R&N Test Fires Reading T-1 2102

Former Reading Company 4-8-4 No. 2102 underwent steam testing this week in Port Clinton, Pennsylvania.

Owned by regional carrier Reading & Northern, CEO Andy Muller, Jr. blew the whistle of the T-1 at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.

“The engine is like new,” Muller said following the testing, adding that the boiler, injectors, feed water heater and stoker tested fine.

Workers did find a leaks and will repair those after the locomotive cools down.

Shop forces had lighted a fire inside the firebox of the locomotive on Saturday. By Tuesday the engine has reached 240 psi working pressure

Restoration work on the locomotive, which was built by the Reading in 1945 will continue.

The 2102’s cab is still not attached and the tender needs to be rebuilt.

However, Mueller hopes to have the locomotive operating by spring when he wants to have it pull a freight train.

The restoration work has cost $1 million to date and Muller said completion of the work will cost another $100,000.

Muller bought the 2102 in 1987 and it pulled excursion trains on the 13-mile Blue Mountain & Reading from 1987 to 1992. 

Its first assignment in revenue service is expected to be pulling the North Reading Fast Freight, between North Reading and Pittston, Pennsylvania.

CSX Donates Caboose to Conrail Group

CSX has donated a caboose to the Conrail Historical Society.

Extended-vision caboose No. 22130, which still wears its Conrail livery, was retired by CSX earlier this year.

It was built in August 1970 by by International Car Company for the Reading Company and is was one of just 10 class N-20 cabooses among the more than 2,500 waycars on the Conrail roster.

The Conrail group began talking with CSX in 2018 about acquiring the caboose and the railroad agreed to donate it once the car had been retired.

CSX also agreed to make some repairs and provide transportation of the car from Tennessee, where it was in service before retirement.

The caboose is now on the New York, Susquehanna & Western and is expected to be moved to the Delaware, Lackawaxen & Stourbridge Railroad in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

The DL&S plans to restore the Conrail livery and use the caboose on excursions starting in 2022.

Historic Switcher Donated to Pennsylvania Museum

A California short line has donated a historic locomotive to a Pennsylvania railroad museum.

The EMD SW1200 was last used by the Stockton Terminal & Eastern and is being sent to the Reading Railroad Heritage Museum in Hamburg, Pennsylvania.

The unit was one of five of the same model built for the Reading in 1963.

The museum expects to have the switcher on display later this year.

It is being moved by BNSF and Norfolk Southern.

Rare Mileage Excursion set on R&N

An excursion to benefit steam locomotive restoration will run on May 5 on the Reading & Northern Railroad.

The Onieda Flyer will cover sections of the former Reading and Lehigh Valley railroads in a 96-mile round trip, traversing some segments that have not hosted a passenger train in more than 50 years.

The excursion train will leave R&N’s Port Clinton headquarters at 10 a.m. and return at 7 p.m.

Trip sponsor Lackawanna & Wyoming Valley Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society said proceeds will benefit restoration of Boston & Main 4-6-2 No. 3713 in partnership with Steamtown National Historic Site.

The chapter wants to raise $225,000 this year for the restoration efforts. No. 3713 is set to return to service at Steamtown in 2020, after 62 years on static display.

Among the branches to be covered during the excursion are the former Reading Company Little Schuylkill and Catawissa branches, and parts of the Lehigh Valley’s New Boston and Hazleton branches via Onieda and Morea junctions.

Motive power will be two of R&N’s recently acquired MP15 diesel switcher locomotives, painted in a Reading-inspired green and yellow scheme. Three photo runbys are planned.

Tickets are $99 for adults and $69 for kids 12 and under. A Subway boxed lunch can be ordered as an option.

More information and tickets are available at http://www.laurellinesspecials.org, project3713.com or contact excursion co-chairperson Norm Barrett at 570-575-5320 or email him at nyowfan@msn.com

Railroading as it Once Was: The Only Day I Got Paid to Take a Ride on a Reading Locomotive

No. 2187 as it looked in Conrail paint with my work train.

No. 2187 as it looked when it still wore some of its original Reading Livery. By now it had been patched as it sat in Rutherford, Pennsylvania in September 1978.

In April 2001 I was called for a work train. I took a taxi from Cleveland to Alliance and worked as needed.

Normally, work trains rated older units, often ex-Conrail GP38-2s. This day was no exception to the older unit rule, but imagine my surprise to see this motive power when I arrived in Alliance. It was an Ohio Central GP30, former Conrail and originally Reading Lines. I sure didn’t expect to be working on a Reading GP30 in 2001.

The train was a cable plow train, a machine that dug a trench and dropped fiber optics tubing into the hole.

