Railway Pics - Locos, Rolling Stock, Buildings, Etc!

[beckychestney]

Hey! I hit the magic number! Here are a few more!



The Midwest Railway Preservation Society has open houses at the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad roundhouse here in Cleveland several times a year. One of their restoration projects was this wagon top caboose.



The group also has the "Mt. Baxter" Pullman car which was used in the filming of "The Natural" with Robert Redford in 1983.



Also local (was just out there on Tuesday) is this little 1922 Vulcan.

[beckychestney]

Has anybody been to the Warther's museum?



Ernest "Mooney" Warther was a master carver and his life work was to carve the history of the steam locomotive. Every piece, even the tiny rivets, are hand carved with knives he made himself. Also no glue was used in the construction. All parts are held in place by friction. And as if that's not impressive enough, all his models are capable of movement and, I was stunned to learn, that no lubricants of any kind are used.



The coal tender of the Hudson has a hidden compartment where diagrams and lists of the construction details of the model are preserved. If you press the right lump of coal it opens! Not for us visitors of course, it's behind glass in an environmentally controlled chamber!







The Big Boy. All of Mooney's models are roughly G-Scale in size. Some, like the Big Boy, turn around on a pedestal while their wheels go round.



Down in the backyard, the museum is behind Mooney's house, is this little loco. It looks like a Porter that may have seen use on Cuban rails.



They also have this nice cab.

[Don Boose]

Great images, Becky. I especially liked the images of B&O rolling stock, being an old Baltimore boy from the days when the B&O still existed as a revenue railroad with those bay-window cabooses (not the wood sheathed ones, unfortunately) and Diesel locomotives (and tug boats) in the simonize color scheme (blue, gray, and dulux gold stripes).

Don

[Kevin WS]

Interesting selection of rolling stock Beck. Thank you!

Those models are very impressive!

Have you any idea of what materials were used to make them?

[beckychestney]

The majority of the black locos are carved of ebony with ivory, mother of pearl and/or bone (usually from their table) details. The Big Boy was carved from mahogany as were many others from his early years. In later years he worked almost exclusively with ivory (legal back then). One of the most useful things about the museum for us modelers is that every part was precisely made using real RR bluebrints. Here's a display of parts that were carved in bone that Mooney later replaced with ivory:



He started making the locomotives after he went about as far as he could with "ordinary" whittling. One of the most famous pieces in the collection is this "tree":



Carved from one very odd looking piece of wood it's made entirely out of pairs of pliers! Again, thousands of cuts, no glue, no pins. He just made the cuts, and then opened it up!

His grandson, David Warther, has a museum of his own just down the road. He works there daily carving the history of sail:





To get details like deck planking he scores the surface and then rubs ink into the cuts.

[Kevin WS]

Thank you Becky - appreciate the feedback and the extra photos!

Even more impressive!

[Kevin WS]

Its been a while since anyone posted here.

Back to the topic of theft.

The national museum here had a large number of steam locos in storage, but given the crime levels and the fact they are made of metal it was only a question of time.....

Some 50 odd locos at one location were cut up by armed criminals who stormed a site and then used heavy equipment. When this site was emptied they then started on the main museum site. It was clear, despite deployment of armed guards, that we were fighting a losing battle, and the decision was them made - reluctantly - to start cutting locos before the criminals. This step at least provided funds to move a handful of "special" locos.

In the meantime the actual railways themselves faced the same problems (as well as storage costs) and decided to go the same route. Several hundred locos where then cut by them.

I took the pics below during part of the "legal" cutting process, both at the railways and the museum.

ALL the locomotives pictured were cut up.

[Don Boose]

Very sad, but appreciate the photographic documentation.

Don

[Kevin WS]

Thanks Don.

Just over 18 months saw something like 1,500 mainline steam locos reduced to about 30......

Not enough interest or money either unfortunately to retain them. So it goes.

[beckychestney]

That was a spectacular collection. Incredibly sad to see them vandalized.