A visit on Tuesday the 13th of August to the Western Maryland Scenic RR shop in Ridgeley, WV found crews working on lowering the front engine onto the leading truck and the driver's.

One Driver / Axle box needs to return from the machine shop before the locomotive can be set on the rear drivers.

The #1309 still needs a lot of work to be done but progress is being made.

Tim W.

In the last photo one can see a sort of yoke spanning the front engine from side to side, is that where the front engine connects to the frame?

Tumbling shaft.

Front Engine Connection to the main locomotive frame is at the rear of the front engine frame, it's a "pin & yoke" arrangements.

Tim W.

Jason Sobczynski had a lengthy video on the 1309 recently

As far as I know, this is a public page and you should be able to view this video with no problems.

https://www.facebook.com/31997228137936 ... 649626178/

And here is an article from the Trains Newswire that is a VERY shortened version of the video above.

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/20 ... TkOiF6Ucwk

We also have a statement from the County Commissioners on an audit on the railroad itself that isn't so rosy, but does suggest there have been marked improvements recently.

https://www.wcbcradio.com/?news=commiss ... road-audit

Important to always remember that we're all human beings and as such we are all works in progress, none of us having achieved perfection.

In that regard let's give John Garner credit in that he has learned to stop giving completion dates and now says rightly it will be done when it's done.

Let's hope they continue to make good forward progress and who knows with a bit of good luck perhaps she'll be able to pull this years Santa trains after all???

Hope springs eternal.

Ross Rowland

Normally I don't respond to these; after looking at the coverage at least I don't have to summarily challenge the context of the reporting; but it is really important to state again that I was down there a full year ago, and the railroad and County really jumped on the issues of the locomotive availability and tie condition - two of the most threatening issues. That happened before the report was just released.

And to Garner's credit - and I'll say this publicly - he was fully cooperative and so was Gary Bentsman and responded to every question I had. If anything, issues were brought up that I wasn't even aware of so that they could be identified and addressed.

I'll also state openly that this should not be perceived as an attack by the county, but they did recognize that an outside party formal report was necessary to justify further efforts when done with public money, and to establish priorities. It's not all about 1309 although that has certainly commanded all the attention. I was very glad to see consensus on the tie replacement and tie inserter so that work could be done this year.

I know they did a test of the boiler already, but the drive wheels/tires/rods look like they haven't been touched since her display days in Baltimore, and even has the paint on the rods from that timeframe.
I know there are people saying 1309 should be done and running before the end of the year, but it appears there's still a great deal of work left to do.

Which picture(s) are you looking at? Because from the top few pics, I don't see ANY paint on the rods and the tires appear to be in serviceable condition. Did you watch Jason's video?

The same ones just a couple of posts above this very one, they're sort of tough to miss, posted by YeOldeEnjine

Now, it's possible these are very old photos and the engines don't look like this anymore? But if not, how can you miss all the old paint?


The same person posted a photo of one of the engines on 8-14-19 and there's no paint there, so maybe they've bene cleaned up since then.
I went through the video quickly but couldn't get past the, "talking head"...

Yes, these are the old pictures. I highly encourage you to patiently watch Jason's Facebook video as it is very detailed and instructive. He is very verbose and a little ADD, but if you can get past that, it's a very detailed video and quite helpful.

Now, it's possible these are very old photos and the engines don't look like this anymore? But if not, how can you miss all the old paint?


The same person posted a photo of one of the engines on 8-14-19 and there's no paint there, so maybe they've bene cleaned up since then.
I went through the video quickly but couldn't get past the, "talking head"...[/quote]

My photos inside the shop I posted on Wednesday were shot about an hour before Jason's video... The driver's have been repainted.

Tim W.

Another photo of the driver's taken at 12:38 pm on 13 August 2019

Tim W.

I'm fairly certain that SRR did the work on 1309's drivers and axles, so they should be ready to go.