Hippo country

At Trout Run. (That’s Shaughnessy at left.) (Photo by Phil Hastings©.)

An article in the Fall 2011 issue of my Classic Trains magazine attracted my attention.
It’s by Jim Shaughnessy, titled “Hippo Country.”
It details the Pennsylvania Railroad’s use of steam-locomotives on their Elmira branch in the mid-‘50s.


A Dek leading a coal-train receives orders at Newberry Tower leaving Williamsport. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

The locomotives were their I1 2-10-0 Decapod “Hippos,” called that because they were so big when they debuted in 1916.
The Deks weren’t SuperPower. In fact, they were rather conservative (no appliances). Just upsizing the boiler to give it greater capacity.
In fact, they used the same size firebox grate as the K4 Pacific (4-6-2), 70 square feet. SuperPower is 100 square feet or more.
The Dek was Pennsy’s solution to needing ever more drag power. —A plodder; a 10-drivered Consolidation (2-8-0).


Passing Watkins Glen depot. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

The Pennsy Dek suffered the bane of all 10-drivered steam-locomotives, the massive weight of its drive-rods.
The offset was massive driver counterweighting.
But still, a Dek hammered the rail.
Plus all that rotating weight translated to heavy vibration at speed.


Rural road-crossing out on the line. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

50 mph was about all you could stand in a Dek.
Plus at speed they could run out of steam. They weren’t SuperPower, which is mainly incredible steam-capacity at speed.


Two Deks face-to-face. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

Amazingly, the earliest Deks were hand-fired.
But it was quickly ascertained there was no way even two firemen could keep up with the coal-requirement of a Dek.
The Dek was the Pennsylvania Railroad’s first broad-based application of stokers.


About to cross Lycoming Creek at Cogan Station, eight miles north of Williamsport. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

The bucolic Elmira branch is mostly gone.
Even some of the right-of-way is obliterated.
But in the middle ‘50s it was a means of shipping coal and iron-ore to a wharf in Sodus Point on Lake Ontario, where it would be transloaded into lake ships.


A Dek positions hoppers on the wharf at Sodus Point. (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

The Elmira branch is the old Northern Central mainline, controlled by Pennsy in 1861.
The line ran north out of Baltimore, and gave Pennsy a lever against Baltimore & Ohio.
Northern Central took over lines north of Williamsport, one of which went to nearby Canandaigua, an outlet for Pennsylvania coal to Buffalo.
Shaughnessy says the Sodus Point extension was built by Northern Central in 1885.
Segments of the Elmira branch remain, operated by shortlines.
Finger Lakes Railway operates an island segment Watkins Glen up to PennYan.
It’s accessed via trackage-rights over Norfolk Southern’s Corning Secondary.
Ontario Midland operates Newark, NY up to interchange with the old New York Central Hojack line. —Ontario Midland also owns the Hojack Webster to Sodus.
(I rode a fall foliage excursion on OMID years ago. The old Pennsy line was a boxcar-sized tunnel of leaves.)
But to Sodus Point is gone, as is the wharf, which burned down in 1971 during dismantling.
The wharf was wood, a wooden trestle.


STAND BACK! (Photo by Jim Shaughnessy©.)

The Elmira branch, and its heavy iron-ore/coal trains, was a last stand for the Pennsy Decapod, which was well-suited for operation thereon.