Bessemer & Lake Erie F7's
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- Опубліковано 20 січ 2020
- F units on the Bessemer & Lake Erie's Western Allegheny branch and the Pittsburgh & Conneaut Dock from the late 1980's. This is a compilation video taken from some old VHS tapes in my collection. There are also a few scenes I took personally.
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F units were heavy duty and rugged. I've read in an old book about ore trains that a 4 unit set could pull 200 loaded ore cars, about 15-16,000 tons. Not bad. They're all engine, as there isn't much room inside the car body as its filled with the huge 16 cylinder 567 series block. Brutish roots blown non turbo power and the grime adds to their character and appeal. Nice footage.
Well spoken
Roots blowers (or super chargers for average folks) full boost at idle unlike a turbo that needs spun up perfect for slow heavy work, typical of old 2 stroke marine diesels. Similar engine used on the F units were used on PT boats in the Navy
@loganbaileysfunwithtrains606 nope, the engines used in the PT boats during WW2 were the Packard 4M-2500 and the 5M-2500 gasoline fueled, supercharged V-12 that came from the line of Packard designed and built "Liberty" engines. The only US manf's to use marine engines was Fairbanks Morse. EMD's used a line of two stroke diesels originally designed in the 1930s by the Winton Engine Company, later to be owned by EMD.
Australia, actually still uses many bulldog nosed trains, we were the first to make a mansard roof bulldog train, we were also the last to use the bulldog nose train for service. And I think thats a pretty cool fact about Australia with there bulldog nosed trains!
F and E units were impractical and fell out of favor, replaced by justras rugged but more practical GP and SD's. The shot of the consist being yarded illustrates one factor of their impracticality, the other being visibility issues from the cab.
#s 727 and 728 were sold to the Southern Railroad of New Jersey in the mid 90s. 727 was painted in Rock Island, and I prepped and painted 728 in New York Ontario and Western. I ran them in revenue service on SRNJ's Salem branch in 96-97, and they ran well with no issues. Since then they have fallen into disrepair, but were recently purchased by the Blue Mountain and Reading RR and are being restored and returned to service.
Would be nice to see them restored as B&LE
This is GOLD. Finally, footage of the old western allegheny division that seemed to just have disappeared
I don't know what I love more, that sick horn or dirty grimy F units still past their prime still proving their worth. Fantastic footage
When I worked for Canadian National in the late 1960's we frequently leased some of these units when we had a power shortage. They were always superbly maintained.
But filthy!
Robert Beadle they focused on what matters the most, like a old man told me about cars “yeah they look nice broken down in the driveway”
Interesting to see "B" units still in service in the late 80's.
Our house overlooked the old engine house in Kaylor. We used to play around the rail yard despite the No Trespassing signs. I’ll never forget the sound of the locomotives starting up in the morning and the diesel smoke billowing out of the roof vents. Sad to see it all gone now.
My father was born in Kaylor on the hillside above the roundhouse. My grandfather was a fireman, then engineer on the H10 2-8-0 steam engines used by WA until 1957. He retired in 1954. The engineer shown inside the cab of the F7 worked with my grandfather in his rookie years.
I recognized that locomotive and yard right away. The whole route on Cherry rd the bridge on Cherry road. I remember seeing this sit in kaylor as a kid and running the track occasionally before they tore the line up. I remember seeing last run 1985 or 86 that was just the Loco I've never seen it pull any cars. It's crazy how u stumbled across this amd recognized it😂.
I work with the new stuff, but I always enjoy seeing, & hearing the old stuff. Haven't seen them in a long while, but some of you might be surprised to learn some of the old steel coal cars NS ran came to the Powder River Basin of Wyoming several times for a while. I even had a few of these sets on some trains I was on. Upon seeing myself I was a bit surprised to see these coal cars built in the 50's, & 60's were still fairly regular use. Another interesting side note, also at the time that NS did was purchase a batch of a few hundred brand new steel cars to suppliment the old fleet. The funny thing was they were using the old design, with a few minor updates. I also had those a few times, & they ran nicely, stopped beautifully. Most cars as many know are aluminium, but NS wanted to steel cars, primarily on certain routes where they had issues with frozen precipitation, plus they wanted cars with a longer life is something along the lines of what I read.
Love those old units. Reminds me of Silver Streak.
