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Steamarama on the Soo Line Part 2 - The Dresser Turn 9/9/2007

I awoke at the Days Inn in Roseville, Minnesota and after a continental breakfast, drove over to Shoreham Yard for the second day of Steamarama on the Soo Line. Today we would travel from Shoreham Yard to Dresser and it would be brand new mileage for me from the yard to Marine-on-St. Croix.

I arrived as the Canadian Pacific Railway crew was cleaning and polishing the locomotive and checking over all parts on Canadian Pacific 4-6-4 2816.

Built by the Montreal Locomotive Works in December 1930, it is the only non-streamlined Hudson to be preserved. The locomotive was primarily used in pulling passenger trains in revenue service for thirty years before it was retired in May 1960. In 1963, it was sold to F. Nelson Blount, who added it to his Steamtown, U.S.A. collection in Bellows Falls, Vermont. After becoming surplus in the collection by the National Park Service, 2816 was reacquired by the Canadian Pacific in 1998 and crews from BC Rail were hired to extensively restore it to operating condition.

It was first assigned to premier passenger service between Winnipeg and Fort William, Ontario. Following the introduction of semi-streamlined Royal Hudson locomotives in 1937, it was re-assigned to secondary passenger service between Windsor, Ontario and Quebec City and during the 1950's, it pulled commuter trains between Montreal and Rigaud, Quebec. In 1957, 2816 received a minor overhaul, with its tender being replaced with one from Royal Hudson 2822. The locomotive was retired from revenue service on May 26, 1960, after accumulating 2,046,000 miles and was subsequently used briefly as a stationary boiler at the St. Luc yards in Montreal.

In the early 1960's, F. Nelson Blount wanted to expand his Steamtown, U.S.A. collection and one of the locomotives he initially wanted to preserve was a 4-6-4 from the New York Central Railroad. Since all NYC 4-6-4s were scrapped by that time, Blount improvised by purchasing 2816 from the Canadian Pacific in December 1963. The locomotive was removed from the scrap lines of Angus, Ontario, and it was put on static display at Steamtown's first location in Bellows Falls, Vermont. During No. 2816's time on static display, the locomotive deteriorated from the outdoor elements and its condition worsened for several years. In the winter of 1983-1984, it was moved along with the rest of the collection to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Steamtown was later reorganized as Steamtown National Historic Site under the ownership of the National Park Service. Following the reorganization, 2816 was deemed surplus in the collection and Steamtown wanted to dispose of it.

During the mid to late 1990's, the Canadian Pacific Railway's then-president and CEO, Robert Ritchie, reorganized the company and established the "Royal Canadian Pacific" excursion train to honour the railway's history and he sought for Canadian Pacific to operate their own steam excursion program. In 1998, the Canadian Pacific purchased 2816 from Steamtown and in exchange, the railway would move some equipment to Scranton. Canadian Pacific had heard of its availability via phone calls from BC Rail, who had been operating Canadian Pacific Royal Hudson 2860 as part of their own excursion program; the 2860 crews had been looking for replacement parts for the Royal Hudson and were offered to buy the entire locomotive by Steamtown.

A team of inspectors performed a preliminary inspection on 2816, and they pronounced that it was in good condition. In September 1998, the locomotive was coupled in a special consist led by Canadian Pacific GP38-2 3069, FP7 1400 and St. Lawrence and Hudson GP9u 8216, and it was ferried from Scranton to Montreal via Binghamton and Albany, New York, before travelling cross-country to the BC Rail steam workshop in North Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadian Pacific contracted the BC Rail steam shop crew, led by Al Broadfoot, to disassemble the steam engine and evaluate its condition; if it were salvageable, then they would restore it to operating condition, but if it were deteriorated beyond salvaging, then they would give it a cosmetic restoration for static display purposes.

