A Missing Locomotive
Missing locomotives occasionally make headlines. Someone discovers that in 19XX, a locomotive pitched over sideways in a swamp - and is still there.
I was recently apprised of a missing miniature locomotive - small in size, but historically significant enough to be relevant to this blog. Of note, the engine was designed in the early 1890s by the general superintendent of a Pennsylvania shortline, and if it still exists, likely has its original planished iron boiler jacket and preserved 1890s paint.
How can one be so sure? Because its two sisters are preserved in this condition.
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DS&S No.4, preserved at Eckley Miners' Village. Photo by Michael Hostetter.
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The Delaware, Susquehanna & Schuylkill Railroad was a full-sized, standard-gauge railroad chartered in 1890 by the Coxe coal mining enterprise in Pennsylvania to connect their coal fields with the national rail network. The shortline eventually stretched some 32 miles, with multiple branches tapping the coal fields.
General superintendent of this shortline, which rostered about 30 locomotives, was a bright young man named Daniel Coxe. Coxe suffered from a health condition which made it hard for him to ride horses, or even step up into carriages. Apparently, however, riding on the tender of a miniature live steam locomotive was fair game.
About 3700 feet of 9-inch-gauge track were laid connecting Coxe's home with the company shops at Drifton. This apparently was how Coxe commuted to work. He also used the miniature locomotives to tinker with new locomotive theories he could apply to his full-sized steeds. The miniatures were, of course, live steamers - and one article in 1890 describes the diminutive No. 3 as "the smallest locomotive in service in America."
There is very little literature available on this unique miniature railroad and an Internet search yields almost nothing. It is, in a way, a ghost railroad.
However, two of the locomotives are prominently displayed, one at Eckley Miners' Village near Weatherly, PA, and the other surreptitiously tucked in the loft of the entry foyer at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, in Strasburg. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you'd likely walk right past it.
Nine-inch Gauge
In North America in the 21st century, there exists precisely one operating nine-inch gauge railroad: a suave and impressive little pike called the Mesa Grande Western near Pearblossom, California.
There are hundreds if not thousands of rideable miniature railroads in the United States, but nine-inch gauge never took off. It's been confined to footnote railroads here, and there, with an occasional more mainstream foray.
One of those more mainstream railroads was the Centerville & Southwestern, built to 9-7/16" gauge, which during the 1950s and 60s enjoyed international renown as one of the premier miniature railroads in the world - possibly more famous in its time than Walt Disney's Carolwood Pacific.
The Centerville was so highly regarded because it was an act of education: run extremely prototypically, it operated on a published timetable, ran multiple trains simultaneously over its block signal equipped point-to-point route, and was lavished with extreme care and upkeep. The railroad is still in operation today at Phillipsburg, NJ, under the stewardship of the Phillipsburg Railroad Historians - moved from its original location and much diminished from its original stature, but steadily expanding, and with a lively fanbase.
There are conflicting reports about the actual gauge of the miniature DS&S. Most newspapers say 9" gauge, but a sign at Eckley says 9-7/16" - the same gauge as the Centerville. Until somebody measures the wheels on one of the locos, the exact gauge of the DS&S is unconfirmed.
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| Centerville & Southwestern 1501, widely regarded as one of the finest live steam locomotives ever built in the USA. Constructed in 1940 by the vice president of ALCO and the retired president of H.K. Porter, it sported an actual ALCO-built boiler and superheaters. Live Steam Magazine, Feb. 1974. |
The Missing Locomotive
Because I volunteer at the Centerville & Southwestern, I am very interested in railroads of similar gauge. Nine-inch-gauge railroading is a small club.
I was aware of the Delaware, Susquehanna & Schuylkill - but the lack of reference material about it kept me from becoming more interested. But one day I found some great photos of it at the Smithsonian and shared the photos in a post on a Facebook group... where one commenter told me there was an additional locomotive to the two documented ones.
The original railroad had four locomotives, they said - which explains why the two preserved ones are numbered No. 3 and No. 4, respectively. No. 1 had been struck by an automobile and was destroyed (a rumor that is questionable, since the railroad quit operations before automobiles saw common use), but No. 2 still exists - in someone's garage or attic in a small Pennsylvania coal town.
To protect the privacy of said community, which is very small, I won't disclose it, but after this I got in touch with Charlie Gallagher, whose great-grandfather worked for the full-sized DS&S as an engineer. Gallagher has made extensive study of Daniel Coxe and his miniature railroad, and since my writing has enthusiastically searched all corners of the Internet for traces of the alleged No. 2. And he's made some inroads - period newspapers exhumed at Lehigh University's digital archive have corroborated that No. 2 did indeed exist, and in fact was built in 1878.
If the Internet has done one good thing for historic preservation, it's make zillions of primary source documents available to the average armchair researcher - myself included. Will we find No. 2? That remains to be seen.
But a chase is always exhilarating.
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If Charlie has taught me anything, it's that Daniel Coxe is one of the unsung heroes of 1890s railroading. The man designed both full-sized and miniature locomotives, so well that he earned praise from a major locomotive builder for being twenty years ahead of his time. The standard gauge DS&S of which he was superintendent was sort of Pennsylvania's answer to the Ulster & Delaware, in a way: a local line small in stature whose quality and modernity of plant matched the innovation of giants like the Pennsy or NYC. A railroad of contrasts - a small railroad with many of the characteristics of a much larger one. It - and he - deserve to be remembered.
More information about Daniel, who tragically passed away at 28, can be found at his findagrave profile, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/91499475/daniel-coxe
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