whistles:
If my memory has not failed me 2124 and 2100 were fitted with two whistles a hooter and a chime for the early rambles. 2102 not sure if they did this same trick.
I seem to recall if double headed they would alternate between hooter and chime, part of the show for folks.
I was at Erie Ave when they were servicing 2124 for a ramble ...the yard folks were having fun running back and forth and blowing both (memory)whistles.

The original whistles were the single-note high-pitched freight whistles that were standard on RDG freight power, possibly inherited from the donor I-10 2-8-0's. 2124 had such a whistle on the first Iron Horse Ramble on October 25, 1959, but received a passenger chime whistle from a G-class Pacific almost immediately.

When two T-1's were used on a Ramble one had a chime whistle and the other a freight whistle.

I wouldn't exactly call the Reading freight whistles hooters. That term seems reserved for the lower-pitched single-note whistles used by N&W on their freight engines. They sound a little like an owl hooting. N&W 1218 has such a whistle and evidently C&O/WMSR 1309 also has a hooter whistle. Strasburg (ex-N&W) 475 usually sports an N&W hooter whistle.

Phil Mulligan

There are two "clocks" in the 1472 day inspection. The first clock is the ONE YEAR clock that starts when the first flue is installed. This "clock" is intended to give the owner/restorer sufficient time to complete the restoration and reduce the impact on the 15 year limit. The second clock is the 1472 service day/15 year clock.

Part 230 gives the owner or group restoring the locomotive one year to complete the restoration before the SECOND, 15 year clock starts. Test firings performed within this period BEFORE FRA approval do not count as service days. If the restoration is NOT completed within that year, the 15 year clock starts anyway and the restoration eats into the 15 years. Any test firings after the 15 year clock has started count as service days even though the locomotive has not been approved for service.

If the locomotive is completed and approved for service BEFORE the 365 day clock expires, then the 15 year clock starts on the day of FRA approval and SERVICE DAYS start whenever the locomotive is steamed, whether for testing or for actual service.

I think one of the post-RDG owners of 2102 may have installed double whistles on the engine, but RDG did not.

Incidentally RDG freight whistles were not one size fits all. Little Camelback 0-4-0 CF&I 4 (RDG 1187) at Birdsboro had a freight whistle that had a distinctly higher pitch than a T-1 freight whistle. That's the engine that ran from Birdsboro to Strasburg and is now at Age of Steam.

Phil Mulligan

Before there’s any debate, I believe they tested with both the freight whistle and the passenger 6 chime. Unless I’m going crazy of course.

So that ends that debate. Both.

Paint scheme hint:

http://railfan.com/reading-northern-4-8 ... next-year/

The photo at South Hamburg in Summer, 1990 is the RDG freight scheme for the T-1's which included striping around the cab numbers and tender. The road name is Blue Mountain and Reading and is intertwined in the style that had been used by the Philadelphia and Reading before 1924 when the P&R was merged into the holding company and became Reading Company.

For the basic Iron Horse Ramble scheme, paint the driver tires, main and side rods, and cylinder heads silver, the footboards yellow and paint the handrails and the bead at the bottom of the running board skirt yellow with a yellow stripe the same width going down the steps. Reading Shops usually found something else to paint silver but it varied from year to year. Where the lettering is intertwined BM&R, substitute "READING" in 12 inch letters.

http://railfan.com/reading-northern-4-8 ... next-year/

Phil Mulligan

When Steam Tours had the '02 during the 1970s, it had up to three whistles on it at a time. I believe one was a Reading freight whistle. I'm not sure about the second one, but there was a third, much deeper "steamboat" whistle on it that belonged to a local Northern Ohio character named Al Shade, and he would not hesitate to let you know that was his whistle on it. According to the story he liked to tell, he got the whistle from NYC Ten Wheeler #1234 when it was either being scrapped or sitting retired at Collinwood Shops in Cleveland, by trading one of the shop guys a box of cigars for it. He said he wrapped it in a burlap bag and took it home on a streetcar. Anybody who knew Al could believe he would do something like that, since for most of his life a thoroughly chewed stogie hanging from his mouth (along with his biting little Chihuahua, "Buttercup", under arm) was a regular feature with Al.

I have thought that it was unusual for such a large, deep whistle to have come from such a small locomotive, but it could have. Knowing more about whistles now than I did then, I suspect his whistle was probably something like a Hancock 3 chime long-bell. I have no idea what happened to that whistle. Al died in the early 1990s.

Paul Woodring's post above got me to thinking.

When I was with the Midwest Railway Preservation Group in Cleveland in the early 80's I found a whistle in a corner the West 3rd Street roundhouse filthy and buried under a pile of parts. No one seemed to know what it went to or who it belonged to. I took it home, cleaned it up and kept it when I moved to Colorado in 1987. When I was working for the Georgetown Loop I rebuilt the whistle and it spent part of a season on 2-8-0 #40.

A few years after I moved, I got a call one day from Fred Neusser of the Midwest wanting to know it I knew where the whistle was. I told him yes, it was in my possession. He said it came off a NYC ten-wheeler and that some NYC museum wanted it. I sent it back to him and that's the last I ever knew of it. It was a long-bell, flat top, 3 chime whistle and did have a low, steamboat note to it. Thinking about what Mr. Woodring posted, I wonder if this was the whistle he was referring to that was on 2102 at one time?

Well, Fred was president of Steam Tours during the time Al's whistle was on the '02. I never actually saw the whistle up close, so I couldn't begin to ID it, but it sounds like a good candidate. Now if we can figure out which museum it went to...

P. S. Anyone have a recording of that whistle on Georgetown Loop #40? I might recognize it by the sound. I made recordings of 2102 with that whistle, but I'm pretty sure they've gone bad. Cassette tapes from the 70's didn't hold up very well under room temperature storage conditions, even the "premium" stuff I used, like TDK.

When I was a teen in the early '70s, Al gave me a copy of a recording he made of 2102 on the Greenbrier C&O branch arriving at Cass, WV from Ronceverte, heading to Durbin when it had three whistles on it. This would have been like 1971. They made a runby there with at least one of the Cass Scenic Shays in the station. The effect of four whistles echoing off the mountains was something else.