When 2816 was disassembled, it was revealed that it was mechanically worn out, despite the preliminary inspectors having stated otherwise, but Rob Ritchie decided to approve a complete rebuild of the locomotive, regardless. Broadfoot and his team were able to obtain multiple plans and vital information about Canadian Pacific H1b class locomotives, including a collection of over 800 technical drawings provided by the Canada Science and Technology Museum and they used them as references for the project. Hundreds of replacement parts had to be fabricated by contractors in Vancouver, such as the cab, the running boards, the rod brasses, the superheater manifold, among others.

Contractors in the United States were hired to overhaul other major parts of 2816; the driving wheels were shipped to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the boiler was shipped to Doyle McCormack and his crews in Portland, Oregon. 2816's firebox was converted from coal to oil firing and the tender received dual water intakes with Canadian and American threads. Canadian Pacific gained so much faith in the project that on April 19, 2000, the railway announced that it would be scheduled to return to service for their steam program by September of that year, but the deadline was pushed back, due to further challenges encountered in the restoration process. The project spanned more than two years and incurred costs between $3 million and $3.5 million.

On August 15, 2001, 2816 passed its federal boiler inspection, and the following day, the locomotive was fired up for the first time in forty years, performing a series of test runs over three days on Canadian Pacific's Cascade Subdivision between Coquitlam and Mission. From September 19 to 23, with Al Broadfoot as the fireman and with Bill Stettler and Doyle McCormack taking turns as the engineer, 2816 pulled its first official inaugural excursion out of Port Moody, toured some of the Canadian Pacific mainlines for 672 miles over five days and then it stopped at Canadian Pacific's headquarters in Calgary, Alberta. The locomotive began pulling additional public relations excursions for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it quickly received the name "The Empress".

On May 16, 2002, the locomotive pulled two excursions for the West Coast Express. Between May 24 and July 8, 2003, 2816 toured the Canadian Pacific between Alberta and Ontario, and the purpose of the tour was to spread further public awareness of Canadian Pacific and to raise money for the children's "Breakfast for Learning" program. On September 27, 2816 visited the Kamloops Heritage Railway and took part in a doubleheader excursion with Canadian National 2-8-0 2141. In May 2004, 2816 pulled the Royal Canadian Pacific consist while performing a 3,000-mile tour across the Canadian Pacific between Vancouver and Montreal, and it marked the first time in fifty years that a single steam locomotive pulled a cross-country passenger train in Canada, but it was assisted by three Canadian Pacific heritage diesels.

In early June 2004, the Empress was ferried behind a Soo Line SD60 over the CSX mainline between Buffalo, New York and Chicago, Illinois, hen it travelled to the Twin Cities area in Minnesota to participate in the Grand Excursion 2004 event, which celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad's celebration train of 1854. 2816 pulled multiple public excursions for the event between the Twin Cities and the Quad Cities area in Iowa, using passenger coaches owned by Friends of the 261 and the last train took place on July 3; a doubleheader with Milwaukee Road 261 from St. Paul to La Crescent and return. 2816 returned from Minnesota to Calgary with a charity train later that same month.

Both the steam engine and the water car.

Still working on the engine. I needed a new floppy disc for the camera so went back onto the train but none of the twenty that I had with me would work for some unknown reason. I tried all of my tricks to no avail and surmised that the drive had given up the ghost. So I could not take any pictures but since I ridden this line in September 2002, will add those so you will at least have an idea of the part that the Osceola & St. Croix Valley excursion train runs over. As a result, I was able to just sit back and relax on a train excursion for a change.

This train consisted of Canadian Pacific 2816, water car 35508, Canadian Pacific GP38-2 3094, tool car Canadian Pacific 29114, generator car Canadian Pacific 96, PPCX 5534 "HR Bowen", NSR baggage 9107 (in Canadian Pacific colours), coaches Canadian Pacific 101 "Dominion", Canadian Pacific 102 "Ernest "Smoky" Smith", NSR 3103 "Wisconsin Valley" PPCX 800757, Milwaukee Road "Super Dome" PPCX 800862 and Skytop observation "Cedar Rapids" PPCX 800040.

