Classic Trains presents CS13 Steam’s Lost Empire III

Picture it: Orbisonia, 1941. The shop and yard of Pennsylvania’s narrow gauge East Broad Top are humming with activity during William Moedinger’s visit for Trains magazine (see page 6). In 2022 you’ll be able to relive those times with the revived East Broad Top operation. Nonprofit EBT Foundation Inc. expects to have steam-powered passenger trains back on the railroad in 2022 for the first time since it shut down in 2011. This year also marks the 150th since construction on the 33-mile coal-hauling railroad started in 1872. We still love steam, some 60 years after the last mainline fires were dropped in North America. This volume provides a fantastic look back at an important era in railroading. We see the pinnacle of steam locomotive design, according to one renowned historian.…

The East Broad Top Railroad & Coal Co., despite its title, is a railroad and not a coal company. Coal is 70 percent of its traffic, and the Rockhill Coal & Iron Co. owns a majority of the stock, but the East Broad Top is all railroad — narrow gauge railroad, heavy duty 3-foot gauge track built and maintained to high standards. The line provides general transportation between the East Broad Top coal field in south-central Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main line at Mount Union, two-thirds of the way from Harrisburg to Altoona. The East Broad Top is one of a class of railroads that is rapidly vanishing. In the 1870s the narrow gauges received the final impetus that was to increase their number by 148 and enhance their…

One sure way to start a fight is to make disparaging remarks about someone’s favorite steam locomotive. The resulting argument will eventually involve dimensions, performance, and eye appeal as standards of superiority. The debaters will discover that their claims and counterclaims have little mutual basis for meaningful comparisons, particularly when the adjectives “biggest,” “best,” and “mightiest” are involved. Superlatives, when applied to locomotives, have had too many interpretations for universal accord among iron-horse fanciers. Maxima of one kind or another have been cited for weight, height, width, length, boiler, firebox, cylinders, drivers, horsepower, drawbar pull, and so on, resulting in more confusion than enlightenment. Comparing actual or calculated performances is all but impossible. The three major builders used different computational methods, all of which underestimated what a locomotive could do…

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe: AT&SF was the uncontested leader in three-, four-, and five-driving-axle locomotives of conventional design. Its 4-6-4, 4-8-4, and 2-10-4 designs possessed more potential power than any others. Only a few unconventional locomotives could have surpassed them, and they were used to the limit of their capabilities. Baltimore & Ohio: The 4-6-4s, with high-pressure watertube-firebox boilers, appeared capable of outstanding performances. Possibly they did not operate at speeds high enough to demonstrate what they could do. The 4-4-4-4 was handicapped by a grate which was too small for such a large locomotive. Chesapeake & Ohio: The 2-6-6-6 was much too heavy for its power potential, which was largely unused because operating speeds were low. Even though its dimensions show the 2-6-6-6 to be admirably suited for manifest…

You are on the right-hand seatbox in the cab of the second section of Southern Pacific train 26 in Roseville, Calif. Second 26 is a hotshot grape train composed of passenger-service refrigerator cars marshaled from the vineyards of California’s San Joaquin Valley. A passenger coach serves as a caboose. That number “26” means you’re running as the second section of the Fast Mail. Across the operator’s desk at Norden, 85 miles east and the 6,871-foot summit of SP’s line over the Sierras, lie several copies of the dispatcher’s 6 a.m. lineup. Bridge-and-building crews, section foremen, signal maintainers on gas cars — all need a copy of the lineup. This morning it contains the following information: Second 26, Express Special. Do not delay. Lv Roseville 8:15 a.m., Colfax 9:15 a.m., Emigrant…

West Trenton, N.J., on the Reading Company’s multiple-tracked New York Branch, was a great place to watch trains in the late 1930s and ’40s. The station, at the end of Reading’s Philadelphia suburban territory, saw more than 130 train movements each 24 hours, although the open country to the east offered the best photo possibilities. The line was part of Baltimore & Ohio’s Royal Blue Line, which provided Washington–New York service in partnership with Reading and Jersey Central. An eight-hour visit to the station in 1938 would reward one with 10 B&O express trains, 13 Reading expresses, dozens of M.U. suburban trains west, and several gas-electrics east. The expresses and freights were steam-powered, with perhaps one hauled by B&O’s new EA/EB diesels on certain days.…