I came upon this story.

http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/m ... xml&coll=2

Here are photos of said locomotive. It appears to be in pretty good shape.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPi ... x?id=75485

4018 was the engine that wrapped up steam operation on the Frisco on 2-29-52. Hope she finds a good restoration team and gets restored correctly (no whitewalls or fancy trim).

She has seen her share of vandals, I gather, yet appears to be well enough to warrant additional restoration work. The shell she was stored under, appear worse off than the locomotive!

What is attached to the front of the stack, as shown in these two photos?

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=627413
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=627414

Thanks. Seth

That's a stack light. It allows the fireman on an oil burner to see what is coming out of the stack during night runs. On an oil burner the fireman often tried to run a light haze from the stack. With a clear stack you did not know how much excess air you had; it could be 10% or 200%, it all looks the same. Firing with a light haze provided the best way to know the boiler was running at good efficiency without oxygen analyzers.

So did A&WP 290. That looks like an ashpan under 4018 too. I visited this locomotive a couple of years ago and remember her being really nice, with very few parts missing. I've been told that before the Frisco was taken over by BN, Frisco mechanical department employees were regularly sent to the park to care for the 4018.

Andrew Durden
SRM
Atlanta, GA

Yes, probably so, but to quell some nerves, here is a post pulled from my ALrails Yahoo! Group I own/moderate.

Re: [ALrails] RE: Fw: [serails] RED ALERT !!!!!


I am REALLY glad this came up!!

Actually...they aren't stolen..and are in safekepping.
The bell and headlight both are tucked away safely, awaiting ANYBODY who is
willing to help reinstall them.
Please do note that the nuts that hold the bell on are still on the threaded
studs still on the engine....awaiting reinstallation.
They were pulled during it's repaint back in the late eighties. A small bunch
of us got together to try to cosmetically restore it. Since no other group
was interested in trying to help it out. My fear was that...since it's jacket
had gotten water under it and had rusted through...somebody was eventuall going
to notice the asbestos that was beginning to hit the ground.
And as has happened with a lot of display engines around this geat
country...they were labeled as health hazards....and were scrapped on site.
I spent many a cold Saturday and Sunday up on her running boards pop riviting
sheet metal patches all over her. We got together right after we started and
removed the headlight and bell, because too many onlookers kept making remaks
of...."How much you reckon that bell weighs...and that would make a cool roof
mounted floodlight....
So we pulled them the following Saturday for fear they would end up stolen
before we could finish the job.
I even had a guy willing to eventualluy spot weld the thing back on. (the
nuts after the bell was reinstalled that is....but the headlight...being
aluminum...brought up a whole different problem.
It was removed to also install the busted out numberboards, and a new
acryilic lens.
All to be reinstalled as she was finished...along with a 110 volt line to her
headlight to light a 25 watt bulb...so everyone passing on the Bessemeer
Super Highway could see her looking at them...Indurall paints downtwn was nice
enough to donate twenty gallons of black paint for us to use. everything
else...sprayers, brushes sandpaper, thinner, soaps cleaners etc..., we paid for
out of
our own pockets.

One REALLY cool thing happened throughout all this though. From the
beginning...her front coupler knuckle had been missing, the pin too.
About halfway through the repaint....somebody shoved a brand new knuckle and
pin under the front of the fence.
Man...we felt like we'd been visited by Santa Claus...
and the donater never spoke up...
(I always had a gut feeling it was probably some ex Frisco person that
probably worked at East Thomas...but we'll probably never know...)

Anyway...eventually the harder the work became..the less anyone else would
show up to help.
I got half of her lettering done...before I was finally run off by gang
members and others throwing bottles and rocks at me. The fairground had 1 read
ONE
security guy...who was rarely seen. I didn't want to end up in a bloody pile
to be found in the tender.
So I finally had to give in...


SOOOOO... If ANYONE in this discussion bunch would like to get together this
summer and help me to put her back together, then let me know. I've had to
hang onto this stuff forever and a day now, cause all my help either discovered
women, got disinterested, moved away or died.

Oh...and a lot of her other aplliances....
Ended up on the 1218....

