Steam & Excursion > More HICO 1971

More info from The High Iron 1971 magazine:

Regards,
"Scoop"

---

---

---

Re the 757...

My memory may be fading, but I don’t think we we borrowed grates from the 757...
759 had a full set of its own.

On Dale’s recommendation, we ordered a few new fingers cast as replacements for future use.   
‘Fingers’  commonly break in service.

I think Don Smith, HICO’s office manager, arranged through Lynn Moedinger, of Strasburg RR, to have Amish craftsmen make new  grate fingers...  possibly, borrowing grates from 757 as patterns for new material.

I think we paid for about 100 fingers , I don’t know the cost.  Also, I believe the new grates were delivered to HICO’s office at Lebanon, NJ.   Don Smith arranged with a local NJ party that had storage-space in a farm building, for storing the new material.

Maybe the 757’s  “new custodians” can let us know if there are large gaps on the grate bars, revealing possibly lending the grates to 759.

Even today,  casting new fingers is an easy process.   I also suspect the the Amish craftsmen used the borrowed grate bars to make new patterns for casting new fingers.  New patterns for the sand castings are the best way to go, account of disproportionate shrinkage of the parts according to varying thicknesses of portions of the final casting.   It may not work well to simply take a grate finger and use it directly, as a pattern to cast duplicates from.

In excursion service, we rarely broke grate fingers...
While at Roanoke Shops, in 1968, the N&W shop forces made a ‘gift’ to 759 of a new copy of the Standard  Stoker
model MB ( horeseshoe-shaped) firing table for the stoker ‘pot’, and gave us several duplicates for future use.😃

That’s my memory.   Lynn may remember more clearly, the process that led to the supply of new grate fingers.

Wes
 



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/19 16:50 by wcamp1472.

Thanks Hank for rekindling some good memories. Been so long ago I forgot that I used to have hair.

   Great adventures....Ross Rowland....aka Chrome Dome

co614 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks Hank for rekindling some good memories.
> Been so long ago I forgot that I used to have
> hair.
>
>    Great adventures....Ross Rowland....aka
> Chrome Dome

I love the line in the article about NKP 759 that states “The work took over two months.” Hats off to you, Mr. Rowland for doing your research and selecting an engine that had been overhauled just prior to retirement. GENIUS - AGAIN!! Also, thanks for all of the memories. I was just a grade schooler when the Chessie Steam Special, pulled by the famous 2101 pulled into Garrett, Indiana just north of my hometown of Fort Wayne. My dad piled the whole family in the car and we journeyed north for the event. FANTASTIC!! We still have a cassette tape of the sounds of that day. A life long memory for which I am eternally grateful. SALUTE!!

Posted from iPhone

I am sure glad that I was able to ride the first High Iron trip in 1966 and I would have been 17.  I also rode behind 1286 on the CNJ Southern Division all the way to Bridgeton.  I had lunch in the D&H diner that was on that train.  I think about that trip when I cross the track on Rt. 539 going to Long Beach Island.  We had a photo runby near that spot.  You would never know that today when you see the track condition, hard to believe that was over 50 years ago.

Wes, refresh my memory, I thought parts were secured from the 757 when 759 had a break down while on the Western Maryland.  I think that had to do with a cylinder problem, but I could be wrong.

Hank, thanks for all of the great memories with these posts!

Ron

Don Krofta was at the dedication of 759 at Conneaut in 1968 and shot 16mm film of the christening ceremony. His footage is in "Steam & Diesel on the NKP, Vol. 2" and will be repeated in "Nickel Plate 759 & the Last Pocahontas" which will be released in August or September.
-Jim Herron
Herron Rail Video
www.herronrail.com