Note the large spools of plastic conduit both on our train and off to the side. It was certainly a different assignment from the normal road jobs I was working at the time.

The day went smoothly, although it was long, with a taxi ride back to Cleveland once we were done.

It has been the only time I’ve been paid to work with a former RDG GP30.

Article and Photographs by Roger Durfee

Amtrak Excursion to Allentown Won’t Run

A planned Amtrak excursion train between New York and Allentown, Pennsylvania, won’t be operating due to lack of action by Norfolk Southern.

The train also was to inspect the route for the prospect of possible regular service between the two cities, although officials said that service is years away from happening.

NS owns the portion of the route not used by New Jersey Transit and the freight hauler apparently had not made any plans to host the passenger special.

NS spokesman Rudy Husband said NS hasn’t ruled out hosting an excursion, but it would require “a lot more planning.” Husband indicated that for now the train won’t be operating.

Amtrak Vice President for Government Affairs and Corporate Communications Joseph McHugh said the passenger carrier will continue to work with officials in the Lehigh Valley toward instituting the service, but indicated it is at least a decade away.

Allentown has been without passenger service since the late 1960s. A route via the Reading and Central Railroad of New Jersey that connected Jersey City, New Jersey, ended in 1966.

Two years later the Reading ended service from Allentown to Philadelphia.

Railroading as It Once Was: The EL on Akron’s East Side was Still Busy in Conrail’s Early Years

The former Erie Lackawanna on the east side of Akron was still a busy route in the early years of Conrail. Traffic carried between Chicago and the East Coast by the EL before the inauguration of Conrail continued to use ex-EL tracks east of town.

This was particularly the case with intermodal trains that originated or were bound for Croxton Yard in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The above scene has something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.

The old is intermodal traffic on the ex-EL while the new is the train’ s symbol, TV 98. That’s a Conrail symbol.

The blue is the color of the freshly painted Conrail locomotives that are trailing in the motive power consist.

The borrowed is time. The lead unit is a former Reading GP40-2 that still wears, in part, its original livery, albeit with some modifications made by Conrail to show its new identity. It won’t look that way for much longer.

This operation is also living on borrowed time. It won’t be long before these trains will be steered to another route and the ex-EL east of Akron will become a branch line used only by locals.

Photograph by Roger Durfee

Up Close and Personal With the Reading 2100

Made in Reading, Meet made in LaGrange. Two distinctive forms of motive power go nose by nose at Rockport Yard in Cleveland.

Reading No. 2100 arrived in Cleveland on Saturday afternoon en route to the former Baltimore & Ohio roundhouse that is now operated by the Midwest Railway Preservation Society.

The T-1 class steam locomotive made the trip via BNSF and Norfolk Southern on a flatcar from its former home in Washington State. The American Steam Railroad Preservation Association is leading the efforts to restore the 2100 in Cleveland to operating condition.

That means transforming it from being an oil burner into a coal burner again. To pull off the job, the group needs to raise $700,000. It has established a website to solicit donations and provide news about the restoration of the 2100. http://www.fireup2100.org/

No. 2100 was among a class of 30 Northern locomotives churned out by the Reading shops in Reading, Pennsylvania, between 1945 and 1947.

Carrying road numbers 2100-2129, the 4-8-4 locomotives were a hybrid built from salvaged parts of the railroad’s I-10a Consolidations (road numbers 20-20-2049) and new parts supplied by Baldwin and other contractors.

No. 2100 thus began life as I-10a No. 2020, a 2-8-0 built by Baldwin in 1936.

The T-1 locomotive was designed for fast freight service, but the final 10 of the class were equipped to haul passenger trains. This was largely limited to troop train duty.

All of the T-1 locomotives served in freight service and in their later years of revenue service the T-1s were pulling coal trains as diesels infiltrated the Reading motive power rosters.

No. 2100 was one of three T-1 locomotives that Reading assigned to its Iron Horse Rambles, a.k.a., Reading Rambles, between 1959 and 1964.

The Ramble was not a new program. The Reading began the Rambles in 1936, typically operating as excursion trains taking passengers out on mainlines and branch lines to see the fall foliage.

Running steadily until World War II, the Rambles resumed after the war and became diesel powered in the 1950s. However, the trips became less frequent and seemed to have faded away until the Reading announced their return as steam-powered trips to be known as the Iron Horse Ramble.

The first of these operated on Oct. 25, 1959, behind T-1 No. 2124, which pulled 16 cars from Wayne Junction to Shamokin. The Rambles continued to be a fixture on the Reading with No. 2124 joined by No. 2100 and No. 2102 also sharing the duties of pulling the trains.

