Now this is one kitbashed, orphaned, strange looking locomotive.
One-of-a-kind Great West Coal 3070 still lettered for WDCM
Manalta Coal (3070) Sheerness, Alberta.
Nice bell if nothing else. Is that thing sticking up on the air supposed to be a horn? Maybe a speaker which blasts "get out of the way". Steam era marker light too. One anyway. Put together in 1951, using Baldwin trolley trucks and an ex Niagara St. Catherine's and Toronto boxcab electric and frame. Then the rest built around all of that.
I was going to call it Frankie as in Frankenstein but I did not want to disrespect its years of service pushing coal hoppers about and its heritage parts....think I'll call it "The Mother In Law" instead.....has that look!
Originally posted this to String Lining but thinking it's a Classic and maybe more will see it here.
Anyone know of any other Merrilees re-manufacturing process locomotives?
I'm not sure what that machine reminds me more of, a Civil War ironclad or a Normandy bunker.
(Cue bad accent) Reminds me of big, strong, locomotive from mother Russia!
Maybe that thing sticking up is some sort of long range antenna?
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Ya know, there was something strangely familiar about that old diesel, so I went lookin' and found this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhURhaIRdqI
Video quality's not so good, but take a good look at the locomotive!
Well, I'm trying to link a You Tube video of the Lionel L.A.S.E.R train set, but it ain't workin'! More anon, I'll try later. OK, NOW I got it to work!
Amazing resemblance, don't you think?
Then there's this one...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD4Ttl9axZ4
OK, that one works too. 'Bout time something went right for me today.
Well I'll be darned.
I was shocked when I saw Sheerness appear on this forum. I was going to say you really need a good map to find Sheerness, but in this day and age Google Maps or somesuch makes it easy.
It is north of where my Mom grew up. After WWII my uncle trucked some loads of coal out of there. It was a regoinal supplier of domestic heating coal. Later, in 1986 two power companies built a coal fired power generating plant there. This was always a fishy deal, involving the Provincial Government of the day. There are massive amounts of Natural Gas closer than you could throw a cat, but the government pushed the coal idea, because it would employ more coal miners during its' operating life than it would employ people to keep a Natural Gas plant operating. Reality has set in, and the plant is going to convert to Natural Gas. And yes, the current government is going to pay for a program to retrain coal miners.
Anyway, to get back to the matter at hand. Sheerness was 11.4 miles south, on the Sheerness Sub., of the junction with a portion of CN's Calgary-Saskatoon line, the Oyen Sub. That juction was 5.3 miles east of Hanna, AB, which has already come up as a topic on the String Lining thread earlier this year.
The Sheerness Sub., originaly extending about 60 miles down to Steveville, was going to be the Hanna-Medicine Hat, AB portion of a failed attempt by CN predecessor, Canadian Northern, to build a Edmonton-Medicine Hat line. That idea died with the bankruptcy of CNor and the formation of CN.
CNor built a station at Sheerness in 1920. It is so remote it didn't receive electricity until 1959. The building was removed in 1976.
There really is nothing out there.
Bruce
BTW I believe that thing on the top of the pole coming off of the cab was a spotlight, so the crew could work the yard at night, since electric lighting didn't come until later.
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Agent Kid-- Wow...great stuff, nice descriptions and historical backgrounds.
A spotlight eh? Now that's a first for me.
Apparently it is preserved! ...at the Reynolds Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin.
No Hudsons or Niagaras. T1's or Q2's, the S1 or S2 and many other fine examples but we have this old gal.
Strange how that works.
Penny Trains (Cue bad accent) Reminds me of big, strong, locomotive from mother Russia! Maybe that thing sticking up is some sort of long range antenna?
Under the paint and foam is a British Rail English Electric Class 20.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_20
Pretty easy to spot if you ignore the "domestic clothes iron" nose.
Peter
M636C"domestic clothes iron" nose.
Looks more like a snow plow to me.
Or a Muppet!
Without the nose.
Penny Trains ...
...
What is the structure the loco is on? An air powered turntable?
MidlandMike Penny Trains ... What is the structure the loco is on? An air powered turntable?
It certainly is a turntable and the big cylinders each side look most like air reservoirs. there seems to be an air hose making its way towards the near end of the turntable.
The interesting thing is that air brakes were relatively uncommon in the UK where vacuum brakes were the standard during steam days, and many freight trains had no continuous brakes at all.
The adoption of air brakes came during the diesel era, when turntables would have become less common, since most British diesel locomotives had cabs at each end.
However that looks like a turntable converted to compressed air power.
AgentKid CNor built a station at Sheerness in 1920. It is so remote it didn't receive electricity until 1959. The building was removed in 1976.
http://www.canada-rail.com/alberta/rs/sheerness.html#.Wc0kUGde6M8
https://archive.org/stream/albertacoalswhat00rese#page/n0/mode/2up
Oh, you are good. Thanks very much.
On the map posted by Wanswheel, Carbon and Drumheller supplied the coal that went past Irricana on its' way to Calgary. Line not shown.
wanswheel
Now that things have settled down a bit as I mentioned over on the TRAINS forum, I wanted to comment on the photo Wanswheel posted.
The architect of this station design had formerly worked for the CPR, so many of the floorplans for CNor station were similar to CPR stations even if the exterior appearces looked different.
In this station, the waiting room, on this end of the building, didn't extend all the way to the back. The window on the right was the living room.
South of Sheerness, across the Red Deer River, was a ranch founded by one of the more famous original Alberta pioneers, John Ware. His Ranch Foreman was a rangy-tangy cowboy by the name of Sam Howe, who my grandparents knew. When I saw this picture I thought of a comment they told me he had made, "as soon as you get a woman in the house, they want to put up curtains".
You can see curtains in the living room window, but likely the only shade in the waiting room would have been provided by one of those ubiqutous green roll down blinds, supplied by CNor.
Both John Ware and Sam Howe have schools in Calgary named after them.
I confess to being somewhat of a locomotive bigot. I like the big three, steam, diesel, and electric. I'm ok with narrow gauge and interurbans. But I don't care for weird engine types like turbines, geared locomotives, Beyer-Garetts(sp)?,etc. Just one man's opinion.....
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