Issue016

A Tale of Two Dump Cars

by Matt Helton

The entire rolling fleet of the Goose Creek Railroad in Bristol, Virginia, consists of homebuilt equipment. Our railroad was started in 1989 when we purchased a homebuilt trolley from Robert Hankla of Abingdon, Virginia. Then, in 1992, we started building our own equipment. First, we built a flatcar, which is now our passenger car. Second, we built our gasoline-hydraulic locomotive, then the caboose, a speeder, and a generator car. When we first started building our equipment, we knew no one else and, therefore, developed our own standards for coupler height, axle gauging, etc. Then in the fall of 2003, we had our first experience with commercial equipment.

In November 2003, we

completed the restoration of a two-foot gage side-dump car that was originally used in the Ebensburg, Pennsylvania sewage treatment plant. The builder and the build date are unknown. According to the previous owners, the car was used to move sand from a stockpile out to the sewage beds for use as a filtering agent. In 1992, the Tuckahoe Valley Railroad in Tyrone, Pennsylvania, acquired several of the cars and used them to haul stone on their private railroad. However, after the owner of the TVRR passed away, the cars were put into temporary storage at the Bucksgahuda & Western RR in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, with the rest of the TVRR equipment. In September 2003, Wiley & Matt Helton purchased TVRR #1 and hauled it 550 miles back to GCRR. After initial trial runs, the car was moved to the shop for total refurbishment. During the trial runs, we found that the car was gaged 23 1/2 inches. GCRR equipment was built to a gage of 24 inches and the track is laid 24 1/8 inches. On normal track there was no problem but the car climbed up on our guard rails at our switches. So, the axles were widened ½ inch and the roller bearings were overhauled. Then the car was sandblasted, wire-brushed, and painted in standard GCRR colors. Unbelievably, the coupler height was a perfect match to our homebuilt equipment!

In 1977, the Bucksgahuda &Western RR in

St. Marys, PA received a large donation of locomotives, cars, and track from Sherwin Williams paint factory in Kansas. The donation included four Whitcomb locomotives, 24 bottom dump hoppers, a tank car, and 40-pound rail. In 1999, they used the wheels and axles from two of the bottom dump cars to build a large air-operated hopper car, and the bodies of the two dump cars were stored. In September 2003, Wiley & Matt Helton hauled the body of B&W #57 back to GCRR along with the TVRR Side Dump car. Shortly thereafter, Wiley made axles for the car, and four wheels from Peter Lear’s Mohawk Valley RR in Colebrook, New Hampshire, were fitted to the axles. Finally, on November 22, 2003, the car was placed on GCRR rails for the first time. However, the car still needed a paint job, and it had no couplers because the couplers were about 1 foot too high, and we removed them. After the cold weather left, we resumed work on the car. Over Easter weekend, I primed and painted the inside of the car; and, a few weeks later, we had the exterior totally cleaned of old paint and rust and ready for primer and paint. After the car was painted, we mounted GCRR couplers at our standard height, and the car made its first run around our loop the first weekend of May. The rest of the month was spent on lettering. The only item that has never been completed on the car is the replacement of the bottom dump door. The old door and its guides were so badly eaten away by rust that the whole thing will have to be replaced. Hopefully, this winter we will move the car into the shop to install the new door.

Loaded up at the B&W, 9/20/2003	Restoring ex-TVRR #1, 10/2003
Restoring ex-B&W #57, 11/2003	GCRR’s new freight train, 6/5/2004

The Story of the Latrobe Brookville

by Nick D’Amore

The story actual begins a couple years ago when the Beaver Valley Junction Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society was fortunate enough to acquire a rare standard-gage Brookville "Type D" railcar, serial #2534, which had originally been built for the US Army in 1940. The car sat in open storage for over a year, full of assorted debris from having sat at the military surplus dealer that bought it in the 1970s. Looking it over last year, I realized that the final drive unit, which controls the forward/reverse and converts power to the chain drive, was apart in the back cargo section. Since the roller bearings were exposed, I knew that it should not be left like that too long, so Bob Bailey and I gathered up the pieces and wrestled it into my truck. After looking it over at home, the reason it was disassembled was obvious. The drive works by having the incoming power from the driveshaft turn a small pinion gear, which in turn turns two large (12") ring gears. A yoke in the center of the unit slips into one or the other ring gear hub and transmits the power to the axle. The teeth on the small pinion gear were very stripped down, and shards of steel were scattered within the grease remaining on the ring gears. Clearly the unit needed to be rebuilt or replaced. The remainder of the drive was not disassembled, lest it remain apart so long that parts disappeared or I could not remember how to re-assemble it.

