Railroad group still fighting for locomotive

The long-running fight over a historic Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad locomotive that a railroad group wants to return to Scranton is headed back to a federal appeals court in St. Louis.

The Lackawanna Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Inc. has appealed a federal judge's decision that DL&W 952 may remain at St. Louis County's Museum of Transportation even though the museum does not own the 104-year-old steam engine.

In his June 5 ruling in favor of the museum, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. rejected the Lackawanna Chapter's attempt to retake possession of the 952, finding the organization waited too long to file a lawsuit seeking the locomotive's return.

Attorney Joseph O'Brien, who represents the chapter, said it is hard to fathom a government entity - in this case St. Louis County, which took over the museum in 1984 - wanting "to rely on that type of technicality to hang onto something they don't own."

"It's not the way a government should be acting, in my judgment," Mr. O'Brien said. "I just can't imagine what the public officials out there are thinking."

Efforts to reach Robert Moore, assistant county counselor for St. Louis County, were unsuccessful.

According to court documents, DL&W donated the center cab or "camelback" locomotive to the historical society in 1939, and the organization offered it to the Missouri museum as a "permanent loan" in 1952. The group gave the 952 to its Lackawanna Chapter, based in Washington, N.J., in 1999.

Efforts to bring the 952 back to Pennsylvania for display at Steamtown National Historic Site intensified in the mid-1990s. When the museum would not relinquish the locomotive, the Lackawanna Chapter sued in 2004.

In 2006, a federal judge ruled the Museum of Transportation had presumptive ownership of the locomotive. However, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reversed the decision a year later and sent the case back to the Eastern District of Missouri to determine whether the railway society should have the opportunity to reclaim possession.

In his decision, Judge Limbaugh found the five-year statute of limitations during which the historical group could stake claim to the locomotive started running in 1995 or 1996, when the museum refused multiple requests to give up the 952. Whether measuring from 1995 or 1996, the five-year window had closed by the time the group took legal action, the judge said.

But Mr. O'Brien contends the Lackawanna Chapter, which was not even the owner until 1999, did not demand the locomotive's return until 2002, meaning its 2004 lawsuit came well within the five-year limit. That is one of the bases for the new appeal filed with the 8th Circuit Court.

Mr. O'Brien said he expects the appeals court to hear arguments later this year.

Molly Butterworth, curator at the Museum of Transportation, referred questions to Mr. Moore, the assistant county counselor.

One of only 3 remaining “camelback” locomotives:

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/camelback/
“”The anthracite coal-carrying railroads of eastern and central Pennsylvania burned the very product that they carried from the mines to the market. Out of this close association, a steam locomotive was developed that allowed these roads to burn the cheapest grade of this abundant fuel.
An individual who played a major role in this development was John E. Wootten (1822-1898). Wootten began his association with railroading in 1837, as an apprentice with the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Later, in 1845, he joined a railroad that became part of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad and rose through the ranks to become the Superintendent of Motive Power of the P & R Railroad in 1866, and the General Manager of the entire Reading system in 1876.

At the time he became GM, anthracite or hard coal which burns slowly and with little smoke was used for home heating. This coal had to be screened to remove fine material and to carefully size the coal before shipping it from the mines. Waste anthracite known as culm, which resulted from handling and preparation, was piled high at the mines and amounted to almost 20% of production and had no commercial value. Anthracite coal was only found in eastern Pennsylvania, and the railroads that hauled the coal often burned it for fuel.

Wootten, who had watched the piles of waste grow into small mountains, wanted to find a way to use this plentiful resource. He experimented with culm to find a way to use this abundant and cheap fuel. He concluded that a very low firing rate worked best and the Reading began to use culm in stationary boilers at its shops and stations. Culm did not burn well in the long narrow fireboxes that were typically located between the frames of the locomotives of the day. A thick fire is required in these fireboxes and the heavy draft needed to keep them burning would blow the fine coal off the grate.

In 1877, Wootten patented a boiler design that would burn the small sizes of anthracite. To accomplish this, the grate area was widened so as to make it about twice the size of those in use at the time without increasing the distance that the fireman would have to throw the coal. A combustion chamber extended forward into the boiler barrel and was separated from the firebox by a bridge wall. The large grate allowed the culm to be spread in a thin layer so it could burn with a moderate draft. Most, if not all Wootten locomotives had twin firedoors. Another feature of Wootten’s original design (that did not last too long) was water cooled grates!

Adapting this new firebox to a locomotive required it to be located above the driving wheels because its width would not permit it to fit between them. However, locating it in front of the crew cab obstructed the engineer’s view. So the engineer’s cab was moved ahead of the firebox and located astride the boiler and the fireman remained in the rear of the locomotive and was provided minimum protection from the weather. Here is a case where form followed function and a new type of locomotive was born which became known as a “Mother Hubbard” or more losely known as a “Camelback” (see below) or maybe more descriptively as a “center-cab locomotive”.

The “Anthracite Railroads” were very quick to adopt this new cost saving design and began to develop locomotives of all types. Most camelbacks were built as 0-4-0, 4-4-0, 4-4-2, 0-6-0, 2-6-0, 4-6-0, 0-8-0, 2-8-0, or 4-8-0. However, the following wheel arrangements were also used: 4-2-2, 2-4-2, 2-6-2, 4-6-2, 2-8-2, and 2-10-0. There were three 0-8-8-0 “Mallets” built by ALCO for the Erie Railroad in 1907 and a very unusual cross compound 2-6-6T built for the P&R.

The first locomotive to have a Wootten firebox was a 4-6-0 built in the Reading, PA shops of the P&R in early 1877. Even though the culm had to be cleaned before it would burn well, the fuel cost savings for a ten wheeler was $2,000.00 a year (about $30,000.00 in 1998 dollars) and by 1883 the P&R had 171 Wootten equipped locomotives.

The camelback was an ideal passenger locomotive because the hard coal burned almost without smoke. Some impressive speeds were obtained with these locomotives as very often they would turn in an average speed of under a mile a minute. Five Class P5se P&R “Atlantics” numbers 340, 342, 343, 348 and 349, routinely made the 55.5 mile trip from Camden, NJ to Atlantic City, NJ in under one hour. One of these “Atlantic City Flyers” number 343 ran the trip in 41 minutes, start to stop, in June of 1907.

There were many safety concerns with the camelback locomotive. The fireman had a very difficult life, being exposed to the elements and having to balance himself on a moving platform while stoking the fire. The engineer sat over the whirling side rod and had no way to escape should a rod break. In 1918, the Interstate Commerce Commission banned further construction of camelbacks, but allowed a few exceptions up to the early 1920s. Finally in 1927, the ICC forbade any more orders for the center cab locomotive on the grounds of safety.

A number of these “camelbacks” were rebuilt into end cab locomotives. The Erie mallets, mentioned above, were rebuilt as end-cab 2-8-8-2s. They were used as helpers over the Starucca Viaduct until the late 1920s. “”

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