By the sweat of their brow, and the grace of their paperwork

The briefest introduction to steam locomotives makes it clear that nothing about the technology comes easily.   Their size and bulk makes any aspect of maintaining them a struggle of iron against flesh; coaxing them into full pressure and then making the best use of that potential energy takes skill and patience. Simply keeping a locomotive in good working order is a notable accomplishment all to its own, but the logistics of moving one out of an enclave of preservation and onto the general freight system, like the Nickel Plate Road 765’s 200-mile ferry between Fort Wayne, Indiana and the Cuyahoga Scenic Valley Railroad in Ohio earlier this week, add an additional round of difficulty.   

Crew call for the men involved in making the move is at 7 AM sharp on Tuesday morning. The use exactly that phrase, the first sign that for this operation,  all pretenses of railroading in a historically accurate manner have been abandoned. Venturing out onto the Norfolk Southern’s territory means means a close adherence to the rules--stricter, in some ways, than the employees working for the railroad observe. The 765 is a house guest here, one invited in with some suspicion, and the crew seek to avoid any small infraction that might  give the track owners reason to revoke their hospitality. Every person involved has donned full PPE--hard hats, goggles, gloves, neon yellow. The 765, too, is likewise equipped with cab signals, an event recorder, and other concessions to the technical evolution of modern railroading. All of the cars in the ferry consist are fully consistent with current  regulations.

Moves  that involve the general railroad network  also requires a  forest of paperwork. The crew members have secured documents for every step of the move just as an entity shipping revenue freight would, and are ready to track down the proper verification in the event that the paperwork is misplaced or challenged. Organizing that many documents sometimes leaves room for misinterpretations: The 765's crew can remember a time when the delivery of the gondolas carrying their coal was delayed because a manager noted that dropping off gondolas at their location was unusual and assumed it to be a mistake.

The 765 travels the better part of two hundred miles on Monday, and ties down to overnight in Cleveland. Traveling the rest of the way to the  Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad is the shortest part of the journey, but the most complicated. The train must take a circuitous route that involves transferring between tracks owned by Norfolk Southern, CSX, and The Crow, a shortline serving the Arcelor-Mittel steel plant, before finally arriving at the Cuyahoga Valley itself. The 765  is paired with diesels for better part of the move through Cleveland.  At each step, the train is provided with pilot crews and  is at times paired with additional diesel locomotives. (Someone at Norfolk Southern has a sense of humor: the leading diesel the assign to the move is numbered 6111.)  

There are of course the usual crowds of photographers lined up along the tracks and people turned out from the houses located next to the right-of-way. Taking a steam locomotive on a trip like this, though,  means exposing it to the entirely new and unsuspecting audience of modern railroad employees.  The crews assigned to the trains that we bypass along the way descend to the ground to inspect our train, just as they would any other freight train, and yard workers of all sorts pause for a brief glimpse at the 765.  Many appear completely befuddled by what they see, unable to draw on any other piece of equipment in the yard for comparison and wholly unable to comprehend that the 765 is a predecessor to the diesel locomotives idling on adjacent tracks.Many of the conductors and engineers assigned by the various railroads to accompany us are acutely curious about the technology, but wholly ignorant of its nature.  What is constant among all of them is the feeling that some rift in the normal world has opened up, that something from another time and place has slipped through. That happy suspicion will endure for them more than the sight of the machinery itself.

That, at the end of the day, is what makes it worth it to endure the effort of keeping the 765  and other steam locomotives in working order, of observing the strict and taxing professionalism that allows their operation on the main lines.  There is a another payoff  besides selling excursion tickets, or providing some good photo opportunities, or even just the challenge of attempting and then succeeding at putting on a challenging event.  There are no simply no substitutes for watching someone get their first glimpse at an elegant and powerful machine. To be able to take a locomotive new locations and introduce it to new people is a difficult prospect, but one entirely worth pursuing.