All Aboard The Polar Express At GSMR!

Over 42,000 passengers rode The Polar Express™ with the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad in 2011 and we hope to see you this year! The 1 ¼ hour round-trip excursion comes to life as the train departs the Bryson City depot for a journey through the quiet wilderness for a special visit at the North Pole.

Set to the sounds of the motion picture soundtrack, guests on board will enjoy warm cocoa and a treat while listening and reading along with the magical story. Children’s faces show the magic of the season when the train arrives at the “North Pole” to find Santa Claus waiting.

Santa will board THE POLAR EXPRESS, greeting each child and presenting them with a special gift as in the story, their own silver sleigh bell. Christmas carols will be sung as they return back to the Bryson City Depot. THE POLAR EXPRESS begins November 9^th and operates through December 30^th. View the 2012 departure schedule here!

For more information, visit: http://www.gsmr.com/create-content/event/polar-express/polar-express-0

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New Pictures Of Daniel Boone Railroad Locomotive Found!

This engine is an old 0-4-0 that the Daniel Boone Railroad used in conjunction with Melodia, which was sold. The railroad continued to use this Cooke 0-4-0 even after Melodia had been sold. I have no recollection of the Daniel Boone Railroad having 2 locomotives.

Tom Flanary from The Gold Coast Railway Museum was nice enough to share with me some new pictures of old #2. He sent me a link to it (HERE) with a photograph. The engine has been painted and is on display. Visit http://gcrm.org/!

Click on an image to enlarge…

  

   

Opening Day At Tweetsie Railroad Is April 13th!

 

Tweetsie: Opening Day is April 29th!

Tweetsie Railroad is proud to operate two vintage steam locomotives: the #12 “Tweetsie” and the #190 “Yukon Queen”. When you visit Tweetsie Railroad during the operating season, the train will be pulled by one of these historic engines.

Locomotive #12 is the last surviving narrow-gauge steam locomotive of the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad (ET&WNC), which ran train service from Johnson City TN to Boone NC from 1919 to 1940. When the Tweetsie Railroad theme park opened in 1957, this was our sole locomotive.

In 1960, Tweetsie Railroad acquired another steam locomotive, the #190 “Yukon Queen” from Alaska’s White Pass & Yukon Railway.

Both locomotives are coal-fired narrow-gauge engines, built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia. #12 was completed in 1917, and #190 in 1943. Before entering service at Tweetsie Railroad, the locomotives were put into operating condition by veteran engineer Frank Coffey, who trained new generations in Tweetsie’s on-site steam train repair shop.

For more info, visit: http://www.tweetsie.com

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Train show exciting for young, old alike

Source: http://www.enctoday.com

Charlie Hall

Sun Journal Staff

There was a common denominator between the hundreds of people who came to Saturday’s opening day of the Carolina Coastal Railroaders show and the trains they came to see — both were all ages and sizes.

The 16^th annual show, which continues today at New Bern High, featured a lobby full of vendors with any possible train or accessory. Inside the gym, there were 10 layouts — complete with detailed miniature scenery — and trains of varying sizes and historic reference.

Nic and Juanita Nicastro come from Newport to the show each year and walk away with memories and bags of trains and parts.

“I’m a collector, an operator and an accumulator,” he said of his own home layout, which measures more than 13 by 19 feet, with three different train “yards.”

He had trains as a child and when the couple started a family in the early 1970s, they wanted trains for the children.

He saw a want ad for trains for sale, so he bought six two-foot-square boxes. The Nicastros were off and running as collectors.

“It’s a toy,” he said of trains. “And I’m just a bigger kid.”

Juanita said that while collecting trains that date to the 1900s, it had given her a sense of watching changes in the way American manufacturing has changed over the years in production and materials, from tin to injection plastics.

Allison Stusse of Havelock brought her sons Noah, Henry and George — ages 2 to nearly 6 — because “They love trains. They have trains, too many trains.”

The Stusse brothers are still in the early stages of train love, with wooden trains that they have to push around the tracks.

“But, they build new track every day,” said their mother, as the three boys pointed and intently watched larger motorized miniatures in front of them at the Garden Railway Society’s layout.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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Tweetsie’s Ghost Train, 2010!

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Awesome List of Illustrated Train Books

The following are books on railroading and Western America by Lucius Beebe or Lucius Beebe and his partner. Charles Clegg.

1. High Iron: A Book of Trains. (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1938).
2. Highliners: A Railroad Album (New York: Bonanza Books, 1940).
3. Trains in Transition (New York: Bonanza Books, 1941).
4. Highball: A Pageant of Trains ( New York: Bonanza Books, 1945)
5. The Narrow Gauge Railroads of Colorado (Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin
No. 671, August 1946).
6. Mixed Train Daily: A Book of Short-Line Railroads. (Berkeley, CA: Howell-North, 1947).
7. Virginia City & Truckee: A Story of Virginia City and Comstock Times (Oakland, CA:
Grahame H. Hardy, 1949).
8. U.S. West: The Saga of Wells Fargo (New York: Dutton, 1949).
9. Legends of the Comstock Lode (Oakland, CA: Grahame H. Hardy,1950).
10. Cable Car Carnival (Oakland, CA: Grahame H. Hardy,1951).
11. Hear the Train Blow: A Pictorial Epic of America in the Railroad Age (New York: Dutton,
1952)
12. Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News
(New York: Dutton, 1954).

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

Visit www.TarheelTrains.com!

 

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GE Locomotives Go Green

New technology allows the train’s engine to capture the energy it now wastes, store it in a battery and use it for acceleration.

Click on the image below to watch the video. You’ll have to sit through a 15-second ad, but it’s very interesting.

Visit www.TarheelTrains.com!

 

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Looking for a lost steam engine?

The database which lies behind this site derives from a number of sources. It began from a locomotive list maintained by a man named Tim Bosshardt in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and was added to based upon a list published by the Tourist Railroad Assocation. Additional input came from thousands of miles of travel by Dale Brown and Doug Bailey, and from other sources too numerous to record or remember. Ownership histories, where we have them at all, came mostly from a text file “ownership guide” submitted by Mark Halford.

Check it out at: SteamLocomotive.info!