I've posted this before. Back in 1951, members of the National Tramway Museum in Crich, England were hiking along the Douglas Head Marine Drive, high up overlooking the Irish Sea, on the Isle of Man. They noticed traces of and abandoned tram (trolley car) line. Eventually, they went around a curve and found the car barn. The entire 16 car fleet was still inside, with notices in the car windows mentioning that the last trip of the season would be 9/1/39. The line never had another season. The hikers had just enough room in somebody's back yard to take the car nearest the door and store it, a Museum site would be 10 years in their future. Some years later, they repeated the hike, but found no trace of the building or its contents

I don't know if I posted this here already, but a few things are coming to mind.

The St Joe Valley Model Railroad club had to vacate it current place in Hobbyland, this was years ago, the layout torn out saved as much possible, stored away, found a new place....the NYC freight Station in Mishawaka, Indiana. The club moved into one end, had to clean the place out, someone got into the rafters and found a freight bill sheet pad, unused, in great shape!.
I wonder if somene was toying around or mad or something and gave it a heave into the air, and it landed high on a rafter unreachable.

Whats notable about this freight billing sheet pad, is its dating format, you know how you write on some pads with dates partially premade on them to speed use...

It goes something like this

New York Central Railroad

Date __ __ __ __, 18__ __

The building was built in 1889.

Having been in the railroad preservation business for some time the lost locomotive story drifts in once and again. Some years ago a gentleman wandered into my shop and said that when he was in the forests of Alaska he came upon a collapsed building and inside was a steam locomotive. So I thought “ya,sure”. Then he said he went back the nest year to find it and I thought “here it comes”. He said he and his son packed in torches and wrenches and took it apart and flew it out in pieces with a logging helicopter, landed it on the deck of a coastal freighter, shipped it to Seattle, trucked it to Nevada, reassembled it, and was running it on his railroad on his property which he built. Oh, and would I like to see the photographs?

So he pulled out a handful of images of a Porter, in the woods, hanging from a helicopter, in his shop, and running on his property. He runs it during the year when the urge strikes and he has brought it to the museum several times.

And the really amazing thing is this isn’t the only thing he has done in his life and he didn’t think the locomotive story was that big a deal.

Okay, but there's no links or references to where it is now in this posting? Can I assume this is the one you're talking about? http://steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=1424 If it's not this one, no other engines in NV on that site would appear to match the story...

Not too exciting for anyone but me but..the last 3 trips I've been on, I've managed to find one railroad piece that excites me.

On a railfan trip on the Canadian Pacific's River Sub in Minnesota. I found a wooden 40 foot, outside braced boxcar at a boat repair shop near Lake City, MN.

Another trip to Portsmouth, Ohio led me to see what was left of NS's "Peavine" Line and nearby to the tracks, I found a former PRR truck trailer used for storage in someone's backyard.

Yet another trip, this time to Cincinnati and the B&O Toledo Sub. Near the big soap factory (The name escapes me right now) I found a long unused spur into what looked like a chemical plant, what of all things...A L&N 50(?) foot double door auto boxcar sitting on it.


Ryan


Edit: The Soap Company is the St. Bernard Soap Company and the road the boxcar is visible from is Kings Run Dr. You can see the car on google earth near the grade crossing. This is the CSX (B&O) Toledo Sub

Back in the early 70's, I had heard the story of this "lost locomotive" in the Sierra foothills of CA. More specifically, it involved one or more former Southern Pacific steam locomotives being used for stationary service in a lumber mill.

This rumor would get kicked around at dinner and when we'd be involved operating a Shay at Rio Vista Junction near Fairfield. Tom Irion went so far as to give a location, Omo Ranch near Placerville.

Well, one day in the Spring of '72, my phone rings and it's Greg Brahms. He talked me into driving up there that day. Off we went in my '61 Chevy and by noon or thereabouts, we stopped up on a ridgetop and were talking with a guy who was scaling logs atop a loaded lumber rig.

Midway through our conversation, an SP 6 chime whistle blew from down in the valley. We hurridly said "bye" and tore down there to find the front end of SP AC-11 4268 sticking out from under a tin shelter and most definately UNDER STEAM. Still on were the twin stacks, Baldwin builders plate and Superheater plate. Greg and I were stunned to say the least.

