favorite steam trains

[CARMINE PELAIA]

LIST AT LEAST FIVE OF YOUR FAVORITE STEAM TRAINS

[Overmod]

Trains as a whole, or locomotives that pull them?

[Firelock76]

I'll go for it.

1)  Norfolk-Southern steam excursions pulled by Class J 611.

2)  Norfolk-Southern steam excusions pulled by Class A 1218.

3)  New Jersey Transit steam excursions pulled by Chesapeake and Ohio 614

4)  Susquehanna steam excursions pulled by 2-8-2 142.

5)  The Durango and Silverton and their wonderful stable of narrow-gauge steamers, NOT to be missed if you're in that part of the country.

Honorable Mention:  The Strasburg Railroad!

And at least the D&S and the Strasburg are still in operation.

Hope that answers the questions.

[Penny Trains]

In no particular order:

1. NYC Dreyfuss Hudson
2. N&W Class J Northern
3. N&W Class Y6 (or a or b)
4. NKP Lima Berkshire (or Lima C&O Kanawah)
5. N&W Class G1

[MidlandMike]

1.  C&TS

2.  D&SNG

3.  Huckleberry RR (Michigan) ex-D&RGW 464

4.  PM 1225

5.  UP Big Boy if they get it running again

[GeoffS]

Excursions on the Reading & Northern, Reading to Jim Thorpe PA.

[GeoffS]

Texas State Railroad, Strasburg, & a Chessie Special. I can only make 4!

[Fr.Al]

I've been on the Texas State, Strasburg, Huckleberry, the old Steamtown in VT, Ohio Central, and Everett. I guess that makes my five. Didn't see the N&W 4-8-0 when I visited the Strasburg.

[Overmod]

Some not mentioned:

Milwaukee Hiawatha anything.  (This includes those funky little North Woods engines, which in turn brings up the Lubeck-Buchener Eisenbahn with the class 60s playing the part of the As and those ... interesting other engines.)

New York Central trains in sections on tight headway behind latter classes of J1s, unstreamlines except for one grand example.  And later, in different context, Niagaras on anything, doing pretty much anything.  I'm partial to those A2a's too.

Why no Daylights?  

Algerian Garratts (and, why not, C&O M-1, perhaps the largest passenger steam engine, a kind of North American counterpart)

T1 power on trains meriting them for the brief time before PRR gave up on debugging them.  (We will see, in detail, what was and wasn't possible ... hopefully sooner than later.)

Coronation Scot over Silver Link, but that's more prejudice than objectivity.  And what a pity the hush-hush development failed to thrive.  Plenty of other interesting steam in Blighty including 71000 and later Tornado; I've always been partial to Churchward's and Collett's designs...

 

More later.

[Penny Trains]

Overmod

Why no Daylights?

Personally I'm an east of the Mississippi kinda girl. 

[Firelock76]

Penny Trains

 

Overmod

Why no Daylights?

 

 

Personally I'm an east of the Mississippi kinda girl. 

 

Nothing against Doyle's Daylight myself, but I've never ridden behind that one, I confined my own choices to those I've experienced personally.  If I was going to give a wish list for rides it'd go something like this...

1)  The Blue Comet

2)  Any of the New Jersey Central's Camelbacks

3)  An Erie K-1 up the New York and New Jersey Railroad, now called the Pascack Valley Line. (NJT)

4)  The 20th Century Limited behind a Dreyfuss Hudson

5)  The Broadway Limited behind a T1.

Honorable mention, anywhere on the New York Central from New York City to Chicago behind a Niagara.

As I said, it's a wish list.

[Miningman]

Have we not done something like this ten times already? Oh well it just too tempting, can't resist.

A T1 during that six month period when they were the stars. 

A NYC Hudson at speed..put me on the CASO With heavyweights. Wartime.

A NYC Niagara at speed

A CPR Jubilee...the original high stepping ones, and their matching train. High flyers, Edmonton-Calgary.

CNR/GTW streamlined Northern ...magnificient in full stride. So powerful. 

I would love to have seen the C&O M-1, been trackside..what hopes for the future that never happened. Glad Overmod brought it up, I suppose most of us disqualify it. 

