[PRCo] Re: East Broad Top Railroad won't run this summer | News | CentreDaily.com

[Dwight Long]

Fred

It's all very nice (that Everett RR web site) but when you get to the bottom 
of it, there is nothing running--at least for public consumption--on the pax 
side.

Dwight

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 6:47 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: East Broad Top Railroad won't run this summer | News | 
CentreDaily.com


>I only personally visited two of Sloan Cornell's railroads.   Penn View 
>Mountain back in the 1960s … wasn't impressed but can't say too much. 
>Taxes on gross receipts from tourism are not unusual.   Right here in 
>Lancaster we have a tax on area hotels to support a convention center. 
>Put that into real perspective … the convention center is downtown.   What 
>this tax really means is a tax on suburban hotels to pay to build a 
>downtown hotel that competes with an almost bankrupt downtown hotel that 
>was built in the 1970s … but it kept the politicos happy.   It brings 
>conventions to Lancaster and thus the politicians can say, "Look what we 
>did for you."   Sorry Bob but I am a cynic about politicians trying to 
>correct that which cannot be changed.
>
> Gettysburg?   I visited it after I had the perspective of working for 
> quite a few years in engine and shop service for the Strasburg Railroad. 
> I observed the owners teenage daughter working in sandals as a railroad 
> brakeman.   She looked to be about 15 or 16 the day we were there. 
> Occupations such as a railroad fireman, engineer, conductor, brakeman are 
> considered hazardous and are prohibited under federal law for those 
> persons under age 18 unless they have graduated from high school.  I think 
> they can work at 17 if school administrators certify that they have gone 
> as far in school as they will ever go.   There were some other things 
> which disturbed me that I cannot remember at this point which is several 
> decades later.   All I can remember now is having said to Ed Lewis, "I've 
> seen enough, I think I want to move on before I see an accident."    The 
> chap I was with, Lewis, was my boss at Strasburg and also, at that time, 
> Strasburg's President.
>
> Therefore it came as no surprise to me when they dropped the crown sheet 
> on that steam locomotive because there wasn't enough water in the firebox.
>
> What I was taught when I first began firing locomotives was, as soon as 
> you climb into the cab of a locomotive, the first things you do, before 
> anything else ….
>
> 1) look at the water glasses….
>
> 2)  blow down the water glasses to make sure the passages in them are not 
> plugged.
>
> 3)  confirm the water glass reading using the gauge cocks.
>
> Add water if necessary and possible, or run like hell ...
>
> Then check the fire ….
>
> It becomes an instinctive thing for a fireman … each and every time you 
> climb into the cab your eye falls on that water glass first and your hand 
> reaches for the water glass blowdown valves.
>
> What I was able to unearth from my channels, including a pipeline into the 
> FRA and people at Strasburg who served on the rules committee, was that 
> Cornell's fireman at Gettysburg was not properly trained; that the water 
> glass was never blown down; that it was clogged with sludge and therefore 
> failed to show how much water was in the boiler.   The fireman said he was 
> surprised that the engine failed to use the normal amount of water on that 
> particular trip and that by itself should have been sufficient warning 
> that the water glasses were clogged.   Note I said glasses.   Engines have 
> two of them.   Why wasn't the engineer also paying attention to his glass? 
> Were they both untrained?  Well, I just now went looking on line and found 
> the FRA Report of the accident … says the same thing I was told.
>
> Here is the FRA report on the accident.
>
>     http://www.communityhotline.com/upload/SIR9605.pdf
>
> My comments on it?
>
>     (a)  One can only shake one's head at the bewildering lack of 
> understanding about how to maintain and run a steam engine.   You get the 
> feeling that every time those guys opened their mouths to give testimony, 
> they attached feet to the insides of their mouth with Superglue.
>
>     (b)  Sloan Cornell's son, testified that he gained experience by 
> surreptitiously firing Pennsylvania Railroad engines when he was about 15 
> years old.  He also said he was 48 at the time of the accident in 1995. 
> That would have him born in in 1947 and firing PRR steam engines in 1962, 
> five years after the PRR quit running steam.   Shall we be charitable and 
> suggest a typographical error?
>
>     (c)  Note the limited amount of variation cited in boiler water level 
> in the water glass (1/2 inch on the plugged glass and the expert testimony 
> that water level in a water glass will bounce up and down as much as four 
> inches).   Let me add something to that … that expert testimony probably 
> means on level track.   Going up hill on a 1.6% grade at full throttle, 
> the entire glass will be black with water.   You really have no idea how 
> much water is really in the boiler.   Then come over the crest of the hill 
> and push the throttle part way closed and the water will drop down half 
> way or more to the real level.   Then some doofus comes across the highway 
> crossing in front of you without looking and the engineer dumps the air 
> and all the water sloshes to the front of the boiler and the glass shows 
> nothing.   The Gettysburg Railway is an up-hill, down-dale railroad. 
> With that kind of a profile, if they only had 1/2 inch of sloshing in the 
> water glass, those glasses or the s!
> pindles were plugged shut and the people should have either enough brains 
> or enough education to understand it or they should not be playing with 
> 400 degree water in pressure vessels.
>
>     (c)  The scale in the plugged spindles?   Scale normally forms on the 
> bottom of a vessel when it is boiled like the bottom of a coffee pot. 
> Forming in the spindles?   I would agree with Lin's testimony as CMO at 
> Strasburg but I would also suggest that if the glasses were spindles were 
> blown out regularly as they should have been, no crap would have 
> accumulated.   Simply bad operating practice.
>
