|
Our railroad is narrow gauge, about 2' wide; standard gauge is 4' 8.5" wide. The nearby NORFOLK & SOUTHERN line suffered a derailment near Emporium, PA. The had to dig up and replace many of their standard gauge ties. B&WRR Co., Inc. was fortunate to be gifted the excess ties from the repair work! What can we do with standard gauge ties? We trim them down to narrow gauge size. Overall, we were able to cut 200 ties for use by the B&W. 
0 Comments
Over Memorial Day weekend, the B&W Crew fired up Otto for first since October '98. Otto ran well with only minor adjustments required. 2230 feet of track was laid, taking the main to the end of the graded roadbed. Now a decision had to be made as to which way the main was going to go. Either way the grading had stopped at a sixty-foot wide 20-foot high gully. Brookville number three was put into service after being torn all the way down, regauged by moving the main frame in, bigger windows fit in, and reassembled.  With the money from the scraped cars from Teldyne Corp, the B&W erected a 24X45 two-track engine house. This included a workbench, office and tool rack. With new room to work flatcar number 30 was built and caboose number 100 was started. 300 feet of main line was laid, Otto received a new paint job, And railroaders day was moved to August. A new car number 2420 was constructed at the T&S shops for the B&WRR Co. This was the railroads first big car and was used as a work and passenger car. The spring saw another large donation coming from Joyce National Powder of Elderd PA. This donation included ¾ mile of track, 4 Brookville locomotives, and five cars. It took the B&W crew 11 weekends to tear up and haul it all home. The B&W keep one Brookville, Which is now number four (Joe), And two cars that became flat car number 30 and caboose number 100. This year a large donation from Teldyne Corp in Pittsburgh, yielded the B&W with lots of 60-pound rail. The large ingot cars that were donated with the rail were no use to the railroad and way to big, so they were scrapped in Pittsburgh for much needed cash.
The two Pittsburgh Shawmut and Northern cabooses acquired by the railroad were moved from storage to the B&WRR Co. and the T&S (another local narrow gauge rr). The railroad had reached a point of needing to do some grade work to extend the line. The railroad was fortunate enough to have a plant being built next to the property and was able to get a large amount of grading done this year. This grading was from well to bridge see track plan. Also due to future line expansion the first curve on the main was re-laid  The B&WRR Co. received a large donation of locomotives, cars, and track from Sherwin Williams paint factory in Kansas. The donation included four Whitcomb locomotives, 24 bottom dump hoppers, a tank car, and 40-pound rail. The year also saw some of the main line relayed, as the crew got better at laying and lining track.  The B&W acquired three Vulcan locomotives from a glue factory in Gowanda NY. The B&W would keep one, one went to friends across town, and the third to a friend in Pittsburgh. This Vulcan would become B&W number three with a nickname of Norman for its sometime cranky behavior. Due to flood damage at his Wilkes-Barre railroad George Spohrer’s Herschel was stored at the B&W facilities until sold to an individual in Kane PA. October 7th saw the B&W second annual railroader’s day with the Horseshoe, Lake Shore, and Buffalo Chapters of the NHRS present. |
RSS Feed
