Tiny Town Railroad 2-6-6 No. 12 “Mary Ross” in Morrison, Colorado shown below, in an image by Chris Guenzler has been removed from our database and website, as it is a steam outline locomotive powered by a 4 cylinder Lombardini diesel motor. It was constructed by the Uhrich Locomotive Works in Colorado. As cute as it is, it doesn’t fit our criteria for inclusion. If it had been an actual steam locomotive that was later dieselized, we’d include it. So, in memoriam:
This locomotive, located in a World War II Memorial Park in Odessa, Ukraine says “Feats of the Immortal Heroes” on its side. The blue label says:
Service Registry of Steam Locomotive Ov No. 3818
1905 – Constructed by the Sormovsky Factory
1906 – China-Eastern Railroad
1908 – 1927 Central Asian Railroad
August 15th, 1973 – Placed by the workers of the Odessa Sorting Depot.
Along a street named Akkeçeli Cd. in Alasehir, Turkey on Turkish State Railway (TCDD) property is a deadline consisting of a group of five derelict locomotives and a group of three locomotives separated from the first group by perhaps 150 feet.
If you wish to explore this deadline with Google Street View then the following link will take you there:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.3572078,28.5163294,3a,75y,264.35h,82.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stG8gePnQhYsFGlHoEu1XGA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
The only locomotive in this group I was able to identify by the number on the cab was TCDD 2-10-2 No. 57021. For your amusement the first group of five consists of the following wheel arrangements: a 2-8-2, a 2-10-0 without a tender, another 2-10-0 with a tender, another 2-10-0 without a tender and a 2-10-2. The second group of three locomotives consists of a 2-10-0, TCDD 2-10-2 No. 57021, and lastly a 2-10-0. If anyone has a means of identifying which locomotives these are amongst those listed in Alasehir, please let me know by emailing me at info@steamlocomotive.info.
Copyright © Alan Short
This Class A Shay (Lima Locomotive Works, 1910, c/n 2374) is displayed near the social club of Finca Pantaleon in Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala. It last operated in 1997 before being put on display. It is lettered for “New England Lime Company” No. 2. This information is fictional and not a part of the ownership chain of the locomotive. When it was being painted for display the lettering came from a photo found in a book.
Etterbeek Station is a railway station in suburban Brussels, Belgium. For many years a narrow gauge (600mm) 0-4-0WT was preserved on the platform of this station. The locomotive was complete, and displayed on a short length of track. Chris West, a contributor to Nieuwsbrief Issue No. 46 of June 2003 described visiting the stationin April of 2003 and discovering that the locomotive was no longer present, though the trackage was.
He writes:
The exact history of the locomotive is not known with certainty, but by the mid-1920s, it was in Belgium and at work on the construction of the Brussels – Charleroi canal. It was purchased for preservation in the late 1960’s by a Brussels watchmaker from the yards of Ponts, Tunnels & Terrassements S.A. at Lembeek. At first stored at the Scepdaal Museum, by 1972 it had moved to Etterbeek.
We have recorded this locomotive as Krauss (Munich) 4018 of 1904.
Chris West continues to analyze this locomotive with information from a visit in the early 2000’s.
The locomotive is generally recorded as Krauss (Munich) 4018/1904. It carries two plates on the boiler back head; one shows ‘Maffei 2061 10K’, the other ‘Brabant No. 1861’. In the published Krauss works list 4018 is a 600 mm gauge 0-4-0T delivered to Schramm & Kraus, München in 1900. Maffei 2061 was a standard gauge 2-6-0, used in Bavaria, so the plate must refer to a separate series for boilers. The second boilerplate is believed to show the boiler registration number.
When I checked the locomotive’s motion I found the number 2842 in two places. Maffei 2842 was a 600 mm 0-4-0T ordered in 1908 by Leipziger & Co., Köln for Kaiser & Schorr, Beilingries. From this I deduce the locomotive is Maffei 2842, carrying boiler 2061, and possibly incorporating some parts of Krauss 4018.
Any further information about this locomotive would be greatly appreciated.
As many of you know, we here at steamlocomotive.info have an ongoing project to attempt to verify the location, condition and whereabouts of locomotives in our database. To this end, I’ve been working my way through our lists of locomotives without photos. There are probably more rational ways to do this, but this seemed convenient.
So, without further ado, let me introduce you to an extraordinary railway museum: The Bochum Railway Museum in Bochum, Germany. The link takes you to a mostly-English version of their website. And the site is stunningly beautiful, the museum quite extraordinary. We had excellent photo coverage of the museum by several photographers — except for one locomotive DB 0-4-4-0T No. 99.604. And this caused me to wonder why.
