You're preaching to the choir, Brother Rowlands !!! The reason I couldn't pass up an engine that nobody else wanted, is that she wasn't "just another Porter Dinky". Neither is #58 !!!

You'll certainly have a one of a kind, unless you end up with several more sister engines that nobody else wants... each one 45 tons of fun. Lightening them would be like "buying a Sharpei dog, and having the wrinkles removed by a skin surgeon because you really wanted a dog with no wrinkles."

One of my best friends suggested taking the back truck off my #6, and turning her back into an 0-4-0T. Some people....

Hi Rick,

I noticed you mentioned that "Carrie Furnaces National Historic Landmark located in Rankin, PA. As the only steel plant blast furnace complex preserved in the US."

I was curious what about Bethlehem? The other day the wife and I were passing through the area on the way home from Kinzers PA, we stopped for dinner at the Casino (it was my excuse for a little detour). I was shocked to see just how popular that site was with so many people flowing through and really taking the time to appreciate the magnitude of the site. It didn't hurt that there was a free concert running that night but the place was packed with people. It was neat to stand near the blowing house and hear just how many people were trying to wrap their minds around what it must have been like to see that place in action.

Historic preservation is always somewhat of a sad thing no matter how you slice it and hard to say what the right way to do it is in order to share the past with as many people as possible but it seems like they have done a pretty nice job in Bethlehem, so I was curious why you left them off the list? What is it like at Carrie furnace for those of us a little too far to vist. At bethlehem they have made the whole elevated charging railway a walkway through the entire complex.

For a long time it was quite unclear as to what the casino's ultimate intentions were for the furnaces. Were they going to actually preserve them, or just allow them to continue to stand without interpretation or close visitation. With the new walkway they are now allowing close access as well as interpretation, and I believe that they are also doing some structural repair work.

So I guess it now can officially be considered a "preserved" blast furnace plant.

What about Sloss Furnace in Birmingham, Alabama, does it not qualify?

Sloss is a merchant iron facility. The merchant iron industry is closely related to the steel industry but their furnaces were generally smaller and their customer base consisted largely of foundries, so the pigging operation was quite important.

All told there are 10 steel shelled blast furnaces in North America that can be considered preserved. Five at Bethlehem, two at Rankin, two in Birmingham and one in Monterrey, Mexico. In a few years the number of preserved furnaces will equal the number of remaining operating furnaces in North America.

J&L 58's saddle tank, although built of 3/8" plate still corroded away to the point where work is required to keep it watertight. The first step to access the areas that need work requires adding an access hatch. I cut out a roughly four foot by six foot section of the top for the new hatch.


A 3x3x3/8 angle frame was made and welded into position and the new lid was cut out of 1/4" plate.


The smokebox door has been sanded down and painted. Preston McEvoy donated the number plate from his US Army 0-6-0T Porter which we have added numbers to and attached to the door. The plan is to paint it black with the rim and numbers done in aluminum leaf.

Steel mill saddle tank locomotives were usually not supplied with tenders. The mills would use whatever car they had and put a coal bin on top of it with the coal supply. So in keeping with that flavor, and not knowing what the J&L 58's "tender" would have looked like, I designed a new tender using components that might have been found in a teel mill.

For the car, I bought one of the 23" gauge Carpenter Steel cars from Kovalchick, and for the coal box, a riveted bin that I bought at the Wheeling Labelle nail Co. auction recently. The bins, as I found out from a former worker at Labelle, were originally built for the Wheeling Steel Benwood plant as scrap boxes in the tube mills. I picked up three of them at the auction for fifty bucks.

The third component was a 4' x 6' x 2" steel plate that I had laying around that came from US Steel. This plate is mainly to give the car some needed weight.

My original thought was to simply place the bin on the car and be done with it, but figured that by inverting it we could end up with a rather cute looking slopeback tender. With all the components on hand, we simply cut the bottom off the bin, welded it to the plate, added a partition plate for the coal bunker and then placed it on the Carpenter car. The car still needs some work, including moving the coupler pockets up two inches to match the locomotive and cleaning and painting, but overall this car was a simple project that will now trail behind the 58 wherever it goes.

now that's using your nut...looks great.

That has to be the most adorable little tender I've ever seen. :)

Hmmm, Carpenter Steel, 23" gauge? All the Plymouth production records say 24".

Or does an inch either way not matter that much?

;-)

Apparently an inch does not matter, because when I brought that car back and put it down on our 23" track it fit like a glove.

It fits tight on 23 inch track, and like a railroad car on 24 inch track?

I would guess that the 23-inch-gage locomotives and rolling stock is intended to run on 24-inch-gage track, and the extra inch of flange clearance is to help negotiate the relatively tight curvature of steel mill trackage. At slow speeds, the extra inch would not pose any problems.

Now that I have one of the Kovalchick cars on site I will be able to take measurements of back to back of the wheelsets of it and the locomotive, and determine what my track standards should be. I'm planning on building all new track to 24" gauge as long as the narrower back to back distance of the locomotive would be compatible with turnouts built for 24".

My latest video update on the project:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/rolling.ingot/

If you were ever curious as to what the ridiculously heavy frame of the 58 looks like without the wheels, well here it is.

And there is still 14,000 lbs. more steel that has to go onto the frame to bring it back to its original configuration.