Hi All
I would like to know what is the latest update on C&O # 2716, that is not much on your website, dealing with updates.

Any information on the locomotive, would be appreciated, I have brought a few items from your gift shop to help with the restoration of the locomotive. Thank you, Can't wait to see her in New England, Pat.

I'm guessing you're not on Facebook?

I've visited most of the Kanawha's that made it into preservation at one time or another. I was particularly captivated by 2760, in Lynchburg. This locomotive was placed in what might be the absolutely worst outdoor setting I can imagine, yet managed to not be badly deteriorated in the early 2000's.
Has anyone created a status-evaluation listing of the remaining C&O 2-8-4's?

That's not very helpful. You didn't attempt to answer his inquiry. I'm not on facebook either or I would have (assuming there's info on there).

I found a wonderful site with all manner of information concerning all the preserved Kanawhas. https://rockontrains.wordpress.com/2019 ... -may-2019/

Check it out.

Here is a list from steamlocomotive.info

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2705 2-8-4
Baltimore, MD
Location: B&O RR Museum
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2700 2-8-4
Dennison, OH
Location: Dennison Railroad Depot Museum
Status: Restoration
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2736 2-8-4
Green Bay, WI
Location: National Railroad Museum
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2755 2-8-4
Logan, WV
Location: Park
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad No. 2760 2-8-4
Lynchburg, VA
Location: Riverside Park
Status: Cosmetic Restoration
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2756 2-8-4
Newport News, VA
Location: Huntington Park
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2789 2-8-4
North Judson, IN
Location: Hoosier Valley RR Museum
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2716 2-8-4
Ravenna, KY
Location: Kentucky Steam Heritage Corp.
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2732 2-8-4
Richmond, VA
Location: Virginia Science Museum
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2707 2-8-4
Union, IL
Location: Illinois Railway Museum
Status: Stored
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2776 2-8-4
Washington Court House, OH
Location: Jesse Eyman Memorial

Chesapeake & Ohio RR No. 2727 2-8-4
Kirkwood, MO
Location: National Museum of Transport
Status: Display
Album: Video: Notes: Links:

Pat,

If you got a few items from their gift store, also consider a membership. They also send out periodic member updates/emails on site work, upcoming volunteer sessions etc:

https://www.kentuckysteam.org/membership

To put it simply

Most of the Kanawhas are in fairly good shape cosmetically or at the very least good situations.

The ones that were the worst in the past few years are 2707, 2700, and 2732. The latter two have seen good care in recent years, and 2707 is in the hands of IRM: so one of these days it will be in a better position.

For a class with so many members in preservation, they’re all in pretty decent care. I couldn’t really pick one that’s the “worst” off.

wesp -

The Kanawha missing from your long list is # 2727 at the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Missouri.

Les

Les,

Thank you. I updated the list.

For some reason C&O 2727 does not roll up in a survey on SteamLocomotive.info using Railroad: C&O and Wheel arrangement:2-8-4.

Maybe Doug can reply or repair this?

Wesley

It is fixed, and the error (on my part) was a very, very old one. In October of 2002, when the site was very new, people complained extensively that, for example, if they searched for C&O as the railroad name they got nothing and had to search for Chesapeake & Ohio RR.

To fix this we did a couple of things. We added a field to the database called rrabbrev to contain the commonest abbreviation for a railroad name. We then went through the database and made sure we had entered the full name of each railroad in a consistent way, so Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad was truncated to Chesapeake & Ohio RR. Just made sure that each locomotive had the rrfullname field filled consistently.

We then began to log search errors. Someone would search, say, for B&O, rather than Baltimore and Ohio RR and the search would fail. So we used these search errors as a guide to filling in the rrabbrev field.

We then changed the way the search query was generated so that it searched for locomotives whose rrfullname or rrabrev field matched the user's query. And voila! It worked, most of the time.

One further tweak was made so that a match occurred if what you entered was LIKE the rrfullname. So Chesapeake & Ohio would match locomotives whose name was Chesapeake & Ohio RR for example. And peace descended upon the land.

This long winded babble, intended to demonstrate conclusively just how dense I can actually be when working on the site illustrates just how difficult it is to insulate a computer program from human mistakes.

The reason that this problem (with 2727) happened is because when doing data entry for 2727 back in the day, I typed C&&O as the abbreviation. As soon as I corrected that, the search results now include our favorite Kanawha.

Sorry it took so long for me to figure this out.

Any organization that is only posting on Facebook (or Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, or even RYPN) is selling itself short. Just like you should own the property the railroad is on, you should own the internet property that your organization has. Social media should be used to augment that website, as well as direct people there.

That said, https://www.kentuckysteam.org has an excellent website and the last news item was posted on January 17th, so they seem to be doing a fine job of keeping things up to date.

If there's useful info on FB that's not there as well, it should be. However, a quick glance at the website's news section finds plenty of info.

Back to the original poster's query-the website has a lot of great information about Kentucky Steam as an organization.

However, I believe Pat is looking for specific updates on what is the latest on 2716's overhaul status. In perusing the website, I saw an older post about firebox work. I would guess Pat would like to know how that's coming along, is there an overall timetable (given the RMNE announcement), that kind of thing.

Pat, if I have mis-stated, I do apologize.

2700 is under restoration? I thought it only cosmetic.

Even long before the Internet and social media, I was helping groups to sort out surveys for the "How did you hear about us?" questions. We all very quickly learned that, at least with the groups (mostly non-rail) I was working with, there was simply no "magic bullet" for promotion. We had to do it ALL: the e-mail newsletter, promotional e-mails, flyers, posters, paid advertising, notifying the Events Calendar editors of the newspapers and "alt-weeklies," postcards, etc.

Similarly, no group can put all its energy into Facebook, Twitter, or any other such platform. One has to take the approach that FB is ethereal, and will vanish completely in five years or so (remember YahooGrouips? Newsgroups? AOL chat rooms and groups? Friendster? Napster? Facebook, too, shall pass.....).