The very movie that made me fall in love with F units. That retro, almost art deco look to them is unmatched. Beautiful engines and sorely missed.
The level of the hobby today is so improved and the loco/car's details so accurate, the 1:1 scale is starting to look like hobby !!!
Chuckle, not bad Mark not bad!
Those "F" series locomotives, we're very popular, and can still be seen today, in use. The "E" series, we're longer with more HP, and some are still in use today. Classic engines, not to be forgotten!
Note the absence of graffiti. Great vid by the way, I love these old American trains.
if it was there, it would be under layers and layers of grime, lol. I love it
The only graffiti I ever saw was “Kaylor Rules” on the control box for the crossing gate by the rail yard.
Wow, Huletts and F units! I feel like I just went back in time in a Delorean. Nice!
These are some nice footage on the western allengeny with the f units! I wish this line was still active today! I have a Athearn emd f7 custom painted in that railroad in ho scale.
I used to sail into Conneaut and Ashtabula on the lakers in the 1980’s. Really enjoyed watching these beauties perform. Thank you!
That was superb. My gosh I enjoyed watching this film.
Back when the B&LE was under USS. I was not alive at this time but I would pay anything to go back in time to see these.
Same
One time, a B-unit broke loose from the A- at high throttle over in Karns City. It made it as far as Kaylor and overturned right in front of the rail yard.
Incredible footage from an incredible railroad. There are a number of Bessemer F units that are still out there, yet none of them are in orange paint. Certainly impressive with how many relics from the Bessemer have endured through the years. That's not including the former Bessemer trackage which still sees train traffic, some of which pulled by the SD38's 867 and 878.
Sadly both of those are gone now. 862, 868, and 905 are the only Bessemer engines left.
@@SebisRandomTech I know. Real bummer, especially the 867.
@@samlivingston4130 I'm still kicking myself because I transferred to school up in Bessemer territory in the fall of 2020, but didn't get to catch my first train until March 2021. I just barely missed out on seeing the Death Stars, 867, and 878 in their final days on Bessemer rails, and if I had gotten out to the tracks before March I probably would have seen them.
Very nice, lots of old memories. Notice that B&LE altered the pilot of their cab units by having footboards, originally these were just foot slots, shows the F-units weakness, switching. Remember watching PRR switching the interchange with NYC in Jamestown and watching the brakeman riding that blind spot, scary for a kid to watch.
When B&LE took over Western Allegheny in 1968 [IIRC] from PRR/PC, trackage and right of way showed deferred maintenance. What you see on this video is years later, B&LE in late 1970s refurbished line since they got serious about the coal traffic which they got for another twenty years or so. Conditions were so bad before that, that they kept two units on either side of tunnel; they pushed the train [I believe with a caboose at each end], push train through tunnel with no one on front end, uncouple power, get in a vehicle go to other side of hill, hook up other set to train and continue.
B&LE got F-units starting in 1950, their first run was a big event along the line. Some people could not fathom why B&LE bought the Funits. In 1949 when ordered, the GP7 really had not been marketed, B&LE management was under a deadline to be dieselized in 5 years from US Steel, and visible from the B&LE Greenville Shops' office was the Erie mainline where everyday they watched Erie RR run eastbound upgrade with FT's and F3's with trains that had stalled the vaunted 3300s [2-8-4].
By mid 1960s, the F-units had been largely supplanted by SD18s, SD9s from DM&IR, and then early SD38s, excess ones were sold to B&O and US Steel subsidiary in Utah. Some were used on mine runs [more switching?].
Thanks for the views.
Brilliant stuff! Thank you so much for posting! I have one faint memory of seeing the Fs parked at Kaylor when I was about 5 years old. My grandfather kept his boat in a nearby storage facility in a defunct limestone mine over the winter, and we stopped to see the Fs on our way home.
Me too!
Great video, those F and E units are my favorite locomotives. Thanks for sharing. Dave
Dave these are actually emd f7s. Just giving you a correction and there pretty awesome locomotives.
Hey fmnut, I was thinking that you should consider making full tapes for distribution. This content is so amazing and has great quality for its age.
Nobody does tape anymore. The DVD is on its way out. I cannot sell this particular material because I don't own the rights to it. So UA-cam is the way to go.
