Summer Update – 2020

It has been about three months since I posted to this blog. I have not worked on building the CNJ camelback, but I have been very busy in my shop.

The photo above is a 4-4-0 kitbashed using parts from a Little Engines pacific in 1957 by Jim Turnbull of Montreal Canada. I am the seventh owner of this engine. When I acquired it in 2006, it needed some repair to the old copper boiler, all new plumbing, detailing, paint and quite a bit of work on the tender. I detailed it to look like the Chicago & Illinois Midland No. 500. I got it running in October of 2009.

I ran the engine a lot for eight years. As with most steam engines it developed a few problems. It made quite a bit of noise because the drive train was wearing out after fifty plus years of running. At the end of the 2017 running season, I decided it was time to pull the boiler and give the drive train a complete overhaul.

I was just finishing the Shay, which I ran for the first time in the summer of 2018. I have been running the Shay every week this summer (2020). It runs on propane and has become a fairly reliable engine.

The reason I had decorated the engine as C&IM No. 500 was because it fit. There were not many big twentieth century Americans with piston valves. The C&IM engines were the last three 4-4-0s built by Baldwin for domestic service (1929). I decided to look at some other prototypes to make a change in the look of the locomotive. The DL&W had a streamlined 4-4-0 similar to their streamlined pacifics and ten-wheelers. Polished stainless steel wings and an odd shaped front end would be extremely difficult to model with my limited sheet metal skills.

I decided to freelance the engine based upon the Lehigh Valley’s Black Diamond. I would just letter the engine for the Red Creek Railroad (same as the Shay). The first Red Creek RR was my garden railroad. The swampy area behind my house becomes a tributary of the Red Creek flowing through Henrietta, NY and eventually joining the Genesee River near the intersection of the Erie Canal.

Finally, I took the engine to the club on August 15, 2020 for its first run as a new engine. There were a few minor things to fix. One of the water tubes from the tender was too long because the plumbing had changed slightly. The grates did not want to stay in position because I did not make the shelves they sit on, wide enough. Alan Francis II and Don Jermyn helped make a shim from a piece of angle iron to fit in front of the grates.

I slowly opened the throttle and the engine moved onto the transfer table where the two driver sets promptly derailed!!! Fortunately help was not far away. Dave Pierce used the tractor to lift the very hot engine up enough for Alan Francis II to re-rail it while I kept an eye on the water and fire and my shoulder against the cab to keep it from tipping. That was a very scary moment! The yellow hinged section of the table had a deformed bump which allowed the wheels to ride up and off the rails. Jack Wylie removed the bump with an angle grinder, but until those hinged sections are replaced, we all need to be very careful when moving equipment on and off the table.

The re-railing was quick enough for the steam to only drop as low as fifty pounds. I was able to get the fire going again while still sitting on the transfer table. Now for a test run. What a great little engine! It steams very well. I am very happy with the engine and I’m sure I will be running it often!