Came upon the photo recently.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 429&nseq=2

Whatever happened to R&R #19, and its sister engine, #31? These two Mikes were probably the best engines that ever worked the R&R. I know that one came from Woodward Iron, but not sure how the railroad acquired the other one. I think that these were in pretty good condition when steam was retired and it would seem that one of them would be a good candidate to provide future steam operations to the South Carolina Railroad Museum, which operates over the old R&R. Has the museum ever given any thought to trying to re-acquire one of the 2-8-2's?

Les

Les- #19 is on display at a railroad museum in downtown Greenwood, SC. They used to be open ~2 days/year, but I believe they are open more frequently now.

#31 is on display in Waycross, GA.

Sure would love to see one of them run at the SCRM.

The Greenwood museum is making plans for a major expansion and overhaul of their railroad collection is a significant part of the effort. No idea when it will occur - but it includes closing down their downtown facility and expanding the railroad location with new buildings, etc. The focus of their collection is P&N and a sort of generic 1964 passenger train consist. They have some fairly major things to address - like an undermined track - but I'd look forward to the creation of a real museum with a strong railroad theme developing there within the next few years, depending.

dave

Here's a link to info on the museum: http://www.emeraldtriangle.sc/Museum/Ra ... enter.aspx (you can just see #19 in a photo).

Here's a link to the #31 at the Okefenokee Heritage Center in Waycross: http://www.railga.com/ondispl/wayloco.html

These are interesting 2-8-2's. They're built more like extra-large 2-8-0's with a trailing axle added. The firebox is above the rear drivers as on a wide-fireboxed 2-8-0 but it extends rearward more than on a conventional 2-8-0.

IIRC both locomotives were originally built by Baldwin for the same railroad; they were acquired second-hand by the R&R several years apart. I have a builder's photo of one of them that shows the original valve chests were smaller and I believe they originally had Stephenson valve gear as well.

Dave -

Perhaps the SCRM might think about working with the Greenwood museum to see if a trade could be worked out so that the 19 might end up back on the old R&R. I think that SCRM has a former R&R ex-ACL 2-8-0 that they consider as being non-restorable to operation. Perhaps agreeing to doing a nice cosmetic job on restoring that engine for display might mean that the Greenwood museum would consider a trade for the 19. Of course, this is only IF the SCRM might be thinking of a restored steamer sometime in their future. Maybe they have no such ideas. In that case....never mind!

Les

Not my call Les - but I would love to see SCRM expand their programming into steam, and use R&R hardware. They operate a fine Canadian transit museum on a SC Quarry line. I always thought a ride on rock cars out into the quarry would be much more memorable...........and unique.

Anyhow if they wish to pursue it they could start talking now. Once the Greenwood museum moves stuff around as part of their track rehabilitation, and 19 gets abated and cosmetically restored, they would likely not wish to deal with disruption of making a trade.

dave

Speaking of the R&R equipment, does anyone have good photos of the two cars?

Does anyone know how complete the combine is (motors, control, etc)?

I assume the private car lasted into the diesel era R&R, but how did the combine come to be preserved?

Combine (classroom car) has neither motors nor controls. SAL used it for mobile teaching, so it survived in that form. Business car is in a renmarkable state of preservation, just beginning to show some more than surface cosmetic issues. Caboose has been mostly stripped of interior fittings, rusting badly at side sills.

dave

The 712 doesn't belong to SCRM, it's owned by a local individual who, after much negotiation, finally agreed to lease it to the Museum. I was in on those negotiations; with the trouble we went through just to get a 15-year lease (now about half up) on that pile of junk, trading it is almost certainly out of the question. It was moved twice a couple years ago when the South Track at Rion was rebuilt. A storage siding was built and it was shoved right up to the end of it. That's the last anybody has given it any serious thought. Nobody wants to invest any money or time in it with the owner so possessive and hard to deal with. He has a rather inflated idea of its value. If the Museum is still around when he turns up his toes, maybe then...

Many volunteers at the Museum have wanted to get a teakettle of our own hot for a very long time. John Gramling's visits have only increased that desire. The 75 is fun, but she's tiny and doesn't like the hills on the R&R. The Gramlings are working on an 0-6-0T; if they can finish it and bring it to Rockton, we might actually see some steam trips through the cut to Rion again. It's all the 75 can do to get three Canuks up the 1.1% from Rockton to Greenbrier. That and time considerations are why the steam trips have terminated at Greenbrier. There was some talk about inviting the 1925 down from Spencer, but with that engine o/s indefinitely that doesn't look very likely now.

IMHO, SCRM isn't ready for its own active steamer, despite the increased hot air now being expended on the subject (pity hot air won't boil water). There's still no maintenance building of any kind on the property, and all four Canuk coaches need serious work on the vestibules and interiors (at least they've been repainted and the pantographs removed). The current leadership is more interested in building a depot at Rockton right now. I agree that a depot is very much needed, but to me, the first responsibility of a "museum" is to preserve what it has, and doing so requires a place to work on stuff. Fourteen years of saying that hasn't had any effect, though, so I've given up.

Anyway, the Greenwood folks are very much aware that SCRM would like the 19 back. Frankly, I've always wanted to get hold of the whole collection over there. The DL&W diner and Erie sleeper could be good trade bait, while the SAL coach would fit the display passenger train very nicely. The P&N trolley is not only sans motors and controls, BTW, it has no seats either. The Greenwood folks had some chairs and such in there last time I visited but the original seats were gone. Makes sense if SCL used it as a classroom car.

Hmm, I wonder if they need any help down there, Greenwood isn't quite as long a drive (I live outside Greenville now)...

Regarding the 19 and 31, both were originally built for Woodward Iron in Birmingham. The 19 (Baldwin #29383, built 11/1906) came to the R&R in 1936 through Birmingham Rail & Locomotive. The 31 (Baldwin #38813, built 11/1912) didn't arrive until January 24, 1962. Both left the property in the 1970s. Apparently, the 19 went into Greenwood by rail and under her own power. An interesting side note, both injectors are on the right side of the cab. Kind of ironic since the last engineer, L.A. Thompson, was a black man promoted up from the left side!

The "Canadian railroad museum" comment isn't very accurate, BTW. The four coaches are the only Canuk stuff at Rockton. They have lost their pantographs and are now painted Pullman green, so they don't look very CN-ish any more. Forget those "R&R quarry cars," you've been shaving with 'em for nearly 40 years now. If you know where similar equipment (40' flats and low-side gons) can be had for love or money, please tell me! Besides, John Q. Public would much rather ride in a passenger coach, Canadian or otherwise, than in a converted freight car. If only those Southern coaches hadn't been sold to Napa Valley to finance the move from Charleston to Rockton...

Regarding other surviving R&R stuff, aside from the 19 and 31, there's the 203 in Knoxville. The 203 was seldom seen outside the enginehouse, although she was occasionally used for switching in Anderson Quarry. The 20, a Rogers 0-4-0T now stuffed and mounted in Cleveland, GA, was also seldom used. There used to be two diesels surviving, a Plymouth and a Superior Stone GE 70-tonner. I don't know if either of these is still extant or not. All other surviving R&R equipment is already at the Museum -- the 712, two dump cars, the frame of a third dump car that's now a "stock car," a little Vulcan gas-mechanical (or most of it, anyway), and the American crane. The R&R's motor car was allegedly purloined in the early 1980s; while most long-time SCRM members have a good idea who took it, no one actually knows where it is.