Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum

On September 16th Joan and I visited the Age of Steam Roundhouse Museum, founded by Jerry Jacobson, the owner of the Ohio Central Railroad, a short-haul freight line for many years. It's eighty-odd miles away from us in northeastern Ohio.

 

Google maps and the ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation) website both indicated a road closure on Route 16, the most direct way, but the information didn't add up. On the ODOT website, the closure was labelled as on 16, the graphics showed it on 16, but the accompanying text described it for route 83 instead! We departed armed with several paper maps and pre-planned alternatives, but 16 was not closed and thus we had time to kill before our 10:00 tour, and took a loop through the town of SugarCreek.

 

At the museum we checked in (one must reserve in advance) and received our wristband. As Joan and I looked at the gifts and exhibits in the visitor center, more and more people trickled in, and by the time 10:00 rolled around there must have been thirty of us. We watched the mandatory safety video, and then Zak led us across a set of tracks to the roundhouse.

 

Zak gave an excellent tour, appealing to everyone, not just railroad buffs. He told us anecdote after anecdote and the hour-and-a-half tour flew by. The museum has an extensive website which includes detailed explanations for those who are interested, so I'll just give some highlights plus links.

Our first steam engine was a switcher, a small locomotive that moves engines and cars around a railroad yard.

An old fellow, it was built in 1897, and acquired by the Museum in 2013. Details here. A view inside the cramped cabin.

Next was the Buffalo Creek & Gauley No. 13, which survived by hauling timber and coal on short runs in West Virginia until it was retired in 1964.

Then we saw the Canadian Pacific 1293, built in 1948 with improvements which, however, were insufficient to stave off its retirement in favor of a diesel locomotive in 1959.

These machines were used for passenger and freight traffic on the Canadian Pacific branch and local lines.

The Canadian National 1551 was built in 1912, for mixed passenger and freight traffic. The museum swapped for and repaired it, then operated it as a short-haul tourist train between 1988 and 2003.

There's a good view of the coupler above; Zak told us that at first locomotive and cars were connected by a link and pin system; each end would have a rounded steel loop. The train would back up until the loop of the last car in the chain overlapped with the one to be joined, and a worker would insert a steel pin (more of a stake), linking the two. This task was very dangerous. Zak said, "In those days, if you applied for this job, you were asked to show your hands. If you weren't missing a finger or a part of a finger, you might be rejected for not having enough experience." Eventually knuckle couplers were invented and perfected during the last quarter of the 19th Century.

  

This next locomotive was built in 1901 as a smaller engine capable of running on light tracks and sharp curves. It was parked at North Lake, Wisconsin for years and restored by the museum.

Built in 1916, the massive Lake Superior & Ishpeming No. 33 was an iron ore hauler, operating within the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

This odd looking best is a "fireless cooker" built in 1930. These were employed in areas where flammable substances were handled, such as textile mills or chemical plants. The insulated boiler was filled with superheated water under pressure, and could power the switcher for about 8 hours.

Here's another fireless locomotive, powered by compressed air -- at very high pressure -- with a range of seven miles. This one began its working life in a Cuban sugar plantation, where it saved the owner the wages of a fireman and $10 worth of coal each day.

At this point, Zak took us outside to view the turntable, another item purchased and moved when it would otherwise have gone for scrap.

Then we eagerly headed back for more tour.

After another loco or two we had a peek at the shop where all the repair and restoration work is done. Here is the McCloud River No. 19 undergoing restoration work on the boiler in preparation for a return to service. In the foreground, wheels have been removed to machine them back into perfect circles. Click on this image.

As trains grew heavier and faster, the existing rails were put under great strain. In 1910, the first year that accident reports were required, hundreds of passengers and thousands of employees were killed, and tens of thousands injured. The evolution of railroad safety has been fraught; here is a snapshot from an extensive Department of Transportation PDF.

Now, for a steam locomotive to be used by the public, even for short tourism runs, it must undergo a thorough inspection every 15 years, including the thickness of the boiler walls. Rehabbing and passing the 15-year inspection can be an expensive undertaking. And for lifting heavy objects ...

 

Back in the roundhouse we saw the Reading "Camelback" No. 1187, an anthracite coal hauler, where the cab straddled the boiler in front of the firebox. The firebox had to be widened to allow using as fuel the coal dust and tiny pieces that couldn't be shipped to customers, thus reducing the operating cost. Note the smaller wheels compared to many other locomotives; anthracite is very heavy and a smaller wheel means each push of the drive rods is moves the train a smaller distance than otherwise. It awaits future restoration.

This Grand Trunk Western #6325 is famous for having pulled Harry Truman's 1948 presidential campaign train. Also note that the front coupler is hidden behind a gate on the cow-catcher.

There were more trains and cars, but maybe you've seen enough. If you haven't, boogie on down to the museum.

 

Zack took eight volunteers and assigned each one a particular job on a steam train, such as brakeman, fireman, and so forth.

He then walked through each job, explaining the impact of trains switching from steam to diesel engines. He fired five of the eight workers.

 

Then it was time to return to the museum building and our cars. Joan and I proceeded to the Raven's Glenn Winery for some wine tasting, lunch, and a couple of bottles to take home. On our return we took a scenic detour on back roads through the Woodbury Wildlife Area, a route we'd identified when looking at options if route 16 were actually closed. Some of those roads reminded me of growing up among the hills and ridges of East Tennessee.

 

Needless to say, we highly recommend the Age of Steam Roundhouse.