At 10:25 AM, we started to reverse past the switch that led to the east yard bypass then we travelled by the Shoreham container facility and the old roundhouse on the way out of Shoreham Yard. We then ran along the Columbia Golf Course before branching right onto the Paynesville Subdivision at Central Avenue, passing homes and a Walmart. We crossed the Minnesota Commercial Railroad line at New Brighton, then crossed Interstate 35W and we saw Lake Johanna to the south. Next to the north was Island Lake and just before Interstate 694 was Grass Lake, before we reached Cardigan Junction where the line to St. Paul took off to the south. Our route took us to Vadnais Lake to the southeast, Sucker Lake and Gifillan Lake to the north before we ran beneath Interstate 35E. Birch Lake could be seen to the south, followed by Bald Eagle Lake before our train crossed US 61. White Bear Lake and Pine Tree Lake were to the south of our route then Mann Lake was to the north. This section of track offered the fastest speed of the day and we passed the Pine Tree Orchard before arriviving at Withrow, where we turned northeast onto the 24-mile Dresser Subdivision.

We ran at restricted speed since the Osceola & St. Croix Valley excursion train was running ahead of us at Marine and I would be riding over tracks I had ridden the day after the Erie Mining excursion in 2002 The train passed many unnamed lakes before reaching Maple Island, then Long Lake to the north and a few minutes later, Terrapin Lake before we reached Marine with its 3,094 foot siding, thus ending my new mileage for the moment. We then traversed Cough Road on a high fill through which the road before running through William O'Brien State Park, then proceeding out onto the large 286 foot Cedar Bend drawbridge.

A pair of pictures from the 2002 excursion as we crossed the St. Croix River. Once off the bridge, we crossed a long fill that used to be part of the wooden trestle and slowly climbed the grade along the river beneath the cliffs protected by slide protector fencing. I played 'spot the waterfall' game, finding both with Buttermilk Falls being the larger of the two. There were a lot of springs coming out of the rock and in the winter, they turn into ice flows which are very dangerous to operating trains. To the east was the old abandoned Bethema Mineral Springs bottling house before a vertical rock with the railroad cut out of the slope. We passed the Osceola station where a large group watched our train go by.

The section house in Osceola from 2002. As we departed, a large parade was occurring. The trip to Dresser was through woods then out across the farmlands with businesses and homes scattered about. At Dresser, the Osceola excursion train was in the siding and most passengers detrained for a photo runby. I stayed on the train and watched the runby before getting more new mileage around the Dresser Wye as we made our way down the former mainline to Sault Ste. Marie, reversed around the wye to the former Duluth mainline and returned to Dresser, where another photo runby was performed.

We departed at 2:42 PM and on the return trip, we passed a Canadian National freight at Cardigan. At University, we went straight staying on the Paynesville Subdivision instead of returning to Shoreham Yard, the way we came out. Good news! I would connect my mileage. Well, almost. Canadian Pacific 2816 came off the "High Line" and took a track that looped around the west side of Shoreham Yard then was stopped by an outbound stack train before we pulled around to clear the switch, then reversed into the loading area, ending another fantastic trip behind Canadian Pacific 2816.

I drove back to the airport, returned the rental car and went through Security. A TSA agent said if anyone was going to Gate C to come with him. We took the train to Sky Cap check-in and went through Security in three minutes versus the thirty at the other checkpoint. I went to Gate C3 and found a flight to New York so checked my boarding pass, only to find that it said G3, all the way at the other end of the airport. I had less than 18 minutes to get there so I ran but ran out of breath near the E Gates. A cart approached came but the driver informed me that he was going on a break. The next cart arrived and he took me to Gate G3, where I found my flight had not even arrived. I caught my breath as I waited for Northwest Airlines Flight 310 and we took off thirty minutes late, but arrived at Los Angeles International Airport only fifteen minutes late.

I went down to wait for the shuttle back to Easy Park, paid to get out and drove home, ending another excellent rail adventure behind Canadian Pacific 2816.