>    (d)  Notice in the report the unique design of boiler stay bolts that 
> permitted progressive collapse of the crown sheet instead of allowing the 
> boiler to rocket off the locomotive frame.   I had been told this by 
> several people before reading the FRA report this afternoon.   Can you 
> imagine how many passengers in the open car behind the locomotive would 
> have been killed if it had been a conventional US firebox design instead 
> of this Canadian configuration?
>
>    (e)  I was bothered by the design of the gauge cocks built into the 
> water glass so that plugged spindles leading to a water glass will also 
> make the gauge cocks also fail to work.    That does not come out in the 
> investigation.
>
> Bob, that sort of thing gave tourist railroading a black eye.  You don't 
> simply march in, buy a steam engine and pronounce yourself qualified to 
> run it.   I am not going to say that sort of thing did not happen in the 
> railroad industry in the past.   But I am thankful I worked for a railroad 
> where we hired a former man who was at the top of the seniority list when 
> he retired … a man who knew how to run steam … to train us.  Unlike the 
> FRA, I have no problem with not having an organized school to teach people 
> how to run engines.   The railroads never did.   You started as a fireman, 
> worked with every engineman on the division and eventually got promoted to 
> the right side of the cab.   Maybe that needs to change now but that was 
> the way it was done then.   The instructor at Strasburg was a man named 
> Harry Grimes who had worked for the Reading Railroad and had  risen in 
> seniority to get the Harrisburg - Allentown passenger train just before it 
> was taken off.  He had worked a lo!
> t of years on steam.   Our air brake instruction and maintenance people 
> came from the Reading.   Our boiler overhaul training and inspection cadre 
> came from the Pennsylvania.   Eventually we trained our own.   There was a 
> great story about the PRR people confirming that the side firebox sheets 
> on 90 were so badly worn that they had to be replaced and they told us 
> that isn't something little railroads do.   Linn Moedinger orchestrated 
> doing it anyway in spite of being told he shouldn't and when the job was 
> done the Pennsy people came back and inspected it and said, "My God, this 
> is better than work we've seen come out of Altoona."   Where did Linn and 
> his shop forces go from there?   Today they run a contract business.   You 
> probably read that they had been doing some work for the EBT.   They have 
> been doing some work to keep UP 3950 and 844 on the road.  Florence and 
> Cripple Creek (later Rio Grand Southern) 20 has been at Strasburg for 
> years on a contract for the Colorado N!
> arrow Gauge Museum to overhaul when they have time … cheaper that way.
> .  The tiny Strasburg grew from using scavenged machinery to new stuff 
> because the old belt driven stuff slows down work.   There are hundreds of 
> guys there now.    Have shop, will fix.
>
> But I am a bit scared of amateurs playing with machinery that they don't 
> understand.   I know that everyone of us on this list, myself included, 
> probably grew up playing with other peoples' toys.   But we all did it 
> under supervision, right?   I ran the local PRR interlocking plant in high 
> school.   I've run trains down the PRR mainline at 75 mph.  I've run 
> streetcars on Pittsburgh Railways tracks.   We've all done things like 
> that but we had people teaching us who knew how.   But we do not need 
> people ill trained people sitting on powder kegs.
>
> Now let's change subject.
>
> By the way, I was not aware that the Everett Railroad, which I knew to be 
> a successor of the Huntington and Broad Top Mountain, had moved, bought 
> two parts of the former PRR lines between Hollidaysburg and Bedford, and 
> now has offices in Duncansville.   They also have bought back an old H&BTM 
> engine that has had several other owners since 1954.   See this link….
>
>     http://www.everettrailroad.com/index.aspx
>
>
>
> On May 21, 2012, at 1:07 PM, robert netzlof wrote:
>
>>> Remember Sloan Cornell's various
>>> operations?  Penn View Mountain Scenic Railroad ---
>>> gone ---
>>
>> Enemy action in that case. The township in which the railroad was located 
>> had, sometime in the 19th century, enacted a whopping license fee and 
>> gross receipts tax on amusement parks, presumably to discourage the 
>> frivolity and licentiousness, not to mention sabbath breaking, attendant 
>> on such enterprises. Come the 1960s, the township supervisors dredged up 
>> the ordinance, declared the Penn View Mountain to be an amusement park, 
>> and sat back to watch the money roll in.
>>
>> Cornell moved his equipment to a purpose-built shed in Blairsville and 
>> entered into discussions with Penn Central to lease the Indiana branch, 
>> with a view to becoming a common carrier, and thus not an amusement park. 
>> That came to naught, but he was able to obtain trackage at Gettysburg.
>>
>>> ...the engine went to Gettysburg?
>>
>> Along with all the rest of his equipment.
>>
>>> Knox and Kane … I think the scrapping was finished in 2010.
>>
>> Not quite. There are still quite a few miles of track in situ.
>>
>> Again, enemy action, this time in the form of a tornado which took down 
>> the Kinzua Bridge and a local bad-ass who thought it fun to torch the 
>> engine house.
>>
>>> Gettysburg Railroad …. the boiler explosion resulted in a total
>>> rewrite of FRA rules for tourist steam railroads
>>
>> That one must be laid on Cornell or perhaps his son, who was the head 
>> cheese at Gettysburg at the time, Sloan having relocated to the Knox and 
>> Kane by then. Whether it resulted from poor finances or a poor attitude 
>> toward maintenance is debatable.
>>
>> Omitted from the foregoing is his brief ownership of the former P&E from 
>> Johnsonburg to Irvineton, a clear stab at establishing freight service. 
>> It may be that Cornell's early bad experience with the township bent his 
>> thinking too much toward operating as a common carrier, thus causing 
>> resources which could have improved the tourist operation to be diverted 
>> into providing for freight service which never quite materialized or 
>> evaporated after money had been spent to serve it.
>>
>> Bob Netzlof a/k/a Sweet Old Bob
>>
>>
>
>
>