Thanks, Leo. Yes, I can kind of make out where the loop was. What is amazing to me is that the lot is almost completely wooded over. Sure, there were some trees there back in the 60s, but my recollection is that most of the loop was in what looked like an open, uncut hay field. As noted, when you approached it from the southeast on Rte 3, the train was visible as it ran the last quarter of the loop toward the station. Looking at it now is almost like looking at a Civil War Battlefield site. A vivid imagination is necessary to picture what it looked like back then.

My Dad shot some 8mm movies the day we visited. I recall seeing those movies over and over as I grew up. No idea if they survive. My Mom is still living, but she has moved a couple of times and she loves throwing things out. She doesn't see value in old photos and movies and never looks at them. I'm just the opposite. I would give my eye teeth to have some photographs from that day back in the 60s. At least I have my current photos of #11 down in Hollidaysburg.

Thank you!

/Kevin Madore

Not to hijack this thread, but back in 1971 I was TDY at Fort Drum. One weekend I drove to Syracuse to look at the museum equipment at the fairgrounds and on the way back to Drum drove a back road which may have been route 3. Somewhere along there I drove by a small steam engine, obviously home made, with a loop of track around a small pond, all in front of a house with a big metal building in the back. Naturally I stopped and met the gentleman who owned it all. He had an organ building business in the metal building and had built the steam engine from scratch. It didn't run well so he kept in on display. He showed me inside the building where he was making a 1/2 size diesel. I seem to recall it may have been an SD40. He had finished the frame and trucks (Blombergs as I recall) all in perfect scale. He invited me back on another weekend but I never could get away. Wonder where that was and what happened to all of it?
Ned

My mom was going through family pictures about 5 years back and one of them was of a fake looking steam locomotive lettered for Emporium's Grasse River Railroad, which was about the size of your average amusement park locomotive.

Judging by how old my sisters and I looked in front of it, the picture was taken circa 1990 when I'd of been 8. I don't have the picture handy, but believe the locomotive was numbered #5 and had an odd looking squared off balloon type stack.

I don't remember anything about this nor did my mother. Growing up in the North Country, I wonder if it's the steam locomotive that you recall?

There is a live steam club in Clyde, NY, about 40 miles west of the NY State Fairgrounds: Finger Lakes Live Steamers
The club's website says they bought their land in 1969, so it could have been them.

Thanks for all the replies folks.

Concerning the reason for the (supposed) scrapping of #24 in 1967; the last owner of #24, the Gray Lumber Company, was not known for maintaining their locomotives once they suffered an issue that hindered operation. Like many smaller, industrial railroads, once an engine could no longer perform efficently and effectively, it was sidelined and replaced. In this specific case, #24 was probably replaced by it's sister locomotive #26 when it succumbed to a major mechanical failure of some sort.

This would mean that when Dr. Gorman purchased #24, he purchased it knowing that it hadn't run in probably half a decade and needed to undergo a serious restoration effort in order to become operational again.

That's why I think that when the already struggling museum made the decision to become a 100% standard gauge operation, management made the difficult decision to scrap #24 along with other narrow equipment because the time and money it would take to restore them was impossible to come by.

Oh well. Atleast we have Surry, Sussex & Southampton Railway #26 in New Jersey and SS&S Railway #6 in Iowa. Funny (not actually funny) to think that more locomotives survive that were owned by the Surry, Sussex & Southampton Railway (which was abandoned in 1930) then that of the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad's standard gauge steam locomotive fleet. (Sorry D&RGW standard gauge steam fans)

Anyway, thanks for all the information

Nick

Hopefully some pictures of the unfortunate no. 24 at Rail City will surface.

The engine house - aka "Moffat Tunnel" - was still standing in 2012.



After a year off due to the public heath situation, we look forward to having no. 11 back in steam next summer. She's a nice little chooch and handy sometimes too.



More:
https://tinyurl.com/Engine-11-gallery

- Alan Maples

Well thanks to this thread I was able to put a little of the piece of my puzzle together. As I mentioned earlier my dad and I discovered a painting he did that happened to be in the museum. I tried asking Robert Gorman about it years ago but he said he didn't know anything about it. Well this thread prompted me to do some searching and on flickr. I found a picture that shows the painting inside the museum. It is on the upper right of the photo, an NYC Mohawk going by a tower.

If any of you bought the new book by Tom Gerbracht, Know Thy Late Mohawk, you can see two other of his paintings in it.

Now to find the current owner, I'd love a picture of it.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jackson_0 ... 41728@N05/

It was still in the same spot in 2012. I suspect it is packed away with all the other artifacts from Bob's "museum of a museum". Given the volume of things that were there, I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't recall a specific item.

