Southern Pacific Daylight 4449 returns to Owosso in late afternoon after an day trip to Alma and back on the former Ann Arbor Railroad.
It was 10 years ago this month that 36,000 people flocked to Train Festival 2009 held in Owosso, Michigan.
There was something for everyone, ranging from three mainline steam locomotives in steam to excursions to a Lego model railroad layout.
The event, held at the home of the Steam Railroading Institute, had its share of glitches, including rain, long lines to tour the steam locomotive cabs and a mechanical breakdown of SRI’s own steamer, Pere Marquette No. 1225.
Aside from Railfair 1999 in Sacramento, California, it was one of the most comprehensive railfan-oriented events I’ve ever attended.
A number of Akron Railroad Club members attended the event, which was held July 23-26.
I originally wasn’t going to attend the festival until I figured out a way to do it on the cheap.
My wife had a cousin who lived near Flint, Michigan, which is about 30 to 45 minutes from Owosso.
Dan was agreeable to going with me to the festival and I could stay at his house, thus avoiding lodging expenses.
The festival officially opened on July 24, but everything was up and running on July 23, a Thursday, and the day I was there.
After parking, Dan and I walked to a location north of the festival so I could photograph the day excursion being pulled by former Southern Pacific Daylight 4-8-4 No. 4449.
Getting open view of the Daylight and its train wasn’t a problem, but rain and overcast skies were.
I was still using slide film and I didn’t have enough film speed to make good images. My photographs turned out dark and a little blurry.
Then it was on to the festival itself, which featured the 1225, Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765, Leviathan 4-4-0 No. 63, three 0-4-0T switchers (Flagg Coal Company 75, Little River Railroad No. 1 and Viscose Company No. 6), and Little River Railroad 4-6-2 No. 110.
The latter provided motive power at one end of the one-hour excursion trains that operated throughout the day while the tank engines took turns taking a spin on the SRI turntable.
You could also purchase throttle time behind some of the tank engines and look inside their cabs.
The Leviathan had just been completed and was making its “world premier” at the festival.
Another notable visitor was Southern Railway FP-7 No. 6133, which traveled from the North Carolina Transportation Museum. It did not operate during the festival but you could visit its cab.
There was a large-scale model of Norfolk & Western 4-8-4 No. 611 on static display and a few live steamers taking passengers for rides on temporary track.
There were diesels pulling the 7.5-inch gauge trains and I spotted Akron Railroad Club member Paul Emch at the throttle of one of those.
Also on display was a Great Lakes Central freight locomotive and various pieces of rolling stock from the SRI collection.
I wanted to maximize my time seeing the exhibits and steam locomotives so I didn’t chase any of the excursions.
Another factor was that I didn’t know the territory where the excursions were operating and didn’t want to try to learn it on the fly.
But ARRC members Peter Bowler and Paul Woodring did chase. Peter, in particular, was all-in on the festival, chasing multiple trips and taking part in the night photo shoot.
Another ARRC member on hand for the festival was the late Richard Jacobs.
For some reason, the line to see the cab of the 1225 was far shorter than that of the 765, so I focused on it.
That turned out to be a good thing because the 1225 later in the day developed a problem with a flue and had to be shut down. It missed its assigned turn pulling the day excursion on Saturday.
By late afternoon the clouds had begun to break and sunlight began peeking through.
That meant the SP Daylight and its train would return in sunlight and I could, at last, get decent images of it.
The challenge, though, was the sun angle. The 4449 and its train would be coming almost directly out of the sun. At best I could get good light on the side of the locomotive.
On the flip side of that equation, it meant good light for the pair of former Milwaukee Road passengers, including a Skytop lounge-observation car, in their striking traditional passenger livery.
I hung around a little while longer to get more photographs of the 4449 after it had cut off from its train and returned to the festival grounds.
The next morning I had a long drive ahead of me. The ARRC was meeting that night and I planned to get back in time to preside at the meeting.
But I spent time that morning photographing Canadian National trains in Durand and Amtrak trains in Ann Arbor before driving home to Ohio.
As far as I remember, most ARRC members who attended the festival stayed around a few more days.
Paul tells the story of how he spent most of his time chasing the excursion trains and making video, but he did visit the festival grounds on the last day.
At one point during a chase, he became annoyed at an airplane that was circling the excursion train and making a lot of noise in doing so.
If the festival were being held today, he noted, the party that chartered the plane to get overhead video would use a less noisy drone.
“I’m glad I got to go,” Paul wrote “It will probably be the only time I’ll ever get to see the SP Daylight.”
He said a prominent memory of the festival was arriving at the motel in Owosso at which he had made a reservation months earlier and upon arriving to check in being told he didn’t have a room.
Paul said he had been quoted a great rate when he made the reservation, but the motel didn’t give him a confirmation number and he had not asked the name of the man who took his reservation.
He thinks that what happened was that once the motel owners found out about the train festival they jacked up their rates.
“So, I staged a sit-in in the lobby loudly complaining to anyone who would listen what they did to me, until they gave me a room not normally given out because it really wasn’t in very good shape.
“However, I didn’t have much choice at that point because there weren’t any other rooms available all the way to Lansing.
Paul said he learned a lesson about doing everything possible to confirm room and rate when making motel reservations.
Memories, photographs and video of the Owosso train festival were the focus of the January 2010 ARRC program.
Four of us were to present with Paul showing video of his steam train chases, Peter showing still images of the steam excursions and night photo shoot, and Jake and myself showing images of the festival displays.
The program went off as scheduled, but I never got to show my images. Two weeks before the ARRC meeting I tore the retina in my left eye in three places and had to have surgery.
I was still recovering from that surgery and couldn’t attend the ARRC meeting. So Jake, Peter and Paul presented their segments in what was the first use of the tag team program format during an ARRC program.
So with this post I am finally showing, nearly 10 years later some of the images I would have shown on that cold January night had I been able to attend the ARRC meeting.
A view of the engineer’s seat inside Pere Marquette 1225. A mechanical problem later that day would mean the Berkshire would only be in steam for just one day during the festival.
A view from cab level of Pere Marquette 1225.
The former Milwaukee Road passengers cars on the rear of the long steam excursions was a most pleasing sight.
At one end of the hour-long excursions that operated throughout the day was this Great Lakes Central GP35 while . . .
. . . Little River Railroad provided the motive power for the other end of the train.
The newly completed Leviathan made its “world premier” at the Owosso train festival.
Viscose Company No. 6 takes a spin on the turntable as seen from the cab of the Leviathan.
The 2009 train festival has proved thus far to be my only encounter with Flagg Coal Company No. 75. Ahead of it is Little River Railroad No. 1
A Southern FP7 from the North Carolina Railroad Museum made the trip to Michigan to be among the displays of railroad equipment.
Norfolk & Western 611 made an appearance in Owosso — well, at least a model of it.
Two CN trains meet on the double track in front of Durand Union Station on Friday morning.
An Amtrak Wolverine Service train arrives in Ann Arbor on July 24. It was my last railfanning experience during my visit to the 2009 train festival in Owosso.
The Owosso-based organization said the CN grant of $2,000 will be applied toward repair the brake valves on former CN coaches Nos. 5447 and 5646, so they can be used in excursion service.
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