Appreciate your time making these videos. I never heard anything about railfanning till a few years ago even though I'm a train freak. You captured a glimpse of the past. Thanks.
Wow those horns at 2:02 sound sick! LOL. Those F units had millions of hard miles on them by that time tho so i guess the horns fit right in. Enjoyed this one a lot sir!
Wonderful video showing these old engines when they were still in operations. I haven't seen these outside of a museum before.
Beautiful Gone but not forgotten
Thanks for the great BLE Video UGGGLY A&B’s doing a Beautiful job on the Kaylor Branch. I have an Athearn Blue Box A’ shell just like the ones on #727 in the video. Looking for a blue box A’ chassis to marry up to it. And I need another A’ to complete the consist for my collection. BEST OLD TRAIN VIDEO i have ever see to date bar none!
In high school, I lived by the Snow Hill tipple in Bradys Bend and knew one of the engineers. He started his career in the early 1950's with my grandfather on the WA H10 steam engines. The F7's started showing up in the late 1950's. About once a week, when I got home from school, the F7 set would be down from Kaylor to pick up a dozen or so hoppers loaded with coal. When the engines started moving, I'd wave to Paul and start running up PA 68 toward Kaylor. With the load and the grade, I could keep up with the train for just over a mile, at which point I'd wave and Paul would toot the horn, then I'd run back home and the hoppers were taken out to Queen Junction. I always got the sense that Paul was holding back the F7's until I gave up because it always sounded like he throttled up after he tooted at me. It was great seeing him in the cab in this video, near the end of his career.
Thanks for that story. I'm glad that so many viewers have a personal connection to my video subjects.
Great footage! 👍
This is GOLD! Thank you for sharing
The B&LE serviced a coal mine up the valley from my parents house in Plum. Twice a day the train would go up with a empties, drop off and take the full cars. At the mine they would coast the empties down under the tipple then down the siding to be picked up. It ran into the early 90s until the mine closed down. A great memory of my childhood
Insane!!!! I Recognized this old train and the area immediately!! I've seen this old Loco run when I was a kid. Kayler Pa Buena Vista Pa Cherry Rd the tressel near Kinkade Hill where it passes under the rail line going to Karns city and Petrolia. Crazy!!! I haven't seen this train run since 1984 and then it was only the Loco. The tracks are no longer there but the bridge still is and the old yard is still there. TO the poster of the video are you Local to the Petrolia area? I remember this old locomotive distinctively because I've see it brought back instant memories lol. That thing sat for years abandoned after they tore the line up and tore out the rail road Bridges. They filled the old tunnel in finally a few months ago. I remember the old tipple too. This line went towards east brady and the tipples along that line near bradys bend.
Amaaazing footage! thanks for sharing!
Awesome videos as always!
Long live the Fs! I rode behing the 722 in West Virginia over the summer and it was quite the treat!
Very old, I love this, I grew up in Cleveland in the 1970's.
Awesome video love the 567 engines and the m3h horn.
excellent filming..enjoyable to watch
I can't take credit for the filming. I did add some of the sound.
The museum I work at owns four B&LE F7’s, I actually saw one of them in this video (#715) the film was great! Thanks for posting
Kudos to the museum for saving these classics of railroading.
What museum is this & where, and do you know which units?
Love the F units, always been my favorite. Sad to think, all or most of these units are probably scrapped by now.
Several survive see comments below.
@@fmnut They don't put comments in chronological order anymore, so at any given point, they may be above or below.
@Vettebecker1
NS recently sold their F's that they had used to pull the office car special.
The next time someone asks me why I haven’t railfanned in over 30 years, I’m showing them this video! It tells the story perfectly!
great video
Wow. What a fantastic collection of clips! Thank you for uploading this! I am in the process of building a 1/8 scale Bessemer F7 A unit, and may do a B just because...
Watching this gives me a weird feeling of sadness and anger... Seeing all the signals and crossing lights all nice an painted compared to nearly rusted out and zero maintenance signals of today. Looking at an entire branch removed and all the businesses and jobs all lost due to a shift to China for everything and coal is evil stupidity. Augh...
Still it is good to hear and see the very engine 725 and her sister 728 at work is surreal...
Coal is not evil, it's the life blood of many...