The locomotive proved elusive on Google, at least at first. The locomotive was not listed on the museum’s website as a part of their collection. A search by builder and construction number on Google turned up nothing. (The builder information we had was wrong, of course). Another wonderful website, if you’re interested in German steam locomotives can be found at The Steam Locomotive Archive. The site is wonderfully informative if you speak German, and if not, well Google Translate is your friend. Therein, I discovered that good ol’ 99.604 did indeed exist, and had been at the Bochum Railway Museum in 2006.
In the history of the locomotive on http://www.dampflokomotivarchiv.de I learned that the locomotive had been transferred in 2006 to the The Society for the Preservation of Narrow Gauge Railways in Dresden, Germany, where it is nicely displayed. Our page for this locomotive is at: DB 0-4-4-0T No. 99.604
And that, dear friends, is how I came to be on my fourth cup of coffee at 5:31 am writing a blog post about a convoluted internet search.
There is an ongoing effort here to both improve the accuracy of the database that drives steamlocomotive.info, and to add locomotives, maps and imagery to the site. Occassionally this yields a pleasant surprise.
So it was, this morning. I often use Google Earth Pro or maps.google.com to search for locomotives in our database. If I can find them in a satellite image, I can add a map/satellite view for the locomotive. I had been searching for locomotives in Chile and was trying to locate Humberstone 0-6-2T No. 11 in Humberstone, Chile. Our data said the locomotive was “Inside Shop”, but the photo provided by Sr. Pato Moris showed the locomotive outside, against the background of a somewhat run-down building. So the search began and I discovered that Humberstone, Chile is actually the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works, now defunct.
It has been converted into a sort of tourist attraction, and Humberstone No. 11 is indeed outdoors in front of a building. So I began using Google Street View to explore the area at ground level and this is what I found:
The locomotive on the left is, indeed Humberstone No. 11 and it matches our photo by Sr. Pato Moris. The surprise, of course, is the locomotive on the right. This locomotive was not on any list of Chilean locomotives I could find. Navigating around it with Google Street View revealed markings that make this Humberstone No. 8, a locomotive which had been reported scrapped in 1940. So…I’ve cheerfully added this little critter to our website and database, and am searching for technical details for it.
In 2006, the citizens of Kiev and surrounding areas dedicated a memorial, near Kruty station to the Heroes of Kruty. Before we discuss these heroes, please note the nice photo of the memorial:
Photo Copyright © parovoz.com
That is a Soviet-era 0-10-0 built in 1954. Bear that in mind as we learn about the Heroes of Kruty.
The Battle of Kruty took place on January 29 or 30, 1918, near Kruty railway station, about 130 kilometres northeast of Kiev, Ukraine, which at the time was part of Nezhinsky Uyezd of Chernigov Governorate. 400 Ukrainian cadets opposed at Bolshevik force of about 4000 men. Armored trains were a part of the battle on both sides.
The result of the battle? Strategic Ukrainian People’s Republic victory, capture of Kiev delayed and enabled the Ukrainian government to conclude the Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The organizers of the memorial had wanted to include a period locomotive at the head of an armored train typical of the period. Such a locomotive was not available and Ukrainian Railways kindly provided Er799-13 as a stand in. The irony of using a Soviet-era locomotive to commemorate a Bolshevik setback at the end of the Civil War is simply delicious.
Below, you’ll see a perfectly nice photograph of SZD 0-10-0 No. Er766-41 performing switching duties at the Museum of Railway Transport in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Image Source on Dmitri Zinoviev’s parovoz.com
But, “Wait!” I hear the eagle-eyed among you say. “That’s Er786-19, it says so clearly on the tender.” And therein lies the nuisance. Unlike practices in other parts of the world, in Russia, tenders are usually lettered prominently for the locomotive with which they were constructed. So this is, indeed Er766-41 dragging around the tender from Er766-19.
In times past, I fell into the trap of placing a photo with the record for the number on the tender (usually when I couldn’t see the number on the locomotive). After getting verbally thrashed over this a couple of times, I’m much more careful now. And I also thought a small explanation would be useful. And I liked the photo we’ve linked to here.
The Umekoji Depot Museum (now known as the Kyoto Railroad Museum) has long been home to operational steam. I had been unaware as to how much of their collection was operational until a recent Note from a site visitor (Yuki Taki) that outlined their status.
Locomotives in Japan can be operational, but not certified for mainline use. At Umekoji we have the following locomotives:
JNR 4-6-4 No. C62-2 Operational, Not Certified for Mainline Use
JNR 4-6-4 C61-2 Operational, Not Certified for Mainline Use
JNR 4-6-2 No. C57-1 Operational, Not Certified for Mainline Use
JNR 2-6-0 No. C56-160 Operational, Certified for Mainline Use
JNR 2-8-2 No. D51-200 Operational, Certified for Mainline Use
JNR 2-6-0 No. 8630 Operational, Not Certified for Mainline Use
JNR 0-4-0T No. B20-10 Operational, Not Certified for Mainline Use
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