Agreed, Gary. Railfans will donate maybe 7-8K over 5 months, and that's for a project as sexy as the J. Not that the 1-1.3 percent doesn't help, sort of like the difference between 34 and 35 PSI in your tire can marginally improve gas mileage, but it won't make the difference between a flat and a tire you can drive on. If railfan's generosity was all we had to depend on, we'd all be broke and closed down junkyards with half a dozen old guys pretending to do real work on weekends.

I'm extremely pleased that the project is so well planned it has taken the building and endowment into the project as an integral part rather than an afterthought. They want to build a program that is sustainable, not something that wil die after 15 calendar years.

dave

Dave,

The local railfans have stepped up to the plate. A little over a month ago the Roanoke Chapter offered a challenge to its members for the 611 campaign. The Board voted to match member contributions to 611 up to a total match of $5000. As of our meeting on the 17th, we were up to near $8000 raised...

Yep, about 1.5%. And that's the local gys who have a home court interest in their own back yard.

dave

Fellow Steam Lovers,

Anyone at all familiar with the mainline steam lovers community knew from the get-go that the ONLY chance this campaign had of reaching any of its goals was if a very few ( 3-10) well heeled individuals were willing to step up and write a large 6 figure or small 7 figure check, or if NS was willing to become a major financial player. Short of that there never was the slightest ghost of a chance of raising $ 750k from the general railfan community never mind the multi-million dollar numbers for the building and endowment.

My gut tells me that there's still a good chance that several major players will come through but we'll need to wait and see. Obviously she is not going to run in 2014 so those who were counting on that need to get over it.

Let's all support the effort in any way we can and hope for the best.

Ross Rowland

Unless I missed something, all I saw was a review of the information in the original report. However, the tone of the article seemed rather depressing, though I know they were not aware of the work in progress by the museum and the Fire Up 611 committee in raising the required funds.
lois

Preston Claytor was on board the 765 trips this weekend soliciting donations. Unfortunately all he said was "we are raising money to restore to operation"
I did make sure to thank him for his efforts.

Has NS done an official solicitation of their employees ?

I doubt they would. NS, like several other major corporations, matches a portion of their employee's contributions to non-profit organizations. They don't try to tell their employees how to spend their money, and shouldn't.

I noticed in a document on NS steam excursions that 611 did not travel to Knoxville, TN that I saw, did she, and if not why not? Just curious again

I have covered the 611 excursions closely for stories, and don't directly recall her traveling to Knoxville. The engines that I recall traveling to Knoxville on Southern 4501,630 and L&N 152.
lois

And 1218 has been there on multiple occasions too.

I'll have to check the old schedules to find the exact dates.
lois

There were places that the J's long, rigid wheelbase wouldn't allow it to go, like the Manassas Gap line to Front Royal. At least that is what NS told the Washington DC Area Joint Trip Committee. The A, no problem.

While the J's wheelbase certainly would prohibit them from traveling "branchlines" on the entire NS system, this was not true for the Manassas Gap Branch between Manassas and Front Royal, VA. There were a handful of bridges remaining along the line that were built to the lesser axle loadings associated with branch lines at the time. These were all replaced east of Front Royal by the early 1990's, allowing 611 to make three round trips to Front Royal in 1993 and 1994. Prior to then, 1218 pulled several excursions along the line, not because of articulation, but lesser axle loadings. (Starting in 1990 all the trips originating in Alexandria were hauled twenty miles south to Manassas where the steamer was placed on the train. With the wye removed in Alexandria, it was easier to keep the steamers in Manassas where there was a wye and a yard that allowed servicing).
The 21st Century version of the fifty miles of the "B-Line" between Manassas and Front Royal is completely different: continuously-welded rail, CTC signalling, and a handful of extending passing sidings long enough to hold most of the daily intermodals that use the line. The old 10MPH south leg of the wye in Manassas has been replaced with a larger, faster connector as well-I have never heard rail groan as loudly as when 611 would turn around the old wye!

This is interesting.

I'd like to establish a slight semantic difference, between 'rigid wheelbase' and 'effective rigid wheelbase'. The difference (to me at least) has to do with the balancing method used on the J, which uses very still lateral compliance on the lead and, I believe, trailing truck centering devices. I do not know directly if there's a comparable stiffening of roll compliance (hunting being a couple of nosing and rolling, so both would in theory be appropriate, and 611 is notorious for being intolerant of cross-level instabilities...)

The result is that the effective rigid wheelbase is longer than the physical driver wheelbase, and this might easily lead to difficulty if the Massasas Gap line was given 'diesel-style' curve transitions and cross-level lining when rebuilt.

I'm suggesting that NS consider instrumenting/programming one of its track-geometry cars to model the suspension and guiding characterics of 611, and run it to see where the 'gotchas' might be.