An old friend shines at first light. The first golden rays of sunlight on a frosty morning in Martinsburg, PA, illuminate an old friend of mine that I first met over half a century ago in Northern New York.
Pictured here is a 1920 Alco Cooke-built 2-6-0 that was originally built for a Cuban Sugar Plantation, but the sale never happened. Instead, she ended up at the Narragansett Pier RR in Rhode Island, where she worked until 1938. It was then that she was sold to a short line called the Bath & Hammondsport, in the wine country of central New York. It is her career there that she was best known for and most fans of this engine still refer to her as B&H #11. When the B&H retired her in 1949, her owner could not bring himself to scrap the engine and she was stored for half a dozen years. In 1955, her owner found her another home at Dr. Stanley Groman's "Rail City Museum" in Sandy Pond, NY. Rail City was literally one of the first preservation steam operations in the entire country. It was there, along about 1967, that I first met this little gal. I was just a 10 year-old kid, but I still remember the B&H nickname "The Champaign Trail" painted on her cab. She was the first live steam engine I had ever seen or ridden behind. Alas, Rail City did not last and in 1972, the engine was sold. She literally sat in pieces for the next 40 years or so, until she was acquired by Alan Maples, the owner of Pennsylvania's Everett Railroad. She was restored there in 2016 to her former glory and now runs tourist excursions on former Pennsy trackage. Needless to say, I've been back to see the old girl several times since then.
In this sunrise image, the now Everett Railroad #11 makes a spirited run-by with a mixed train for a Historic Transport Preservation Charter in November of 2021. She is pictured northbound at the Renaissance Nutrition Complex near Martinsburg, PA, at about Milepost 20.
A continuously growing album of photos that IMHO reveal the awesome and seldom-seen beauty of the railroad world from the dimming of day to dawn's early light! From dusk to dawn, trains roll on! (I'm still finding gems of sunset-to-sunrise surprises!)
Steam scenes from Pennsylvania's Everett Railroad, featuring the former Bath & Hammondsport 2-6-0 #11, operating on photo charters and local Christmas Trains.
