Migrating Locomotives

One of the things that has surprised me about running steamlocomotive.info is just how often steam locomotives, dead and non-operational, get moved from place to place. And how often they seem to change ownership. I have a few modest examples here.

To begin with, consider Six Gun Territory 4-4-0 No. 4 “General Sam Houston”, a Crown Metal Products locomotive of 1964. For years it has resideded in Underground Atlanta. I saw it there in the late 1980s. 
Photo Copyright © Wes Barris

On August 30th, 2017 it was removed from Underground Atlanta enroute to the Kirby Family Farm in Williston, FL, where it will become a display.

And in an example of how long it sometimes takes for information to reach us, let us consider PKP 2-8-2 No. Pt47-14 which had been on display in Bialogard, Poland for a very long time:

Photo Copyright © Ian Smith

In the late 1990s this one was moved from Bialogard to Technikum Kolejowego w Stargardzie Szczecinski in Stargard, Poland. And then, in 2004 it moved again and was placed on display at the Szczecinsk Railway station in Stargard, where it remains.

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Adventures in Research

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.

 

 

 

Preservation News (8/6/2017)

Some newsworthy items acquired today:

• V.E.W. Donawitz 0-4-0T No. 100.13 had been listed as being stored at the Waldbahn Museum Railway in Bezau, Austria. At least least since 2015 it has been operational at a tourist railway in Criscior, Romania.
• An 0-4-0T with only partial information was listed at Feldbahnmuseum FIM in Freiland, Austria. The locomotive’s railroad of origin was the Graf Karoly Imre tramway, it’s build date was 1899 and a photo was added for the locomotive. The locomotive is operational, have had its boiler recently reworked at Graz, Austria.
• Removed a duplicate entry for this locomotive at Freiland
• CFF 0-8-0T No. 764.219 is in possession of the Club 760 Museum, in Frojach, Austria, and it’s status is now “Operational”. A photo was added for this locomotive.

 

A Memorial to the Heroes of Kruty

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.