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Doyle McCormack's ALCO PA Status?

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Doyle McCormack's ALCO PA Status?
Posted by Trainzguy2472 on Thursday, February 20, 2020 11:56 PM

Is there any update on the status of NKP 190?  It's stored at the same place as SP 4449, right?  Is it operational yet, PTC issues, or what is going on with it?  Haven't heard anything since 2017. 

Matthew Cheng Smile, Wink & Grin

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, February 21, 2020 5:53 AM

If you go to the T1 Trust open house in early March you can ask Doyle all the questions you want about it, and get better answers than anyone here is likely to have.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Friday, February 21, 2020 5:58 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erdozXTWrXw

Skip to 4:50 for a short interview with Mr. McCormack himself.

If the video won't play for some reason, at 6:58 he says "I got three more connections to make in there with the diode bank and the electrical system will be all complete and then we can take it back out back and start it up again and see if it'll actually move under its own power".

A wrecked ex-BC Rail MLW M420B provided the 12-251 diesel engine and a number of other large, important parts.

The trucks came from one of three ex-Pennsylvania Railroad FM Erie-Built B-units which had been purchased by Canadian Pacific, and were then gutted and converted into a rail welding plant.  I believe the trucks from all three units were saved, but one pair was badly damaged and ended up being scrapped. 

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Posted by Penny Trains on Friday, February 21, 2020 7:13 PM

Overmod
If you go to the T1 Trust open house in early March you can ask Doyle all the questions you want about it, and get better answers than anyone here is likely to have.

If you can't make March, he will be at the Mad River and Nickel Plate Railroad Museum in mid May: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=kfejbcdab&oeidk=a07egw044gg8c999809

 

Trains, trains, wonderful trains.  The more you get, the more you toot!  Big Smile

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Posted by Trainzguy2472 on Monday, February 24, 2020 1:00 AM

Wow!  That's fantastic!  Great to hear that it's finally almost done.  Maybe I'll get to go and see it run in Oregon sometime soon.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, February 24, 2020 9:23 AM

Considering what a piece of wreckage that thing was when Doyle got his hands on it what he's accomplished is a downright miracle.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, February 24, 2020 11:47 AM

Flintlock76
Considering what a piece of wreckage that thing was when Doyle got his hands on it what he's accomplished is a downright miracle.

A great achievement, but not as much a 'miracle' as this:

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, February 24, 2020 1:11 PM

Flintlock76
Considering what a piece of wreckage that thing was when Doyle got his hands on it what he's accomplished is a downright miracle.

If something was once made by man, it can be remade....all it takes is time and money - in mass quantities.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, February 24, 2020 2:51 PM

Overmod

 

 
Flintlock76
Considering what a piece of wreckage that thing was when Doyle got his hands on it what he's accomplished is a downright miracle.

 

A great achievement, but not as much a 'miracle' as this:

 

OK, that thing's such a horror I have no idea what it is, aside from the obvious fact it's an old steam engine.  The General  perhaps?  The Texas ?

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Posted by Leo_Ames on Monday, February 24, 2020 3:57 PM

I'm probably wrong, but I think it's that steam locomotive that was dug up in New Zealand a few decades ago after many years of being used as rip-rap on a river bank, that eventually was restored to operation.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, February 24, 2020 5:10 PM

Flintlock76
OK, that thing's such a horror I have no idea what it is, aside from the obvious fact it's an old steam engine.

Leo is quite right.  New Zealand K88 Washington.  Thrown in a river in the late '20s, and retrieved in the early Seventies as very famously covered by Trains Magazine.  (Strange that I remember the issue being in that time period, and not many years later in the '80s as is apparently the actual restoration timeline...) 

If you think this is grand, there are two more from similar 'sources', one running.

To put things in some perspective, these came out of the Rogers Works in Paterson and are only about a decade and a half younger than the Hunley.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, February 24, 2020 9:35 PM

I followed the link to the K88 Washington, and that is an incredible restoration, although I'm not surprised a new boiler was called for.  

Not to denegrate what the Kiwi's accomplished by any means, but I still think Doyle's faced a much harder uphill climb, considering the much more sophisticated technology involved in an Alco PA compared to a 19th Century steam engine.  

You know, there was a New York and Hackensack Railroad 4-2-0 that went off a bridge in the Hackensack Meadows just about where HX Draw is today back in the 1850's and was never recovered.  Supposedly it's still there.  Makes you think, doesn't it?  Although what it looks like after 160 years in a salt marsh is anyone's guess.

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Posted by Penny Trains on Tuesday, February 25, 2020 7:46 PM

Trains, trains, wonderful trains.  The more you get, the more you toot!  Big Smile

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Tuesday, February 25, 2020 8:19 PM

Yes, I know!  Right now, the question is what to do with them.  They're still sitting 90 feet down while those interested are trying to figure it out.

That's one way to cheat the scrappers.

Here's the whole story from the New Jersey Museum Of Transportation.

http://www.njmt.org/images/SunkenLocoInfoArticles.pdf  

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Posted by MMLDelete on Tuesday, February 25, 2020 11:44 PM

Do you believe the size of those barnacles on the boiler!!

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 8:54 AM

Lithonia Operator

Do you believe the size of those barnacles on the boiler!!

 

They must be eatin' good!

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Posted by 54light15 on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 1:17 PM

Isn't that a place where they put gangsters wearing "concrete galoshes," as Scotty from Star Trek would say? 

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 1:55 PM

54light15

Isn't that a place where they put gangsters wearing "concrete galoshes," as Scotty from Star Trek would say? 

 

Not that far offshore.  The East River was good enough for the New York mob, the Passaic for New Jersey.  Chicago I'm not sure.   Whistling

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Thursday, February 27, 2020 10:03 AM

The Chicago outfit tended to stuff their victims in car trunks.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by MMLDelete on Thursday, February 27, 2020 4:07 PM

Maybe Jimmy Hoffa is in the boiler of that engine.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Thursday, February 27, 2020 4:19 PM

Lithonia Operator

Maybe Jimmy Hoffa is in the boiler of that engine.

 

Dang, I never thought of that!  I (and everybody else from New Jersey) naturally assumed he was under the 50-yard line at Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands!  

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Posted by SD70Dude on Thursday, February 27, 2020 4:27 PM

Lithonia Operator

Maybe Jimmy Hoffa is in the boiler of that engine.

Detroit River

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Posted by MMLDelete on Friday, February 28, 2020 1:47 PM

If you have the chance to see the Netflix film The Irishman, do. Very good. And Al Pacino plays Hoffa.

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