Steam & Excursion > When The Get Coupled Together Like This It Means Only One Thing!

Some time back I showed two Santa Fe steam locomotives coupled back-to-back as they were ready for shipment to the scrapper. This was necessary because the railroad had use for their tenders even thought they had no use for the engines any longer.

As we see in this photo from 1953, the same practice was employed by logging railroads. In this fine Jerry Hanson photo we see former Chehalis Western 2-8-2 #211 and former Weyerhaeuser Timber 2-8-2 #102 on their way to the scrapper in Seattle, Washington.

Both engines were recently kept in service at Weyerhaeuser's Vail, Washington logging camp serving as backup to the newly arrived diesels. However this service is now over and they are no longer needed. Their cab roofs have been cut back and they are coupled draw bar-to-draw bar for this last trip.

The tenders to the 2 engines were saved by the logger for use as water cars on the line The tender to #211 survives still to this day.

Martin



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/17 03:33 by LoggerHogger.

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Sad, and that's the way I remember dozens of Milwaukee Road steam in the yards at Bensenville, Illinois in the middle 50s. They even butchered the backs of the all weather cabs on the S-2 and S-3 northerns so they had enough clearance to drawbar them together.

C. Hanson
Vay, Idaho

They must have rigged up the tender drawbar(s) of them to couple them up like that.

Martin, do you know if it was common practice to salvage the "jewelry" by the scrappers before cutting everything up? Or was it just fans who removed the jewelry for collections?

nycman Wrote:
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> Martin, do you know if it was common practice to
> salvage the "jewelry" by the scrappers before
> cutting everything up? Or was it just fans who
> removed the jewelry for collections?

A lot depended on the individual railroad. For example the Northern Pacific removed and retained bells for shipment to EMD, for re-application to their new switching and GP diesel units. Other railroads, like the C&O, would allow enthusiasts to sign wavers and enter the property (Huntington, W Va) and take anything that one had the tools to remove and safely carry away. In fact, I had a contact "order" a locomotive bell off a "large articulated" C&O locomotive, for me and had it crated & shipped to my mother's house in New Jersey, for only $100! The C&O was also VERY accommodating to some friends of mine, who visited Huntington and came home with hundreds of pounds of builder and number plates.

Some scrap yards also accumulated various "collectibles" for later sale to enthusiasts.

nycman Wrote:
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> Martin, do you know if it was common practice to
> salvage the "jewelry" by the scrappers before
> cutting everything up? Or was it just fans who
> removed the jewelry for collections?

Jim,

Jack has answered your question as to mainlines. Loggers were all different. All the Shevlin-Hixon engines left Bend with all bells and jewelry intact. The McCloud engines had all that removed before they were shipped out.

Each logger handled it differently.

Martin

Thanks Jack and Martin for the answers.