sat Aug 14, 2010 12:20 am

Fascinating - keep 'em coming Tom!

I never gave it much thought but figured SEPTA was the
entity that elected not to serve New Hope which is odd
considering the crowds and parking situation.

/Mitch

K.R. Bell · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:37 pm **Posts:** 299

Not to fear, I have been writing these stories down for years. I have thousands of pages of notes that will make their way into future articles and books, including one forthcoming on the NH&I.

K.R. Bell

junior · **Posted:** Sat Aug 14, 2010 12:16 pm

Is it correct to assume, that "the railroad's lone diesel, 903"...is none other than that of leased Reading FP-7 #903 ?

...I know they had a few RDG F Units working the line during early NH&I ownership until 57 came along.

wde3rd · **Joined:** Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:13 pm **Posts:** 4

I was one of the lucky nes to chase that train. We had a beautiful day and I had only one roll of slide film to shoot. Se followed the train from St. Clair to Phoenixville and had a gr3eat time. If I can figure out how to post a photo I will share one or two.

Warren

tomgears · **Posted:** Sun Aug 15, 2010 10:18 am

That would be awesome Warren! I was not able to get out there that day as I was busy being born over in Philadelphia. Here is another good story on New Hope.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Rg ... tive&hl=en

JimBoylan · **Posted:** Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:19 am

junior wrote:

Is it correct to assume, that "the railroad's lone diesel, 903"...is none other than that of leased Reading FP-7 #903 ?
...I know they had a few RDG F Units working the line during early NH&I ownership until 57 came along.

Lenny Smolsky told me that the 1st revenue passenger train left New Hope pulled by a Reading streamlined Diesel running backwards. 1533 wasn't quite ready for "prime time". The renting of Reading Diesels stopped some years before the arrival of Washington Terminal 57, so there was a time in the early 1970s when all trains, even freight, were steam powered.

limejuice · **Joined:** Sat Jan 31, 2009 7:58 pm **Posts:** 80

A number of rather interesting stories and rare photos regarding NH&I can be found here:
http://www.mchugh4macklocomotive.com/nhir.html