We recovered and then headed for an office to get permission to look around. What we found was the owner of the place, Glenn Oviatt, sitting in a very unpretentious little shack surrounded by books and paperwork. We introduced ourselves and he genially said for us to go ahead and look around.

I made an innocent comment about the plates still being on the boiler and he countered "well, do you want the damn things?" He loaned me a large adjustable wrench as well as a hammer & chisel. I have pictures of us removing them. When I later told one well known globe-trotting friend that I took a builders plate off of an SP Cab-Forward in 1972 while under steam, he got angry and called me a liar.

The boiler ran at 150 lbs., had a continuous feedwater system with level control and used sawdust fed by a Reddler Conveyor for fuel. Next to it was another boiler under steam and I later found out that it was off of a 4300 class 4-8-2. There was a 3rd boiler in the shed, but it was cold, likely a spare. Glenn came by and drove us aways in the yard to show us an old 4000 class malley boiler, no longer used.

It wasn't many years later that the mill moved locations and the boilers, I believe, were not part of the new operation.

Any Winterail attendees on this forum? I did a presentation in 2008 titled "That Other 70's Show" and there was an image of 4268 showing the plate.

Many years ago while doing some research on my favorite topic - The Eagle Lake & West Branch Railroad- I found reference in a copy of "The Northern" - a monthly employee publication published by the Great Northern Paper company during the 1920's to "a tractor conveted to run on rails" that was used during construction of the EL&WB. That was the only reference I have ever found.

Fast forward to 1994. My Dad and I were contracted to perform a inventory of historic artifacts - those remaining the former railroad property and about a dozen other sites throught the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. This work involved mapping out sites featuresd and documenting artifact and assigning each item a coded number.

We spent at least three days at Tramway working on both the Tramway remains and those of the railroad. Working our way westward along the line we found numerous parts and pieces, but two in particular had us perplexed. They were fairly large diameter railroad wheels of a design that did not fit with any of the known equipment of that remaining. Both castings were broken. Beside the wheels were other castings that made no sense. We quickly documented them, photographed them and painted on the appropriate numbers and moved on.

Several years later Mrs. Avis Harkness Black called me and invited me to visted her. Avis' father was O.A. Harkness - a gentleman who played a big role in the construction of the Tramway and its tow attendent steam boats. Later he became the Chief Mechanical Officer for Great Northern paper Company.

I had not been there long when Avis gave me a stack of papers and photographs. As I leafed through them my heart litterally stopped! There in black and white was the "Tractor converted to run on rails". I had expected something like a Fordson but here was indeed a tractor.....a 10 ton Lombard Tractor....converted to run on rails!

And there were those funky wheels and castings.



O.A. Harkness had overseen its construction by Great Northern Paper's Greenville, ME. shop crew.

In reply to P51, yes that one, owned by Jim Walsh of Fallon Nevada. He has two other locomotives with simalr stories but no helicopters.

In the late 1990s, our Museum was just starting to restore Twin City Rapid Transit No. 1239. No. 1239 was built in 1907 following the TCRT's standard "gate car" design, which means the motorman was in an enclosed compartment upfront and all passengers entered and exited via the large rear platform that had sets of wire gates to prevent unwanted exits/entrances. In the 1930s, No. 1239 along with hundred of her sisters were modified for one-man two-man service. This modification entailed butchering the front bulkhead to allow for front entrance steps and folding doors.

One fine fall afternoon, member Bill Graham was up northwest of Duluth on his motorcycle when he spotted a crew demolishing an old gasoline filling station. Seen clearly in the partially demolished building was a complete Duluth Street Railway streetcar, totally unbeknownst to us or to the Ben Minnich chicken coop roster. The car was a former Twin City car that had been sold to the Duluth system sometime in the pre-WW I era. (The Duluth-Superior system the "Twin Ports Electric Lines" was managed by the same folks who managed the Twin City Lines system.) The car had not been modified by Duluth so it was in it's original gate car configuration so it has an intact front bulkhead. Bill discussed obtaining the front bulkhead with the property owner who agreed to allow us to salvage that part of the streetcar along with the usual hardware items, mahogany wood moldings, etc.

We also had to totally rebuild the front and rear platforms because of deteriorated steel and to bring the front platform back to it's original as-built configuration. See photo.

While it would not have been impossible to replicate that front bulkhead, it was such a serendipitous find when Bill literally stumbled upon this streetcar when taking a joy ride on his bike in the Iron Range of Minnesota! Right Place--right time!

Thanks!