How about UP Portland Rose behind a grey jacketed Challenger and its matching trainset. 

Anything high drivered Sante Fe, I mean c'mon. 

Concur..anything Hiawatha, homemade cars, such pride, so beautiful.

[Penny Trains]

Miningman

Have we not done something like this ten times already?

Tastes evolve.  Besides, it's winter for most of us. 

[Fr.Al]

I'd like to see a CPR Jubilee up and running. I believe Steamtown has one, not sure if it could be fixed.

[Overmod]

Fr.Al

I'd like to see a CPR Jubilee up and running. I believe Steamtown has one, not sure if it could be fixed.

Not the right kind.  All the drawbacks of a light Hudson, with none of the advantages.  Real useful for running excursion trains too short to pay their own way, while stalling often or burning rail with poor adhesion doing it.

What's needed is a 3000-class Jubilee, which was Canada's somewhat better answer to a Milwaukee A class. 

[Penny Trains]

http://www.rgusrail.com/pascollection.html#cprf1a2929

CP 4-4-4 2929.

[Firelock76]

Christ, what a mess!  If Steamtown can't do anything with it they should just give it to someone who can.  Wouldn't anyone in Canada be interested?

[Fr.Al]

Maybe someone in Canada IS interested. Maybe Steamtown COULD do something. I'm not sure, but I think other locomotives in similar shape have been revived.

[Firelock76]

Well Father, anything built by man can be restored by man, but it DOES take buckets of money to do it.  In the meantime Steamtown should send someone out there with a few buckets of Rustoleum just to keep it from getting any worse.

The original finish is shot anyway, just something to stop the rust.  As they say, rust never sleeps.

[Miningman]

One of the strangest consists you'll ever see! F1a 3002 a streamlined 4-4-4 taking water, ancient steel underframe (S.U.F.) headend car is only an empty buffer (required by BTC Order) between engine and passenger cars, a single near-new RDC and a single lightweight coach make up this light traffic Saturday run stopping only at Woodstock, and shown here 
taking water at Galt, just one hour after leaving London, it will be only another hour and five minutes to Toronto Union. 
Saturday February 27,1954 Gordon E. Lloyd.

[Miningman]

Don't let anyone tell you a Jubilee couldn't pull much! More common on the prairies freight here we see Extra 2929 West bound for Smiths Falls with 60 cars! Might have been slippery getting underway but she made it. 
Dorval, Quebec April 5, 1958 Ron Ritchie/Ron Visockis digital restoration 

2929 at the Glen. 8/29/1958 Wm.Raia/Joseph Testagrose Collection 

This locomotive was one on the many collected by F.Nelson Blount for his Steamtown USA in Vermont. It never operated. Now at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, PA in a sad state of neglect.

[Firelock76]

I for one never thought a "Jubilee" couldn't get the job done, if that was the case they wouldn't have lived very long.  Just because the Reading couldn't make a 4-4-4 work doesn't mean no-one else could.

Slippery?  They were probably just like the Pennsy's T1, once head-end crews knew what to expect and how to handle 'em they were just fine.

Cool-lookin' too!

[Overmod]

Firelock76

I for one never thought a "Jubilee" couldn't get the job done, if that was the case they wouldn't have lived very long.  Just because the Reading couldn't make a 4-4-4 work doesn't mean no-one else could.

This reminds me a bit of the end of a caption in Trains describing the Wilmington electric shop switcher, 'wouldn't two of these make a great engine?'  The smaller Jubilees made a fine engine, but things would have been ever so much better with one little additional driver pair...

The Reading engine was a 4-4-2 with entirely the wrong kind of truck substituted.  It was the wrong answer to a question Reading had already far more compellingly answered.  Now, had the firebox been extended to take full advantage of the two axles, and correct steering (at the rear of a Bissel truck being best) been applied to those axles, you'd have had the best engine thus far for the Atlantic City express traffic (fastest in the world) ... but the immediate thing that would occur to you, as it actually did on the Pennsy shortly before the P&R experiment, that an extra driving axle and better balance would give you a far better locomotive with minimal effective drawbacks...

