As noted a few weeks ago, a cross-country road trip was pleasantly interrupted by a multiple day stop in Tennessee wherein some time was spent visiting various distilleries and a day in Columbia at the Mid-South Live Steamers semi-annual get together. The distilleries (in descending order of size) were Jack Daniel’s in Lynchburg, George Dickel in Normandy and Prichard’s Distillery in Kelso. The first two make sour mash sippin’ whiskey, while Prichard’s distills rum. Of the 3, I think I enjoyed Prichard’s the most because it is, quite literally, a mom and pop operation, doing business out of an old school house.
Be that as it may, I promised pics of the Mid-South meet, so here goes in no particular order. NOTE; Mid-South runs on 7 1/2" gauge track and most models are scaled 1:8 (1 1/2" scale). However, there were a couple of narrow gauge models and those would scale out to 1:4.8 to maintain the scale/gauge ratio. Only one of the narrow gauge engines was in steam when I was there, a D&RGW K-27:
Naturally, when there’s narrow gauge, there has to be a Galloping Goose:
Then there was this little gem, a vertical boiler job. Boiler may be a misnomer, it’s more like a tea kettle.
This couple showed up with a neat little early 19th Century British train. I nearly choked when I saw the owner pouring gasoline into the tender since gasoline and live steam don’t mix too well. Silly me, the thing wasn’t a steamer but a lawn mower engine powered putt-putt: