On Friday, Wayne Allen , Adam Bartley and Cory Fothergill
performed the 736 day airbrake changeout on the 72. They reconnected all 4
traction motors, added journal oil and topped off crater and support bearing
oil. All brake rigging was reinstalled and side bearing clamps as well. The
locomotive is closer to being ready to test.
On November 19th Overall Crane Services assisted with lifting 72/1741
to install the remaining two traction motors. Club members and CSRR employees
Eric Grover, Adam Bartley, Ryan Fothergill, Cory Fothergill, Wayne Allen, George
and Jordan Small helped assemble two traction motor combos and installed
them into the front truck of 72/1741. Also, a center bowl liner and a set of
springs were replaced at the same time. The locomotive will now have brake
rigging reinstalled and traction motor leads reconnected as well as some other
minor electrical work before it can be tested.
On November 3, 2022, Strasburg locomotive 475 was unfortunately involved in a collision with an excavator on a track at Leaman Place, the turnaround point for the railroad, in Paradise, PA. The former Norfolk & Western locomotive is the oldest active steam engine in the United States today. The accident happened on Strasburg’s 11:00 excursion train and it wasn’t as bad as first thought. Presenters Eric Grover & Jackson Small will investigate how the accident happened, what could have been prevented, and what the railroad found out from the incident.
The 116-year-old locomotive was out of service for less than one week with their shop forces working on it. Thankfully nobody was injured in the accident with only a small amount of damage to the equipment. Engines 89 & 90 both filled in during the absence of the locomotive on the country’s oldest continuously running standard gauge railroad.
The Canadian Pacific Railroad is running two Holiday Trains this year..
The U.S Holiday Train runs from November 21 to December 19 and stops in Maine, New York, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas. Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana. There are three stops in Maine on November 21st.The schedule can be found at
The Canadian Holiday Train also runs from November 21 to December. It has has many stops in Canada along with a few in New York. The schedule can be found at
There are some changes with PayPal membership renewal this year.
1. Your membership will automatically renew a year from now. You can turn this off in your Paypal account.
2. There were some initial problems Paypal billing for renewal each month. The problem has been corrected. If you are billed more than once, please contact Alan Small, alansmall1964@gmail.com
3. Paypal now allows payment with a debit or credit card.
This month’s membership meeting is a live meeting along with Zoom and is being done by Club member Ron Johnson. I'm going to start the first part of the program showing a DD movie my dad made called “Early years of the Conway Scenic Railroad". It will start with Dwight Smith's 0-6-0 #7470 in 1968 at Rigby going through following years to startup in 1974, Very unusual scenes will be shown like three cabooses sailing through the Rt 302 crossing by themselves from Intervale into the N. Conway yard. It will wrap up with a bi-plane chase of one of the early runs from Conway. It should bring back fond memories of the 50th! anniversary coming up in 2024. The 2nd half of the evening will be "The Maine Central from all four corners of the almost 1000-mile system from 1974". It will cover all the branch lines from Eastport, Maine to Beecher Falls, Vermont.
Conway Scenic and Maine Central 1000 mile system
There are some gaps in the audio recording of this meeting
Joe Mato presented selections from his collection of images of The Hartford and Connecticut Western Railroad, which later became the Central New England Railroad before being absorbed into the New Haven system. The presentation will focus on how the railroad came to be, the people behind it and the construction of the railroad when it first started. There will be pictures of locations and landmarks starting from Millerton, New York to the town of Winsted in Connecticut. Joe Mato grew up in Danbury next to the Maybrook Line. His interest in the railroad started when he was 3 years old but he never worked for the railroad and became a commercial airline pilot. Before he stopped flying, he started working at the Danbury Railway Museum and later he fired locomotives at the Valley RR and volunteered at Steamtown in Scranton. In 2005, Joe and Bernie Rudberg started the CNE Bus Tours, showing people one segment of the CNE railroad at a time. Bernie died in 2016 but the tours continued until Covid hit in 2020.