- Alan Maples

As pointed out previously, Scranton 505 was saved by Dr. Stanley Groman, the founder of Rai City. Scranton sweeper 107 was also saved and was able to fit inside a building a the Rail City, keeping it in good condition. Unfortunately 505 was sitting outdoors. Both cars were acquired by the Magee Transportation Museum from Rail City in May 1966. Scranton sweeper 107 became the first trolley car to operate at Magee on May 26, 1966.

While the outdoor storage certainly took its toll, #505 was hiding a lot of problems when she left Scranton. The photos of the car at Magee, taken only a few years later, illustrate that pretty well. Those issues made sure that she stayed on the ‘back burner’ as she moved from museum to museum and the car continued to deteriorate. I believe that Rockhill only bought her from Magee as a parts donor.

It’s amazing that 505 survived at all and thankfully Dr Groman intervened when he did; a second Scranton electromobile was slated to be saved locally but the funds never materialized and she was scrapped with the rest of the fleet.

Progress on #505 has been hamstrung by covid but we are hopeful to get back on track this winter. The next few stages are complex so having a chance to catch our breath wasn’t such a bad thing.

Thanks Alan, maybe I'll nudge him again. I'm trying to put together a"roster" of all the paintings he made.

Hello Everyone,
My father created Rail City Museum and I have researched it extensively. My father never went anywhere without a Kodachrome slide camera, a medium format B&W camera and a 16 mm movie camera and left me with an overabundance of photos, slides and movie footage. IN a basement darkroom I developed over 3,000 negatives into photos (before digital) and spent several years researching each and every photo related to Rail City. Much of that effort culinated in the 1995 article in Trains magazine.

If anyone has questions on Rail City I can answer them here or on the online website for Rail City. I wasn't happy with Facebook , no longer use it, but cannot get them to delete it.

As to a narrow gauge locomotive #24 - WE DID NOT HAVE IT. Rail City only had one narrow gauge locomotive and that was the Porter locomotive from Gallup New Mexico. No locomotives were scrapped in 1967 but the interim owner, Bernie Weber, did scrap some of the equipment from the Grasse River Railroad.

I would note that Rail City was a huge undertaking for my father. And he didn't have the assistance of other organizations with donated money. In the later years when Rail City was on the decline many were hard on my Dad as they hated to see the decline. But my father invested a considerable sum that ended up preserving many pieces of equipment that otherwise would have been scrapped. For that alone he deserves recognition. He just could not sustain additional loss after the failed Bernie Weber sale which truly cost him dearly. Scheduled payments from Weber were not made and Weber went into debt with local businesses that my father worked with for many years and who trusted my Dad by electing to work with Weber. For that reason he elected not to attempt to sell Rail City a 2nd time getting burned twice.

The final nail in the coffin was the oil embargo in the 70's which prevented much road traffic. Coupled with vacationers now using Route 81 instead of route 3 the museum saw little support to sustain it further. In it's final years Rail City was operated by volunteers of the Rail City Fire Dept under Nelson Husted and even they struggled not having the burden high costs of labor.
Regards,
Bob Groman

Bob, thank you for taking the time to post in this thread. As I noted in my posts, your dad's museum was my first opportunity to see and ride behind a live steam locomotive. I still remember the moment when #11 pulled into the station in front of us, and I could read the phrase "The Champagne Trail" painted on the cab under the engineer's window. Thanks to his efforts, a number of steam locomotives that would likely have ended up as razor blades are still around to delight and educate future generations on how hugely important these machines were in the development of the technology-based society we are today. It lit a fire in me and today, in my retirement, I travel the country photographing and documenting the 150+ steam locomotives that can still run. It's a hobby that I enjoy immensely.

When I heard that Alan Maples and his team were restoring #11, I made it a point to head out to Hollidaysburg to renew my acquaintance with the first steam engine I ever saw. I've been back several times since. Number 11 is in great hands.

If you'd like to see some photos of #11 as she is today, you can look here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/112261457@N06/albums/72157678055905635/

If you have an on-line site that has images from Rail City, please do post that link. I would love to see them.

Thank you!

/Kevin Madore

Folks,
I got some postcards from Robert Gorman several years ago. Interesting to see that he is still with us. The cards came from many years after Rail City closed.

Another piece of it is at the Seashore Trolley Museum. They were allowed to collect a pair of trucks for an Interurban at Kennebunkport.

Ted Miles, STM Member

Was watching a YouTube video yesterday of the Gramlings moving Flagg Coal 75 off of the old Rail City site. Mr. Groman was in the video and mentioned that he would love to be one of the first to ride behind # 75 once it was operable. Was just wondering if he has ridden behind #75 as he had hoped.

John