Sure, they could pull lots on the level.  There were some wartime anecdotes involving a relatively high-drivered SP Atlantic, very far from new, successfully operating loaded main trains with upward of 21 cars (!) -- of course you had to know they used a trailing-truck booster for starting, making them the moral equivalent of a 4-6-0 at starting and low speed, and the terrain was largely flat.  Remember that my comment on their being relatively 'slippery' involved the context of running out of Scranton on excursions heavily occupied enough to pay for them and the pro rata cost of restoring the Jubilee. 

Slippery?  They were probably just like the Pennsy's T1, once head-end crews knew what to expect and how to handle 'em they were just fine.

Cool-lookin' too!

No question there.  But the 3000s were far more locomotive, and used the high steam-generation capacity inherent in the four-wheel-supported firebox to much better advantage, at least in theory.

Would I pay towards restoring or at least stabilizing the Jubilee at Steamtown?  Of course.  Would I help work on her?  Of course.  Would I say that operations would justify restoring her ... not so much.

[Penny Trains]

Five that I'd like to see restored to running order (in a perfect world)

This one's a long shot:

[daveklepper]

Steam trains ridden moreo than once, in chronological order:  New Haven - Concord, NH., NYNH&H (electric to and from NYC) and B&M, interchange at Worcester.   (Springfield one time)

Empire State Express, Harmon - Detroit, Hudsons

Suncook Valley mixed:  Concord - Pittsfield, NH

New Haven (electric to and from NY) - Boston, I-4 Pacifics or I-5 Hudsons

New York and Long Branch, South Amboy (electric to and from NY) or Jersey City - Red Bank or Little Silver, CNJ camelback 4-6-0s or K4s.

Grand Trunk Western, Chicago - Pontiac or Bloomfield Hills via Duramd, 4-8-4s and Pacifics

D&RGW narrow gauge, Alamosa - Silverton via Durango, Chircago Railroad Club Morie Kliebolt Specials

UP  Rawlins - Cheyenne  844/8444, UP secials and last City of LA.

Loved every miniute of all of them.

 

[Miningman]

Very nice Dave. I'm sure we are all quite envious of your far and wide journeys when trains were still very important and service was a matter of company pride. Many of us here may have caught the final acts of it all, but you were there for the whole show.

I think a trip on the 'just after the war' Milwaukee heavyweight Olympian would be quite the experience. 

[Fr.Al]

1. Can you identify locomotive number 4?(directed to Penny, but maybe someone else can answer).

[Penny Trains]

Fr.Al

1. Can you identify locomotive number 4?(directed to Penny, but maybe someone else can answer).

 

That's Norfolk and Western Class G-1 2-8-0 #7 which is on display in Bluefield WV.  More info here: http://www.rgusrail.com/wvnwg17.html

[ACY Tom]

The original post asked for five favorites, and did not specify that they should still exist. Some responses have focused on five existing locos that should get better treatment in preservation.

If we're talking about five existing locos that deserve a better fate, I would start with NKP/AC&Y/D&MM 4-6-0 number 304 at Steamtown.  I seriously doubt that Steamtown will ever have the resources or will to do anything to preserve this loco, and it seems sensible to follow the example of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in regard to NKP 757, and turn her over to somebody who will treat her right. Age of Steam Roundhouse in Sugarcreek, Ohio would probably give her a great home. Next on the list is the entire roster of the East Broad Top. I'm not sure what other engines to add, but there are lots of candidates. 

My all-time list is too big, so I'll list my all-time favorite extinct locos.

1.  Erie Berkshire, any class.

2.  Erie K-5 Pacific.

3.  B&O EM-1 2-8-8-4.

4.  B&O S-1 2-10-2.

5.  PRR J1 2-10-4.

Ask me on a different day, and you would probably get a different list.

Tom

 

[Firelock76]

Great choices, especially the Erie Berkshire and the K-5.

Those Berkshires made the modern Erie, and those K-5's were so good the Erie never bothered to upgrade to a Hudson or Northern type for long-range passenger work. 

Mind you, if you didn't have to be in Chicago yesterday the "Erie Limited" was a fine way to go.  Not competing with the NYC or the PRR for speed the Erie didn't need anything more than a Pacific type anyway.