The next obvious step was contacting Brookville Locomotive Works, which is still in business as Brookville Mining Equipment Corporation. Unfortunately, Brookville could no longer supply mechanism parts for these older units since losing much information and patterns in a flood in 1996. Brookville did not even have a parts diagram for the final drive, although the same drive appeared to have been produced at least between 1940, the date of Beaver Valley’s unit, and 1965, when Bucksgahuda & Western #3, a narrow-gage model BMD now at St. Marys, Pa., was built. Fortunately, Brookville did have the original sales file on Beaver Valley’s unit, which included a builder’s photo and mentioned that the final drive was a "Type C" drive. Robert Schreyer also provided a Brookville catalog that included a cut-away view of the drive but no information on the source of the gears used. Several Beaver Valley members suggested that the gears looked like tractor parts, but with the number of possibilities it would be difficult to find correct replacements.

In late February 2004, Beaver Valley President George Alberti forwarded me an internet link on Plymouths. A little surfing found me on Jay Reed’s Critters Dinkys & Centercabs site, which included a list of "Forgotten, but not gone" critters. The list included a 30" gage Brookville "stored/derelict" at "Standard Steel" in Latrobe, Pa. Could this unit have the same final drive, so that it could be removed and used to replace the damaged unit?

After an initial misstep thinking that the plant had become Timken’s plant in Latrobe, in April a newspaper story said that Standard Steel was a different company ... and was closing their Latrobe plant in June. With a short timeframe, I moved in several directions to find out if the locomotive was still there. The company happened to also have a plant in Burnham, on the Juanita Valley Railroad. The Juanita Valley is part of the North Shore Railroad system, and North Shore’s Director of Sales and Marketing, Todd Hunter, is active in the Bucksgahuda & Western narrow gage project of the Bucktail Chapter, NRHS in St. Marys, Pa. I asked Todd if he could check if any of his company contacts knew if the locomotive still existed. I also asked Charlie Bowser, a member of the nearby Indiana, Pa., model railroad club, if he could locate anyone who worked at the Latrobe plant. Also, after a follow-up newspaper article gave the name of Standard Steel’s president, Michael J. Farrell, I sent a letter to him asking about the locomotive.

Mr. Farrell forwarded my letter to the VP of Manufacturing, John Cummings. John e-mailed a reply on June 17 that the locomotive still existed and that we could make arrangements to see it by contacting John Nease at the Latrobe plant. On Tuesday, June 22, Joe Jack and I drove out to inspect the locomotive. It had been stored under roof since, apparently, 1988, judging by a newspaper found inside. It had the correct "Type C" final drive, and the engine had been replaced with a Chevy 289 V-8. Mr. Nease was kind enough to copy the few pieces of paperwork he could find, including the part diagram for the final drive that Brookville Locomotive no longer has.

After further discussion with Mr. Cummings, and through Todd Hunter, with Standard Steel’s VP of Transportation, Tom Ferencz, Standard Steel agreed to donate the locomotive to the Bucksgahuda & Western in St. Marys. Doing so makes sense as the locomotive is a more appropriate match to the B&W collection of narrow gage industrial locomotives, and makes future operation more likely. Also, this spares the Beaver Valley chapter from needing to find a place to store the unit. With a copy of the parts diagram in hand, complete disassemble of Beaver Valley’s final drive can proceed and replacement gears sought out ... the diagram indicates that two different gears were used in the final drives. A visit to Berg’s salvage yard north of Zelienople, Pa., produced some Ford tractor gears that appear to fit, and will be investigated further after the drive is completely disassembled. However, if these don’t work out, Beaver Valley can remove the drive from the Standard Steel unit, as B&W will not begin an overhaul (which requires regauging from 30" to 24") in the immediate future. The locomotive was moved via tilt-bed truck (located by Charlie Bowser) to storage at B&W on Tuesday, July 13th.