@@lanerailvideo5928 I wish people were smart enough to see it. (mainly because I'm having a hell of a time finding a supply of pocahontas coal for my 2-6-0!)
Thank you for uploading some of the history of the region I live in. I wonder how many of the coal cars were built down the road by Pullman Standard in Butler Pa.
I was actually kind of thinking the same thing actually 😂👍
I catch the BLE ore trains in butler Pennsylvania
Even though those locomotives may be very Dirty, they still are Beautiful.
Back in 70s freight train hauling coal cars on the track awesome video friend bless you back in time good old days 21 century technical locomotives powerful machines
Great video !
AMAZING!!!!!
nice job on this.
Love those F units.
F7’s have PERFECT aesthetic’s!
There’s something menacing about the countenance of F units, with the high nose and the uncaring eyes of the windshields reflecting like a pair of aviators on an unreasonable cop. Especially when they are grimy like this. Fantastic footage
This entire line is LONG gone, removed in the early 2000s and saw its last train in 1994
Incredible video!! I remember seeing them parked N of Butler Pa near Kaylor when I was young, 1970's Now I have my own in HO scale by MTH! and there they are at Kaylor 3:37!
I thought that looked familiar. I also remember the units parked at the Kaylor Yard. Traveled past the yard often in the mid-60s on the way to Clarion. I remember mines north of Kaylor along Rt. 68. I traced the branch out to the main on Google Earth. Only farmland. Without coal to haul, no revenue to justify the line.
Among the first 3 minutes of this, there is footage of what looks to be an old line that was taken out yrs ago above where I grew up in Chicora. Way to familiar to mistake. Looks like the end of Dogwood road meeting cherry road. Looks identical!
@@joshthompson302Hello...Cherry road and the old yard in Kaylor was a dead guve away. I remember seeing this train sit there abandoned and seen it run before they tore the Line up and the bridges down. The tunnel by the youth center is gone now too.
2:00 love the m3 here
Very cool video !!!
I think these are the first F-units I've seen that have jacking pads.
Thanks for compiling and posting this. I especially enjoyed seeing the Huletts at the P&C Dock Company in Conneaut, OH. There is still a Hulett bucket and cab lying in the weeds just outside the dock property. We are working with the City of Conneaut to have it displayed on the railroad museum property. Where did that yellow and black F unit come from? They certainly could have used a fresh coat of paint. Thanks again.
Ex Bessemer unit assigned to the dock co.
Yellow and Black was P&C dock maintained by the B&LE
This is great! This is a long shot but I’m currently working on a short documentary about the Bessemer and Lake Erie, and I’m curious if I could use some of this footage in it where applicable. Hope to hear back and regardless thank you for uploading this!
Please contact me via email. fmnut@msn.com
Is one of those places Butler PA?I was there in 1981 and those structures such as the Box Car storage building and parking the F's behind a chain link fence with a stair case & platform leading to the cab door. I saw these in Railroad & Railfan and decided to visit.
The parking compound was at Kaylor, PA. It's about 30 miles northeast of Butler.
VERY Nice!
I sailed with US Steel on the Philip R Clarke in 1976 and these guys were working the docks then..
715 is the unit I remember in particuler - that distinctive yellow color.
there are only 2 of their branchlines in service now
The crossing gates at 8:50 must've been installed by TYCO.
eSPeeScotty or Bachmann and life like
just out of curiosity do you have any footage of the rock island railroad up till its closing in 1980? there not that much footage around unfortunately.
Nope, sorry.
Very nice :)
Wow those are some old locomotives! Did any of the units featured in the video survive to this day, or did they get sent to the scrapyard? Excellent compilation video!
Several survive. The rest are razor blades.
Where are the ones that are still around?
Awesome
Great Stuff
Any videos of f7s or gp7s with their original 567B engines
I wonder if there is a single F unit still in revenue service anywhere in the US. These ones look like they were probably run untill dead. So much rust! And I know a great many were rebuilt.
NS recently got rid of there last F Units. And they were in regular service.
What is the structure at 21:41used for? Awesome video! I grew up in Conneaut and remember watching these loaded trains grunting out of the P&C docks heading toward Albion, Pa.
It looks like part of a coal hopper loading system.
After the end of Steam on B&LE
Fantastsic
WOOHOO FROM TEXAS 😎😎😎 SURE HOPE AT LEAST 1 OF THEM WAS SAVED AND RESTORED.
