Rusting Under Blue Skies #10625

The Story

A very rusty old steam locomotive with partially boarded windows sits on a sunny sidetrack at Steamtown in Scranton, PA. It is the oldest Nickel Plate Road locomotive still in existence, a 2-6-0 built in 1905, and it is supposedly on the restoration list. Probably the rustiest piece of equipment in the entire place. You can see the starting point for the restoration work on some of this equipment can be obviously a little disheartening, but they pitch into the work anyway!

I think the buildings behind the locomotive relate to the currently active rail line that runs alongside Steamtown. The tall brown one may be a sand tower for the diesel-electric locomotives that go by, and the round one may be a tank of diesel fuel for them as well.

The light blue boxcar ahead of the old rusty locomotive appears to be one of the first types of all-metal boxcars put into use around the 1930s.

Location: Scranton, Pennsylvania.  © Andrew Dierks