Citing high locomotive repair expenses and deteriorating track conditions, the Reading said that the 50th Ramble on Oct. 17, 1964, would be the last.

Including the 2100, four Reading T-1 locomotives survive today. A year after the last Iron Horse Ramble took a ride on the Reading, No. 2100 was sold to a Baltimore scrap dealer along with the 2101 and 2102.

But the 2100 was not scrapped and 10 years later steam impresario Ross Rowland Jr. purchased the 2100 in order to obtain parts for the rebuilding of T-1 No. 2101, which went on to pull the American Freedom Train.

The 2100 sat in Hagerstown, Maryland, between 1975 and 1987 before it was restored by a group known as 2100 Corporation whose leaders included Rowland, Bill Benson and Richard Kughn.

The group spent more than a million dollars to overhaul the 2100 but no railroad would agree to allow it operate on its tracks, although it did make some break-in runs on the Winchester & Western.

Over the next several years, the 2100 would embark on a long, strange odyssey that brought it to Ohio.

The journey began with a trip to the Wheeling & Lake Erie’s Rook Yard in Pittsburgh that eventually led the 2100 traveling to the railroad’s shops in Brewster.

The 2100 Corporation donated the 2100 to the Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority, which had plans to operate the steamer. But those didn’t pan out and the 2100 wound up on the Ohio Central in Coshocton where it was stored until 1998.

On Jan. 16, 1998, Tom Payne of RailLink Ltd. in Edmonton, Alberta, purchased the 2100 at an auction from PORTA. The locomotive made some test runs under steam on the Ohio Central in May 1998.

Payne moved the 2100 to a former Michigan Central shops in St. Thomas, Ontario. Now part of the Elgin County Railway Museum, the shops transformed the 2100 into an oil burner.

During that restoration the “Reading” name on the tender was removed in favor of the name “Ferroequus.”

He also purchased an auxiliary tender and 12 passenger cars with the idea of offering excursion train service.

Then he made a disturbing discovery. There was no suitable tracks in St. Thomas over which to operate a heavy steam locomotive in excursion service.

In June 2005 the 2100 was sold to the Golden Pacific Railroad in Tacoma, Washington., traveling there atop a flat car.

In Washington, the 2100 was steamed up and able to pull trips over former Milwaukee Road tracks between Tacoma and Frederickson.

Accompanying the 2100 on those trips was a former Amtrak F40PH. The train, which consisted of three bi-level commuter coaches formerly operated in Chicago by Metra, operated in push-pull fashion with the F40 serving as a cab car.

Tickets for the trips were $50, which included a catered lunch in Frederickson. The high cost of tickets was blamed in part for the failure of the service to make money and the last trip ran in 2006.

The next year the Spirit of Washington dinner train used the 2100 over the same route, but this service was short-lived, lasting just a few months. However, the dinner train united the 2100 with a remnant of the Reading Crusader, an observation car.

The 2100 was moved to Richland, Washington, for storage where it sat until it began moving eastward for Cleveland last month.

The Fireup 2100 group Tweeted on Saturday that the 2100 is expected to remain at Rockport Yard until Tuesday or Wednesday when NS is expected to move the steamer and its entourage to Campbell Road Yard and then the ex-B&O roundhouse at West Third Street.

Roger Durfee visited the 2100 this past weekend and sent along these images of it. Note that in the eighth photograph down an American Airlines jet is landing at nearby Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Roger’s detailed images show a locomotive that has acquired some rust, but otherwise looks like with a little TCL it could be brought back to life.

Will it be? It is going to a while and will hinge on a number of factors beyond the control of any one person or organization.

Article by Craig Sanders, Photography by Roger Durfee

 

 

Reading 2100 May Be Restored in Cleveland

Reading Company 4-8-4 No. 2100 was a fixture on excursions in the East during the 1960s. But lately it has been stored on the West Coast.

Now plans have been announced to remove the locomotive from storage in Richland, Wash., and transport it by flat car to Cleveland for restoration.

Leading the effort is the American Steam Railroad Preservation Association. Members of the group recently inspected the 2100 and determined that it is in reasonable mechanical condition and suitable for return to service.

The group also plans to transport to Cleveland on a flatcar the 2100’s tender and an auxiliary tender.

No date has been announced for the move. The group was founded in 2005 and is also seeking to raise money to move Frisco steam locomotive to Cleveland from its current home in Taylorville, Ill., to be restored.

Built in 1945 in Reading, Pa., No. 2100 was known for pulling the Reading’s Iron Horse Rambles from 1959 to 1964. Further information is available at www.fireup2100.org