Steam & Excursion > Steam in Michigan today with PM 1225

Photo 1. Leaving Owosso. I heard the locomotive soon after it got going... About a mile away.

Photo 2. This is at the Juddville Road crossing just outside of Carland.

Photo 3. I took these and the next two from M-57 just before the track crosses the highway. It's a good thing that the crops are all in :-)

So I live in Mt Pleasant. I got on the road at 08:30 and got to Owosso at maybe 90:40 or :45. I scoped out a few spots, and finally settled on King road in Owosso a few minutes later. I freeze my butt for a while, and then hear 3 toots... A few minutes later, I hear the toot-toot and he is on his way. After he passed (10:12) I zipped up Delaney to Juddville and waited for maybe 5 minutes until he showed up for the second shot (10:30). I then went north on Carland to M-57, took a left and got to the Ashley crossing at least five minutes before he showed up again. I kept to the speed limits and arrived with time to spare. A few over-eager types zipped around me ;-)

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4. The train has passed, and I snap one of the GLC loc that runs on Alco trucks. These old Ann Arbor locos are really getting to be long in the tooth, but they continue on to burble down the road.

5. This should switch places with #4. Anyway, PM 1225 was close and I got decent close-up here.

As far as I know, the engine runs through the 22 of December.

John.

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What a beautiful set of pictures of an equally beautifully proportioned locomitive.  Great job!  This is on my bucket list of things to photograph someday.

Beautiful photos. This group deserves a lot of credit for the job they do keeping this great locomotive alive and well. Thanks for sharing.

    Ross Rowland 

co614 Wrote:
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> Beautiful photos. This group deserves a lot of
> credit for the job they do keeping this great
> locomotive alive and well. Thanks for sharing.
>
>     Ross Rowland 

I agree with Ross on this statement.  I'd love to see this engine back out on the main line again some day.
John in White Marsh, Maryland

Thanks, guys. It's snow and mostly ice today, so I'm staying by the gas log for now. I'm hoping to get out a few more times before the PM 1225 show is done this year.

John.

Nice pics!!

A beautiful piece of hardware.

Nice to see the pix.  Thanks.

-LD

Tnx for pix, Bix, and animated narration, now I don't feel so bad for missing any 4014 chase. Happy Holidays, Dude.

Steve Donaldson
Pacific Grove, CA

There is a video going around Facebook of a group of photographers getting to close to the tracks on the runs this weekend. A woman was so close her jacket sleeve was hit by 1225 and torn. A few more inches and she probably ends up like the lady in Colorado that 844 hit. Search Facebook for either IRM Steam Team or Scott Shields for the video

Posted from iPhone

Too close?

Theyll scatter if you come at them with the cylinder cocks blowing...
Blows them back from the tracks...

The sudden expansion of the steam cools it down to a sauna-like temp....
The loud noise, the billowing clouds startle the subjects...a reflex reaction..
But it scatters the fools quickly...it’s best in cold, cool weather as it soaks their phones and cameras ....

But crews need to be instructed & prepared to blow the fools away from the trackside...

Wes Camp

Wes:

Go look at the video. It's terrifying. No amount of cylinder cock venting would have detered this lady from getting her picture.

The worst part of it is, a dozen people visible in the frame, including the photographer taking the video posted, did NOTHING to warn her or move her to a safer location.

SRK

wcamp1472 Wrote:
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> Too close?
>
> Theyll scatter if you come at them with the
> cylinder cocks blowing...
> Blows them back from the tracks...
>
> The sudden expansion of the steam cools it down to
> a sauna-like temp....
> The loud noise, the billowing clouds startle the
> subjects...a reflex reaction..
> But it scatters the fools quickly...it’s
> best in cold, cool weather as it soaks their
> phones and cameras ....
>
> But crews need to be instructed & prepared to blow
> the fools away from the trackside...
>
> Wes Camp

Steve Krause
Chillicothe, IL

SRK,

From experience, the open cylinder cocks do indeed "move the people back away from the edge of the tracks"! I can tell you from first hand experience, I have seen it work literally hundreds of times.

You want to activate the ( involuntary)  “Startle Reflex” in the trespassers 

To do that, you must be close enough to the trespassers so the reflex reaction “kicks-in” before the brain ‘reasons’ it out.
The “automati”  nature of Startle Reflex is what makes it effective..

I, like Jack, have experienced the same success with judicious use of the cylinder cocks....I would yell at Ross ( from across the cab) to alert him of trespassers on my side of the loco....sure enough, that would quickly scatter ...
Works every time when we did it ( 759 NEVER struck a by-stander during any of our excursions).   

I also noted that the only auto drivers that dared to race us to the crossings, were dare-devil, movie-shooting foolish fans—- 
they always cleared the crossing just before we got there.  I never saw the ‘general public’ race us for thecrossing.
Most of them were intrigued and enjoyed by the steamer’s “attracting display of power”..

​W.

I agree if you see the people that close open the cylinder cocks well before hand and that should be enough of a deterrent to get them back

Posted from iPhone

SR_Krause Wrote:
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> Go look at the video. It's terrifying. No amount of cylinder cock venting would have detered this lady from getting her picture.

I'm not sure how long a horn blast can be done with steam. The engineer tried to warn them back with multiple blasts. I agree that venting would not have helped. She was not going to budge.

Steam consumption of a whistle...

Most steam loco whistles have a narrow, circular slot at the base that directs the expanding steam past the base openings of the tuned tubes.  That extreme speed of the escaping steam-column causes the brass tubes to loudly resonate, similar to the action of organ pipes.

The actual amount of steam consumed is extremely small.
it makes a lot lot of noise, but that’s related to the fact that steam,  escaping to the atmosphere, expands by 15,000-times its volume when it was confined  in the boiler under pressure.  
That’s where the noise comes from...

W.

wow. beautiful photos of a great-looking locomotive.

My favorite Christmas locomotive.