I found them at T.J. Gaffney's "Ahead of the Torch," where photos posted by Brother Rowlands on his personal FB page had been reposted.

I'm sort of torn between protecting his privacy and just reposting all of them here. All I can say is that I'm pretty hard to impress by now, and even *I* was flabbergasted. In all seriousness, if the next round of photos shows a NYC Hudson buried in scrap metal, I wouldn't put it past him/them.

I have posted the majority of the photos that I took yesterday here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/33523379@ ... 603678041/

I am still amazed at the amount of old iron at Kovalchick's yards, both in Burnham and Indiana. What I also find amazing is that this place seems to be as unknown as it is. It is along a heavily traveled road just a few miles from the PRRT&HS headquarters.

Everything is apparently for sale, although not at scrap prices.

We bought some 60# rail from Kovalchik for use in our new barn floors. The rail has a foundry stamp from Africa.

divide the weight by 4 you get about 24000 lbs tractive effort, for a little engine that is very husky. The cylinders seem larger than your usual 0-4-0.

I'm planning some steel mill operation on my model railroad this is great inspiration, hope your efforts work out just as great at 1/1. cheers.

From afar these two Belpaire boilers appear to have come from steam locomotives.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/33523379@N03/15951841942/
Given that there are two firedoors I'm tending to believe that they are stationary locomotive boilers.

I've never seen or heard of a locomotive-type stationary boiler with a Belpaire firebox, but the dual firedoors are unusual. If they did come off locomotives, the firedoors would seem to be a good clue to help identify them.

This is the tentative track plan for the steel mill demonstration railway. The orange line is our property line, the red line denotes 23" gauge track already built, the blue line is proposed 23" gauge track. The undeveloped northern part of the property is on a hillside, which is precisely why we haven't put anything over there yet.

There is half of a teeming ladle laying out front of the building. The ladle is to be stood up in front of the building with a track going under it to simulate ingot teeming. The loco would spot the molds, similate teeming, then pull them out and shove them to the rear of the property onto the runaround track. Runaround the cars then shove them onto one of the two tracks behind the building. An overhead crane would lift the molds off of the cars and onto a cut of empty flats on the adjacent track, simulating the stripping process.

The building will receive an addition to the rear so that we can use the overhead crane for the stripping demonstrations.

The building houses our 34" x 68" x 60" cross compound rolling mill steam engine (the Tod Engine) and it takes up most of the space inside. To the rear of the property is one of those ex NYC GE 70 ton centerabs and a Kling type hot metal car. I bought this property in 2000 and personally built everything here with the help of no more than one or two people at any time.

Question:
I know where at least many of these photos were taken, thanks to personal familiarity with the area, yard, and adjacent line.

Were these photos all taken at the same location, or between there and another Kovalchick location?

Breaking topic for a moment, but I've seen one of these before:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/33523379@ ... 9603678041
There's one at Schnitzers in Worcester (I believe it came from Leroy's Scrap), but I have no idea what it is or where it's from... I'd guess it's an old EMD prime mover(?).

Holy cow! That's quite a collection of hardware.

If everything i indeed for sale, does Kovalchick welcome inquiries from individuals, or do they sell only to "the trade"? I see a good number of spoked mine car wheels and would love to find 4 of those (or even some multiple of 4!) for a personal project.

-Philip Marshall

What FB site are these photos from?

Work on the J&L 58 is continuing over the winter. I found that both sets of roller bearing equipped drivers were stuck, which caused some concern that the bearings were still good. After four days of working on it, not only did I get the rear axle unstuck but now it spins quite freely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2u1msp ... e=youtu.be

Next to jack up the front wheelset and get it unstuck as well.

So, since this thread has already been hijacked: If I may be nosy, where is this place at, is there a contact number and on what sort of "regular" basis is stuff actually trucked out? Like some of the other posters, I see a few things worth inquiring about for both museum and personal project purposes. Sorry to take away from Rick's thread, but on that note, nice job on the #58 so far!


~Welp, answered my own question with the photo of the sign in the Flickr collection! Sorry for being an inquisitive idiot on this one.
Sincerely,

Kent Walker

I am going to resist the hijackers by not responding and asking that a new thread be started to request info. about Kovalchicks.

Here are four video updates on the restoration of the J&L 58, or more accurately, the struggle to get the wheels to turn and to roll her around the curve into the enginehouse.
http://youtu.be/IO077WQEm6Q
http://youtu.be/hLdUBUQ6i7U
http://youtu.be/VYM1bG5k45U
http://youtu.be/d1rxWJf2ZNs

BTW, here is the newest single stall enginehouse in the United States. At 10' x 20' there isn't much room inside for anything other than the locomotive. Its pretty much a "temporary" building to shelter the locomotive until an addition can be built on the Tod Engine Building. An example of using what you have, all but some 2x2 and 3x3 angle and two 3" junior beams were materials that was on site, including the siding. It will get new trim and a 9' x 9' roll up door, so I'll have around $1,000 invested in it when done. It has no foundation other than three 8" I beams that rest upon the ground with the rails clipped to them to hold everything in alignment. The window frames are salvaged steel mill type windows, made by the now defunct Truscon Steel Products located about a mile from the museum.

The building is not finished yet, we still have to finish off the south and east sides.