Some of these shots where used in a VHS production of the Bessemer.
If you read the description I said I got them from some old vhs tapes.
@@fmnut wasn't being rude or complaining. Sorry
@@andrewtreece3708 no worries. I try to be informative in my descriptions, that's all.
@@andrewtreece3708 I just checked my archives. The VHS you were referring to was from Berkshire Productions.
The Most common train set locomotive
THE FIRST LOCO IS HAUNTED ...NO ENGINEER , NO NUMBER..THE CHRISTINE OF DIESELS
Did F units have the same engines as geeps? I always thaught they sounded better than the geeps.
Yes. F7 and GP7 were 1500 HP 567B. F9 and GP9 were both 1750 HP 567C. All were 16 cylinders. F units had a slightly more mellow sound. Not sure if this was due to different exhaust systems or just the shape of the body work.
@@fmnut I thaught it may be resonance from a larger body shell.
Are they still running in 2020 or on a tourist RR ??
727 and 728 are on the Reading & Northern
722 was pulling tourists through WV not long ago.
whats the name of the place at the end of the video where the engines are parked?
Kaylor PA
@@fmnut ok thanks but im searching Kaylor PA and there's no city with that name
@@pabloluimeme yes there is. Try 382 PA-68, Karns City, PA 16041
I found! Thank u :)
cool,2:23
These ran into the 80s? Wow, I was alive when these beasts roamed the B&LE. I'd have figured they got rid of them a lot sooner.
Actually, the Western Allegheny F's ran into the early 90s, and the P&C dock ones ran until 2000.
@@fmnutThat's awesome. I knew they ran F units way back but I figured they sold them to Erie mining or whoever else was buying them in the 70s
@@thenekom Erie Mining's F's were all bought new from EMD. They never got any secondhand. Some ex Bessemer F's went to US Steel's Atlantic City mine railroad in Wyoming in the 60s, perhaps that's what you were thinking of.
@@fmnut Yeah maybe so. I grew up on the Monongahela line, I know Erie did wind up with some of their Baldwin S12s secondhand. Didn't know they bought their EMDs new.
Shy of the sd-40 these units are worth every gal of fuel in there tank
When was this video taken?
It's from several sources. My portion was from 1990, some scenes may go back to the early 80s. Operation of F units ended in 1992 and the line shut down in 94.
Those f type locomotives are a bit different to the ML2 & A7 units that were built here in Australia under licence by Clyde engineering, our units were lower, longer & all had 3 axle bogies and were all powered (co-co) apart from some early units for the commonwealth railways which were (A1A) and there is still quite a few being used on our mainlines today, there is numerous film on UA-cam if anybody wants to view.
The E series units are their close cousins.
Super!!!Yes no graffiti! Where those former C&NW and milwaukee road? or always Bess?
Original BLE.
How’s come there we’re Yellow?
Some of them
Poor things look pretty tired at this stage. I'm guessing they didn't last too many more years before they were retired after these videos were taken?
Toot toot
2:00 what is that horn?
A very sick Nathan M3.
@@fmnut those clips have the actual audio, right, you didn’t make your own sounds or anything?
@@traincrazykid1917 that's the original sound on this video.
Those are some sad sounding horns
Those chimes sound so sad, almost pathetic, anemic.
I think the engineers are partially pulling the handle, not sounding all the horns
Imagine growing up in the house at 1:36
I’d love it
Our house was just a ways off to the left of that one. Great memories.
That’s the old Bresnahan house
Sure it's not 91'
that branch has been ripped up
I believe that operations were discontinued in the mid-1990s. Operations on the western branch from Queen Junction to New Castle were terminated in the 1930s. And those tracks were removed in 1942. Of course, the old cast off Pennsylvania RR steam engines were in use in those days. The road bed of the western extension was laid through my great grandfather's farm in Worth Twp., Butler County in 1906.
Paul Myers cool
They look ldentical to the Australian emd S class loco with a 645 or a 567 motor in it
Similar but not identical. The EMD design was built under license by Clyde, but modified for Australia. Same 567 engines inside.
@@fmnut cool love the sound of an old school loco with no computer controls in them to
Yeah was before the “woke” movement. Back then, people just worked more and built shit and America just kicked more ass back then.