News from Halifax, Canada

by Peter Freeman

David has completed his 3-way switch and now has it fine-tuned to Perfection. He has added another 40 feet past the switch so we can really see how the engine works at top speed (12 mph or so), though not for long! We are now spending our time digging the down grade roadbed so track laying is still at a snails pace until the roadbed is complete.

Once we get the grade cut and fill finished, track work will be much faster going, as we will shift our energy 100% solely to laying rail. Before then we have to brush out our 1 mile road in to the boat landing to accept a dump truck load of ballast, then lug 6 yards or so across the lake by boat in 3 gallon buckets, to have on hand for the tie placement.

We already have enough ties on the side of the new roadbed so part of our work is done.

In our excavation we ran into a huge granite rock yesterday just under the surface that has to be dealt with. It is 5 to 7 times bigger than our machine and about 18 inches too high of the level so we will need to drill and split the rock with wedges as they did over the last few hundred years before big equipment came into the picture. Unfortunately this boulder is right smack in the right-of-way so it will take time break the top off or whatever happens when we crack it.

We want to keep digging the cut all the way through the hillside, which is another 40 feet or so just in case we strike another boulder as we will need to rent a heavy drill to drill breaking holes and only want to do that once. We have made 80 or so feet of bed from the top end down and it is ready for track. The rest of the route is clear of obstructions so we will get back online after we deal with this obstacle. The photo is not very good but just under the backhoe boom you can see the top of the rock before we uncovered the whole thing. We were moving smaller rocks down to the fill on our little rubber tracked Honda Power Carrier.

News fromo the Twin Meadow Railroad

by Shawn D. Watson

June 2003 saw the completion of the first loop of track, with station siding and grade crossing. A dedication party was planned for early July with over 200 antique cars, tractors, engines, their owners and other friends invited to attend.

Over 8 inches of rain fell in the week prior to the party, so it was postponed to late September, but it never dried out, so a party in 2003 never happened, and with a wet 2004 already in progress, no party is planned for 2004. This will allow more work to be done, and a better time to be had in 2005.

Hear are some photos of my new riding car. The axels are some of the extras from the purchase of the railroad, springs from a junk mobile home, plate from the scrap pile, used treaded 4x6’s, and rubber matting from the surplus store. New plywood, bolts, and custom built contour benches made a comfortable, smooth riding, and fairly inexpensive car. The people in the photo are 4 generations of the former owners of the train, who came up to ride one afternoon while having a family reunion.

Most of my railroad was financed thru collection and sale of aluminum cans and scrap metal, and built mostly without the use of heavy construction equipment, just pick, shovel, roto-tiller, and wheelbarrow.

Once the grade was excavated, in some places dug out 14 inches, and this dirt used to make a 30 inch deep fill in another area, all at 5 feet wide, gravel was hauled 2 tons at a time on my car haul trailer, and spread 2 inches thick. 3x5 landscape timbers 4 feet long were placed 20 in. center and the rails were placed, adjusting the ties so that a tie was under every joint, more ties being better than less.

Add radiuses are 21 ft. 6 in. All 12, 16, and 18 pound rails were bent with a hand bender, making sure that the rail was in place with no stress, in other words, in gauge without forcing, so that it will not be fighting the spikes to stay in gauge. Spikes were used in the station area until the supply ran out, then ½ inch lag screws with wedge washers were used, each one ratcheted in by hand, not by power.

This has been a 5 year project so far, with health, time and finances being big factors, but it has been fun, and there are worse things in life to spend time and money on, and besides, who else in the neighborhood has one?

Closing Remarks

by Tom Bauer

Hey folks, it is that time where we need to start thinking about the 2005 Two Footers Convention. So far, Ohio, Florida, and Maine have been suggested. We are leaning towards Maine in 2007. We are interested in your feedback as far as the location of our convention and if you are interested in attending. When providing locations, please note a list of railroads in that area so that would be of interest to the group. In addition, why not include an article in your response.

Rhodes Auto Salvage on Route 28 in New Bethlehem, PA has several 42" gage brickyard carts left. These were once used in the brick plant in Summersville, PA. The wheels are 12-inch diameter with 2" wide treads. If interested, contact: