Model Train Journal

Sarge flipped me a few photos of recently restored Reading T-1 #2102, and she looks magnificent. Those guys up at the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern have done what looks to be a great job of restoration.

Seeing those pics brought back memories of seeing #2101 in Cumberland, Maryland, in May, 1978, heading the Chessie Steam Special:



A grainy photo likely shot with a pocket-sized Instamatic, #2101 is seen at what serves today as the Amtrak station in Cumberland, built atop the footprint of the B&O's Queen City Hotel (which I believe was torn down in the early 1970s). Before the Chessie Steam Special, #2101 was on the point for the American Freedom Train during the 1976 Bicentennial.

A year after I saw her in Cumberland, #2101 was badly damaged in a roundhouse fire. I think she's now sitting at the B&O Museum in Baltimore, restored to her American Freedom Train scheme.

Railroad museum in CT.

robert. wrote:

Neat - Fox trucks!

That flat car with foxs trucks was found in a warehouse. It was used as a movable work platform.

What are Fox trucks? They look pretty minimalist as compared to other types.

Robert, those are some really nice pictures. Which railroad museum in CT are they from?

Richard

This is Thomaston Ct. station. https://rmne.org/ I stopped here to stretch my legs after a business trip to Hartford. Just happened to see it by chance. I went to the next exit and turned around. Hit the museum, grabbed a bottle of water in town and headed back out to good Friday traffic home.
My phone was not playing nice when it cam to taking photos. Most of the truck photos i took for a reason. I never noticed they shimmed truck springs with 2x12 lumber.

A few photos of the B&O's Queen City Hotel in Cumberland, Maryland, in the days/months prior to its 1972 demolition:







And Roger Puta's photograph from December, 1970, just two years earlier:



That's the Metropolitan on the left and the Shenandoah on the right (the Shenandoah continuing in Amtrak service until 1981). By the time I got to Frostburg in 1974, the hotel/station was long gone and the site had seen the construction of a new post office and an Amtrak "station".