Famed 4-8-4 will visit Pennsylvania tourist railroad for weekend events in September and October
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2019/03/14-nw-no-611-to-visit-strasburg-rail-road-for-four-weeks-of-events
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
Time to ask Santa for an early holiday gift.
They're going to have to reimburse those farmers. Their fields are going to be destroyed.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
zugmann They're going to have to reimburse those farmers. Their fields are going to be destroyed.
I don't know, those farmers just might make a ton of money selling overflow parking spaces if there's a massive turnout for 611's visit.
Then again, you live out there Zug, you know the area a lot better than I do.
Savage TunnelYou better hurry, the events are selling out...
Direct link to booking for the four events, via the Strasburg website:
https://fareharbor.com/embeds/book/strasburgrailroad/items/?flow=162408&full-items=yes
The Railroad Museum Of Pennsylvania should likewise have a good fall 2019 and be able to raise some additional funds for their roundhouse project and continued restoration. It is probably too hard to make this happen but it would be interesting to see the M1b side-by-side with the J.
Which raises a question - did the J ever test on the Pennsylvania in the merchandise freight role? I am guessing not since the Pennsylvania had the 300-strong armada of M1a and M1b 4-8-2 Mountains.
I know that the Pennsylvania 2-10-4s and then 4-4-6-4s handled a lot of that role on the west side of the Alleghenies after World War II.
Thanks for any thoughts!
611 is sold out. A few seats available on 475. Looking forward to my daughter and I being a pair of engienmen on two trips (will switch roles) with 475. Thanks Strasburg RR for making a dream come true!
kgbw49Which raises a question - did the J ever test on the Pennsylvania in the merchandise freight role?
Why? They wound up with a whole class of merchandise-freight engines with 70" drivers that were far more capable in that role than a N&W 4-8-4 with or without alloy rods would have been. And for high-speed M&E (as we know from other developments including the Q1) PRR wanted a larger wheel, and then went to explicit divided drive to prevent issues with 69" drivers even at lower Q2 speeds.
Let's also remember that the postwar follow-on to the S2 would have been a 4-8-4 with 68" drivers and zero augment, and the V1 even as originally 'scoped' would have run any train as fast as PRR said it needed.
Had PRR wanted a steam engine for TrucTrains ... it still wouldn't have been a low-drivered 4-8-4, rightly or wrongly. I have always thought the Q1 was the wrong mix of characteristics for PRR when they tried getting a 5/4 M1 following the same general logic as the AMC did going from Berk to slightly larger proportions in a 2-10-4).
In my opinion, the M1 situation is akin to the K4 situation in that PRR built large 'standard' quantities just prior to the practical invention of good balancing in high-speed 4-8-4s and the advent of the Depression.
A hiccup from 611's excursion history -
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR8705.pdf
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Interesting what Overmod points out. After incredible success and growth suddenly almost a karmic fate makes them a victim of their own cutting edge success with motive power. Seems they miss the boat quite regularly after making huge investments in one direction. K4's, M1's and then as the last T1 rolled off the line simultaneously all knew Diesels were the champions. I suppose the GG1 was a big win, but confined to wire.
After that the down spiral never stopped.
I would hardly consider PRR's mechanical department to be cutting-edge. Most of their designs were adequate but hardly exceptional. Standardization of parts often seemed to be carried out to the extreme for reasons unknown.
This may sound blasphemous, but the GG1 was more of a refinement of prior designs from elsewhere than something dramatic and new. Also note that it came about primarily because the P5 was found to be less than adequate for its intended passenger service role.
Any chance it might work an early morning freight, as the Js did back in the day after they had been bumped from passenger runs?
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