I think somebody in New England did in fact build a 2 foot gage line to serve his farm and act as a tourist attraction. He raised cranberries and called it EDAVILLE. It was popular for a few decades, but seems to have fallen on hard times since. Is the market ripe in NJ for something similar? Humus World? Perhaps as part of a theme park dedicated to "green" and organic farming, locavore consumption, etc....assuming enough people care about it to make it work.

Maybe JR and his guys will lay a third rail at Pine Creek.

I think we are all agreed it is worthy of preservation, even if we haven't got the WHY and HOW figured out yet. Humus farming doesn't seem to be a sexy basis for a tourist attraction.

I'm just happy it was kept secret until it was saved.

dave

The only other ones that I am aware of are what I think are three surviving examples that were built for the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway ("toy train") in India; two examples, #792 and #794 are still running:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bvohra/4414831981/

Another, 793 is in the Regional Rail Museum in Perambur.

Widen your net out to 2ft 6in gauge, and there are another three survivors.

I had an involvement with the effort to preserve one of the J&L 0-4-0s. That was back when I did not have as many resources as I do now. I was offered the 58 for $5,000 and seriously tried to raise the cash to buy her but could not. The 59 was also offered, but since it had a cracked cylinder saddle we saved only the boiler and eventually it made its way to California to replace the condemned boiler on an 0-4-0 out there.

I don't know what happened to the 58. Benkart probably scrapped her on site as I have not heard of it going anywhere else. It was certainly the heaviest built locomotive known to man, having been made out out of thick steel plate. Porter crammed 45 tons of steel into a locomotive 20 feet long and riding on four drivers, which themselves were made of plate steel.

I better stop talking about this, not being able to save the 58 still bothers me.

> Maybe JR and his guys will lay a third rail at Pine Creek.

Count me out. Haven't been to the Creek since July 2004 and I just recently sold my 3' gauge Porter. If I ever work on anything "full size" again it'll be standard gauge. So, can't speak for the Creek.

JR May

take the restoration step by step, you will have a full boiler checkover anyways.
Work over the running gear, open the cylinders, clean them out, derust them, these are cheapies to work on.

Have an open donation something somewhere website, promote promote promote.

Did one of these locomotives end up at Hesston? Or what am I thinking of?

Les

There is historical precedent for a 3 rail Pine Creek RR, they had some in their old location.

Yes, but not the Baldwin built ones; I think it was 778; built by Sharp Stewart & Sons in 1889. It was involved in a fire at Hesston; if I have the right engine; it was later sold to private individual in the UK; who restored it to operational condition.

North British Locomotive Co. and the DHR itself also built some the B class 0-4-0Ts used on the railway.

The main rods were sitting in the cab and were stored last year. Best as we can tell, almost all the metal is there. What had fallen off was taken away and stored. There are still a few odds and ends embedded in the ground that we can get to now that the locomotive is out of the way, but that needs to wait until the spring thaw.

As for the conservancy at Westby Farms hosting an operating railroad, that is not likely. It is not a very "public" place save for some hunting during hunting season (apparently animals are not what they are trying to conserve...). One reason the locomotive stayed hidden so long was there is almost no public access to the land it was sitting on.

Did I miss something? Where is the engine being preserved?

Wesley

That's great news, Steve. It sounds like nothing that is hard to replace has disappeared and essentially it'll be a major cleanup and replacement of sheet metal, wood, and glass.

The fact the main rods were in the cab would tend to dispel any myths of her running on the farm where she was found. They were probably taken off and put there before her last move, decades ago!

Anyway, she's going to become a pretty little engine again and that's great. She's so darn cute and deserves better treatment than she's had in the last while.

Steve Hunter

Hopefully this project might juice enthusiasm for NJ's narrow gauge rail history. It's no Colorado, Maine or Pennsylvania, but NJ had a slew of industrial roads gauged 42" and smaller. And that's not counting the Pine Creek... nor am I thinking of amusement park trains, which is a whole other fetish.

Rob

I have asked this question before, but never really got it resolved. I don’t mean to hijack this thread, but the photo of the abandoned 0-4-0T, is a perfect example of what I am wondering about.

Other than creating a pleasing appearance, was there any function to that “cap” or “flange” on the stack? It seems like there was a whole phase of cap stacks intervening between the discontinuance of diamond stacks and the advent of the straight shotgun stack. It seems unusual for railroads to have added this feature just for aesthetics when they were in a period of departure from ornamentation.

However, looking at the photo leading this thread, gives me an idea that might explain this cap stack phase of locomotive building. What most of the tall cap stacks had in common (including the one in the photo) is that the stack tube appears to be straight whereas later shotgun stacks had a taper, either inward or more commonly outward as they rose.

I know there were shorter cap stacks used later on more modern locomotives, and they were all cast iron, but my concern is with the taller 1900-era cap stacks. In thinking about this and realizing that these early cap stacks all seemed to have had straight tubes: I am wondering if those tubes were rolled steel cylinders with riveted seems, and the cast iron cap was simply a way to finish off the discharging end of the tube. The cap would have reinforced the end of the tube in order maintain its roundness. There might have also been intricate theories concerning the cap orifice having some sort of effect on the exhaust blast.