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establish service to Coquille. The railroad owns five locomotives and serves eleven cus- tomers who ship and receive wood products, steel, chromite ore, and animal feed. Last year the railroad handled 2480 cars, and it expects to move twice that many this year.
Florida Central
BIG TRACK PROJECT GETS FUNDS: In July, the Florida Central will begin an $18.4 million upgrade of its 57-mile route between Orlando and Umatilla from Federal Railroad Administration Class I to Class II standards, which will allow a top speed of 25 m.p.h. The FRA will provide a $2.2 million grant, while the balance of the funding will come from FCEN, the Lake-Sumter Metropolitan Plan- ning Organization, Metroplan Orlando, the Florida Department of Transportation, eight on-line municipalities, and Orange and Lake counties.
General Electric
ERIE JOBS WILL MOVE TO TEXAS: On April 9 General Electric Transportation an- nounced that it plans to move nearly a thou- sand jobs from its locomotive assembly plant in Erie, Penn., to its new, lower-cost plant in North Fort Worth, Texas. 950 jobs will be cut from Erie’s 5500-member workforce as the company’s locomotive and mining equipment sales expectations have been reduced, due in part to the increased use of natural gas by electric utilities. Railroads have put surplus locomotives into storage as coal shipments de- cline, and reduced coal mining activity has eaten into the market for mining equipment. While GE says the new plant is more efficient- ly laid out than the 100-year old facility in Pennsylvania, the company claims that the non-union workforce and its lower pay scale in Texas were not a factor in moving the work. A small portion of the work currently done in Erie will be moved to Mexico.
Georges Creek
ACQUIRES TWO ALCO SWITCHERS: The Georges Creek Railroad has added two Alco S6 switchers from Tri-Gen Energy of Solvay, N.Y. GCK No. 153 was built as Southern Pa- cific No. 1064 (then SP 1231, Chrome Crank- shaft 1231, Allied Chemical 1A, Allied Chemi- cal 1. It retained No. 1 after Allied became Salt City Energy Venture and then Tri-Gen Energy). GCK No. 154 was Buffalo Creek 2nd 42, then Allied Chemical 2nd 4, and on to SCEV and TGE. They will be painted in the same GCK red and silver scheme as T6 No. 101, which they’ll join in switching the New- Page paper mill at Luke, Md.
GCK owner Gerald Altizer says his ex-West-
ern Maryland GP9 No. 39 and SD40 No. 7445 will soon enter the shop to be painted into WM’s red, white, and black scheme. The rail- road also owns FA2 No. 303, GP9 No. 25, SD38P No. 7436 (a de-turboed SD35), and SD40 No. 7471, all former WM locomotives and all painted WM black. Activation of the former WM Georges Creek branch hinges on ratifica- tion of a coal contract, although the railroad has been pursuing additional customers.
Kloke Prepares to Deliver Country’s Newest Steam Locomotive
THE COUNTRY’S NEWEST STEAM LOCOMOTIVE is on its way to Pennsylvania. On April 15 and 16, 2013, crews from Kloke Locomotive Works trucked Northern Central Railroad 4-4-0 No. 17 York from the firm’s Elgin, Ill., erecting shop to the Fox Valley Trolley Museum in South Elgin. The locomotive made its first test runs sans headlight, steam dome and cylinder jacketing, and pilot, as David Kloke and a mechanic adjusted the slide valves (above). Constructed to the same plans as Kloke’s replica Central Pacific 4-4-0 No. 63 Leviathan, York
was built for Steam Into History, Inc., a Pennsylvania non-profit that will operate regular Civil War-themed excursions over former Northern Central trackage beginning in June. While the original was a wood-burner, the replica burns oil, which is readily available and produces no ash or cinders to dispose of. Beginning on June 1, the locomotive will power three daily 20-mile round trip excursions between New Freedom and Hanover Junction, Penn., part of a critical transportation link during the Civil War. The line is known to have been ridden by President Abraham Lincoln on his way to deliver the Gettysburg Address. On April 15, contractors began replacing ties and ballast on the county-owned trackage, which has been dormant since the Northern Central Dinner Train quit in 2001. Passengers will ride in reproduction passenger cars; the Reader Railroad is building three cars new for SIH and leasing two for this first season. En route, Civil War re-enactors will discuss “current events” and the war with passengers. Two turntables and an enginehouse remain to be built.
Long Island Rail Road
CANNONBALL MOVES TO NY PENN: This season, the Long Island Rail Road’s lim- ited-stop, summer weekend-only Cannonball service to Montauk on the Island’s south fork will operate out of Penn Station, N.Y., in- stead of originating at Hunterspoint Avenue in Long Island City (Queens), as it has in the past. Powered by two dual-mode DM30AC lo- comotives, the 14-car train will run nonstop for the first 76 miles between NYP and West- hampton Beach. The train will leave Penn Station at 4:07 p.m. on Fridays between Me-
morial Day and Labor Day, arriving Mon- tauk at 6:48. On Sunday evenings the west- bound edition will leave Montauk at 6:37 p.m., arriving Penn Station at 9:31. First class Hamptons Reserve service will be of- fered for an extra fare and includes a guaran- teed reserved seat along with beverage and snack service.
In addition to the limited-stop Cannonball,
the LIRR offers six regular eastbounds be- tween NYP and Montauk on Fridays, along with four regular westbounds on Sundays. These trains take more time and make more stops than the Cannonball.
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BRUCE MOFFAT
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