Garden Railroading: A Saturday Night Steam-Up

A Saturday Night Steam-Up

A note came in from Mark in my inbox reading...

Hi Mike, wonderful blog post today from the Saturday-morning activities. And thank you for announcing the upcoming Garden Railway News issue!

Andrew and I had some fun at Fred’s last evening. We came to test out a new live steamer I had just acquired and fire it up for the very first time. Here are my photos and story. Andrew, please add to it if anything is missing. I can’t remember if you also took photos, but you can send them along to Mike. I think the videos tell the story even better than the photos for this particular run, so I will send those along momentarily. I hope you can create a blog posting from this session. We had a ton of fun!

This full posting comes from the words of Mark.

Blog entry for “A Saturday night steam-up"

After the busy crowds had departed earlier in the day, Andrew and Mark descended on the IPP&W to enjoy a little Saturday night live-steam fun.

Mark has recently acquired a live-steam Mikado and is eager to try it out. It has never been fired up (the previous owner kept it new) so let’s see how she runs. It comes packed in a huge aluminum “suitcase on wheels"

Fred admiring the new loco… let’s take a closer look.

Here she is: Aristocraft live steam Mikado, in special edition Canadian Pacific livery, road number 5167. About to embark on her maiden voyage.

Live steamers, of course, need both water and fuel. Andrew is eagerly measuring out the water to fill the boiler. Thanks to Fred for keeping a supply of distilled water at hand!

The fire has been lit and steam pressure slowly starts to build. We’ll be able to operate at about 25-30psi… must stay patient!

And she’s off… departing Craig Leigh, having passed through Douglas Yard, now steaming through the Northland Interchange.

What’s this? A live-steam meet up? While CP 5167 was being put through her paces, Andrew had steamed up his USRA 0-6-0 Canadian National. Three-dimensional meet up between Ironwood and Spruce.

Looking handsome steaming over in Bellamy.

Pretty sharp over at Peter’s Pond...

And the moment we’ve been waiting for: a true meeting of kindred spirits (or friendly competitors?) CN and CP over at the Watkins approach to Bell Junction. My goodness, I feel like we’ve been magically transported to the early half of the twentieth century, when the “iron horse” ruled supreme over all of this great, vast land.

This approach to Fir Grove could be like climbing a heavily-forested mountain pass… just use your imagination a bit!

Having arrived at Fir Grove, the terminus of the line, we check whether CP 5167 can fit on the turntable (she can…)

Meanwhile, having been teased a bit by Fred… Andrew sets out to prove that his trusty 0-6-0 is indeed a fine workhorse of the rails: seen here maneuvering a unit-train consist of tankers through Ironwood. I think this loco can join a true operating session anytime. Indeed, our hope is to see both live steamers in action one day at a Saturday morning ops session (they are both standard gauge locos but we can “pretend” that they can fit thematically better with the narrow gauge steam locos… take your pick…) The Mikado would look fine indeed pulling a matching maroon set of heavyweight passenger cars, and the CN 0-6-0 would look great pulling the ore train, for example.

Thank you, Mark for your amazing coverage of the evening's events. To watch videos Mark took, simply copy and paste the links below into your computer's browser. (I snipped an image from each video to accompany the link. Mike)