I too would loooove to see her back in action. HOD tried and almost got her
back in the late seventies....and was given B'hams blessing, but was stopped by
BN at the time, as they supposidly had the last say on what happened to
her....she (was) in really good shaped as she went through an overhaul just
prior
to being retired. Wish TVRM's shop could get a hold of her.

That's the problem....everybody wants them to be saved...but nobody thinks
about being the the caretaker....
Personally....I didn't want to see her on top of the same pile of rubble the
Terminal Station is now residing. This citys lost too much already....

I'll now step off of my soapbox...

Don't get me wrong...I ain't upset or anything...just needing some
help....and rambling!!
:-) :-) :-)

Chris Howard

Southern STILL Serves The South!!

Thanks for the update Dale. It's good to know the jewelry is safe and not residing in someone's collection.
Frisco 1501 at Rolla, MO has been missing the bell for years. Rolla is home to an Engineering college, so I'll bet a shakedown of frat houses, etc, would yield some jewelry also. Shame that people can't leave things alone that don't belong to them.
You may want to check under the jacketing for signs that the Frisco removed the lagging. That was a habit of theirs, removing all the lagging, tack welding spacers around the boiler and replacing the jacketing.
We were appreciative of that when we restored the 1522.
What the heck did that engine have that was usable on the 1218?

Don't get me to lying. I wouldn't have the slightest idea. I can't believe much other than knobs and handles and the like would be mateable (is that a word?) with the 1218. That may have just been a speculation on the original email authors part. I'm like you, though. I think that it'd be a stretch to think that some of 4018's parts are up in Roanoke on the 1218 as we speak.

As someone who is somewhat intimately familiar with 1218, I would be confident in stating that 1218's "stuff" is mostly original. I was an employee at Roanoke Transportation Museum from 1977 through 1980 and pretty much crawled all over her during that time. I helped reassemble and repaint her for display in 2002 and 2003, and except for the 26 brakes and some bearing substitutions, she was pretty much the same then. Of course, it's rather hard to tell one Nathan 4000 injector from another. I'm fairly certain that the missing injector from a certain 2-8-4 now in Ohio was last seen in Texas..............

4018 had Chicago injectors, so it wouldn't be that. I'm sure the boiler checks would have been too small for the A, besides being wrong. I really can't think of anything that could have been used, other than maybe class lights or something like that. Gauges?

I don't know anyone involved with this, but couldn't that be the same thing? Think what would happen if the person "preserving" the items croaks and all of a sudden, the family either doesn't recall what all this rusty old train stuff is for (or even worse, doesn't care) and suddenly it's given or sold to anyone who wants it? It sure wouldn't be the first time that's happened. If it's not with the actual owner of the locomotive (or at the very least, with their blessing), then in my mind, it is stolen.
I know of someone who has the builder plate of a different locomotive currently on "display" somewhere in a park (I won't go into which one) which was sitting on a dead line at the time he got the plate off it. I was earmarked for the town by then, but he did get the plate off it with the RR's knowledge. He feels that as this engine is in very poor condition right now, he's "preserving" the plate until the day comes that someone restores it to "his standard". He's very specific about that point, if it doesn't meet his standard, the plate won't return to the engine. I really doubt the town that owns the locomotive has a clue where that plate is today.
Anyone want to place bets on the likelihood that this plate will ever get within 100 miles of the engine? I truly imagine that even if the locomotive I'm referring to even gets restored to run (a highly unlikely possibility due to it's condition), he'll say the paint is the wrong shade, or they used the wrong typeface on the cab markings or something.

One way to prevent something sinister from happening if he croaks is to make it well known that he has whatever parts in his posession. From his family to the other project members, give them a list of what you have.
At one time, I had what seemed like half of the 1522 in my basement where I was restoring them through the week and working on the engine on the weekend. I had the headlight, whistle, class lights, smoke light, cylinder cocks, booster valves and fittings, dynamo and builders plates to name a few. The rest of the organization also knew that I had them. Likewise I had several items at my workplace for machining work. Power Reverse, bell ringer, etc. Since three other group members also worked there, it wasn't a secret.

Communicate!