"I’m helping Derek Rayner and Don Sibley with a feature on surviving steam trams in the USA.

There’s supposed to be the remains of one at Port Townsend and another at Shartlot Hall Museum at Prescott, AZ

Can anyone help with an image or three?"

Thanks,

TH

The Sharlot Hall Museum has a couple of photos on their website - http://www.sharlot.org/archives/photogr ... p?id=14456

The Port Townsend locomotive is in the old motor pool building at Fort Worden State Park. Scenes from the movie "An Officer and a Gentleman" were shot here. The park has kindly provided a window for viewing the locomotive. It doesn't make photography easy. If you want the whole story and photos PM me.

As a side note, the Fort's locomotive shed still exists as a Park Ranger residence.

The Sharlot Hall locomotive is easily found on your favorite Internet search engine's image search function. The below image is just as it looked last time I saw it (I have relatives out there and have been all over the copper mine rights-of-way out there, and in a couple of the mines themselves):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosasay/3514219876/


More on the loco's history:

http://www.sharlot.org/library-archives ... ocomotive/

The wonders of the internet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NypGArjGNB4

Video of the Prescott engine in operation in the 80's.

Somewhere, an FRA safety inspector is having a heart attack from watching that video.

(Good find!)

My jaw just dented the floor.

I joke that 1) Prescott is "the biggest city in Arizona no one outside of Arizona has heard of" (I exaggerate, but slightly), and 2) a couple counties there are bigger than a couple states put together, and enforcement of various codes can be quite lax in many corners (reservations have their own governments, police, courts, etc., and people in Seligman, 70+ miles from the county seat, joke that they have their own little "fiefdom" forgotten about by the county--they do buy their "public" water from BNSF, because the wells are former locomotive supply wells). It's in said context that the Second Amendment takes on a different context than it does in urban areas.

Having said that, my in-laws in a town 26 miles from the county seat phoned in to the county seat for a routine construction inspection on the county automated hotline at 10:45 one night, and the inspector was there the next morning at 7:45 a.m.

But this steam-up STILL boggles the mind.

Whats the big deal? It's just a bunch of guys running around unsupervised on abandoned trackage (that they don't own) in an open area surrounded by the public with a boiler that hasn't been tested since god knows when. Whats the worst that could happen? ;)

Actually I noticed if you look at the firemans side at 1:52 stuff starts falling off the engine!

I'm currently double-checking with my "experts in the field" in Arizona, but as I recall, the line through/into Prescott, then just a branch from the Skull Valley cut-off built in the 1960s, was formally abandoned in 1984, and there were local efforts to start up a tourist operation based out of Prescott between that time and the removal of the rails, ca. 1992. (There was much going for it--Granite Dells scenery, a nice station, and a small loco facility and car shop downtown, used until the grade over Prieta Summit was abandoned in 1962.)

Oh, wait. Google Books is our friend. Just read about it in this brilliant account in When The Railroad Leaves Town, by Joseph P. Schwieterman:

http://books.google.com/books?id=kzk_m4 ... &q&f=false

Thank you all for your input.

TH

I can't really make out the newspaper clipping from Port Townsend. What's the deal with the track in the background that appears to go up the side of the mountain? Was it connected to the streetcar? Cable car of some sort? Did they haul the locomotive up and down that hill? Anyone know details?

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't watched that video myself. Good grief!Beats me what that was, it looked like it was falling out the back of the cab, it's not like the rods are coming off or something...

I believe it was a couple of chunks of firewood falling off. Not a big deal compared to everything else!

Steve Hunter

Bob,

The Port Townsend Construction and Railway Company took delivery of the Porter 0-4-2T (the first of two) in August, 1889. The car-bodied Porters pulled passenger cars from the water level in downtown up past the courthouse on the hill.

All streetcar service petered out in the early 1890s so the Porters sat. When construction of the local Army forts started, the Govt bought the locomotives for use in hauling materials.

The hill in the photo is Fort Worden's Artillery Hill. Materials arrived by barge or ship. I don't know if the cars came already loaded or if all the materials had to be trans-loaded. Remember, though, labor was cheap! The locomotives would shove the loads to a point where a cable was attached then the car was hauled up the hill by a hoist engine powered by a stationary boiler.

When construction was complete, the scrap value, delivered to Seattle, was $30. They buried the locomotive at the beach. I'm sure the Fort Chaplain performed services. Tradition held that there was a locomotive buried on the grounds and attempts were made to locate it. It wasn't until the demolition of a building on 21 February, 1973, that the location would be discovered and the old soldier would again see the light of day.

Oh, don't start that "buried locomotive" stuff again, it won't fly here!



Wait, what? They actually found it? There's hope for the quarry engine after all then? Hooray! Hope it's a streamlined K4! Or maybe a Hudson...