Yet Another Inspection Locomotive

 

Inspection Locomotive Number 300 leaving the Stanislaus River bridge and carrying the superintendent to Oakdale.

Inspection locomotives are one of my weaknesses. My last such engine was reported on almost one year ago (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2020/12/another-inspection-engine.html). This engine is similar to the previous one in that it is a brass model of the Lehigh Valley's Dorothy. The main difference between this one and the previous loco is this engine represents an earlier version of the locomotive.

   

 Red Ball imported this piece in the 1960s-70s in both versions. Since this was the earlier version, I decided to add spoked wheels on the pilot and trailing trucks. A Minebea 15mm can motor with a new NWSL worm was installed along with a Tsunami2-Steam2 decoder. 

     In my research, inspection locos never were used west of the Rockies so these would be hard to find on a California railroad but, it's my railroad and I like them. If you are interested in learning more about these fascinating engines, pick up a copy of Railroad History magazine, issue No. 206. It has a very detailed article by Ron Goldfeder which covers about every inspection engine built. 

Another Inspection Engine

S&C Number 301 is ready to start serving the superintendent. All it needs now is an engineer and some white flags on the front of the engine.

I like inspection locomotives (http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/search/label/inspection%20loco). They are a very interesting part of nineteenth century railroading where a division superintendent would take his office out on the road to conduct business on site. They came in various shapes and sizes. Some were rebuilt older engines while others were purpose-built by the prominent manufacturers. Unfortunately, they faded away by the 1920s.

     The particular engine in question is a model of the Lehigh Valley's Dorothy. The prototype was built in the Lehigh's shops in 1884 and appeared somewhat differently than the model. The original loco was involved in an accident and was rebuilt to the appearance modeled. I didn't do much modeling here, though. The basic engine was imported by Red Ball beginning in 1963. I added a rear headlight, whistle and some step details. It was also remotored by a Minebea motor as described in http://sandcrr.blogspot.com/2020/08/new-motors-and-new-buggy.html. A Tsunami2-Steam2 decoder was added with a small sugar cube speaker. It was all fairly straight-forward except that all the wiring had to be accomplished through a small opening in the bottom of the body. This makes two engines for this superintendent which was two more than the Stockton & Copperopolis ever had. As I said above, though, I like these kinds of engines and I will probably built up a couple more in the future.

New Blog for the S&C and a New Engine

After a few years with a separate web page, I have decided that the Stockton & Copperopolis should join the blogging community. The old website (www.sandcrr.com) still exists but there will not be any new posts to it. The blog format should make it a lot easier for people to follow and for me to have more frequent postings. We'll see what happens.

The latest project was to get an inspection loco running. These little engines provided an easy, but dignified, way for the division superintendent to get out and inspect his part of the railroad. It didn't need the full five-man crew that a regular train used and it made seeing the line a lot easier. Perched over the boiler, the superintendent could readily observe the line, dictate notes to his secretary and then return when he was done without needing a turntable (note the pilot on the rear). Not being expected to pull any cars, the engine itself could be very light weight.

The Ellen is brass imported by Fomras in the 1990s. I installed a Loksound Select Micro decoder in the cab and a 3/8-inch speaker in the tank. I wanted to use a Tsunami but it was just too long for the space. It turns out that the Loksound decoder has a real nifty feature. When the engine first starts to move, you hear the hissing of steam coming from the cylinder cocks for a short while before the familiar chuffing begins.

The Star as it appeared in the 1890s

The prototype of this engine was built for the Central of New Jersey Railroad in the 1870s and served them for several. Although the inspection loco popularity was pretty much limited to the eastern part of the country, S&C management thought it was a much better way to get the super out on the road.