I think my rarest sighting was an ALCo. S-6. Second was a BNSF GP60B.
Mine would be a steam driven pile driver used by the Illinois Central to repair wooden trestles around Clarksville, Tennessee in the early seventies. They had taken over the Western Division of the old Tennessee Central that ran from Hopkinsville, Kentucky to Nashville, Tennessee. There were about six or eight long wooden trestles around Clarksville.
George
The rarest piece of equipment I ever saw were two Alcohaulics.There were only three built.I got a picture of them from a passing train. They were in storage at Roseville.At the same time I also saw the KM camera car.[:)]
I guess any one-of-a-kinder would rate. Around 1950 I saw NP A-1 2626, the “Timken Roller Bearing engine” stop at Vancouver, Washington, with pool train 408 enroute from Seattle to Portland. It made its last run on a fan trip in 1957, then went to the scrap yard.
The Seaboard’s 1/2of an E5/6, a shovel-noser-baggage that powered the Sarasota connection (or was it Naples?) for the Silver Meteor in Florida, 1959. Having lunch in a restaurant in La Grange, IL in the summer of 1952 on the north side of the Burlington main near the Stone Avenue Station and having my jaw drop as I saw a 2-6-2, a genuine Prarie, on a local freight (usually using a GP-7 or a Q2 2-8-2 at the time). The blue Wayne bodied school bus on flanged wheels used by the Naragansett Pier Railroad (NP to the NEC at Kingston, RI) in 1950. A genuine Elevated Railroad cable car. One of the original Brooklyn Bridge gate cars, originally used with cable power before steam, in Iowa in 1952 on the Mason City and Clear Lake electric freight line, just sitting in the yard. (What in __ did they ever use the thing for? Passenger service behind a steeple-cab loco?) Riding the last three-phase AC electric with two overhead wires (last as far as I know) from Sondrio to Tirano in northern Italy. Trains once had an article on the Italian dual-wire three-phase, wish I had it with me. I think it is all dc 3000v today with just one wire instead of two. Finally a genuine Garratt at the Pretoria enginehouse, South Africa, 1985, in for repairs from Zimbabmei/Rhodesia.
I would start with C&IM’s RS1325’s, only two were built. Then comes ATSF H12-44TS, only three built. Not rare but definitely exotic are export models: GT22CW and JT42CWR which were built by EMD and an RS8 from Alco. Slugs are a world unto themselves since most of them are rebuilt from something else.
I’m not sure if this would count as a rarity but I would also submit for your consideration, a four-wheel scale test car, properly located just ahead of the caboose.
The winnebago on rails(or the csx inspection car!!!)
stay safe
Joe
My favorite sighting is me strangling John for being a topic theif…Bad boy, no ALCo for you, go sit in that BN yard over there!
[#wstupid] [banghead]]
I have a few instances of seeing freight cars of companies who own only a few, or even only one, car. Not necessarily the car type that is rare, but certainly the paint!
In my youth, I was on intimate terms (i.e., cab rides) with GTW’s two RS-1s, which were built years after any other domestic units of that model. And–same town, a few years earlier–the most common engines around were C&O BL2s! I didn’t find out how rare those were until about four months before they were gone.
There are so many rare engines whcih are rare. I have seen the german class 156 electric (4 were built), class 12X (1), class 242 diesel (6). In Germayn were many classes, where only one engine was builtt this would be a very long list.
Micha
I did not see this in person but in our local newspaper. They have a section called, “Arkansas Postcard” where they show an old postcard about life in Arkansas years ago. This one postcard showed a railtricycle. It had two wheels on one rail and a third wheel on the oposite rail. There was a seat and one man was setting on it. I don’t remember if it could hold another man or not. I will have to dig it out and see. I did cut it out of the paper and put it in a scrapebook somewhere.
Mine was a CP rail freight car, still in Script type font. (1953+)
The Baldwin DT-6-6-2000 (MN&S 21) and the E5A (CB&Q 9911A) at the Illinois Railway Museum. I’ve ridden the cab of both.
San Luis Valley Southern D-500 The ultimate “critter”
An SP “Valley Mallet” 2-6-0 wheel arrangement. Could pull on the flat what it took an AC class (2-8-8-4 and 4-8-8-2 Cab Forward.) in the mountains.
And, in 1967, riding behind a DB 2-6-2T from Hannover to Wolfsburg, a regular train in regular service. Wolfsburg station was (partly) in East Germany.
Riding a Class 50 2-10-0 along the Rhein.
Seeing 3 2-10-0’s (Class 43 and Class 50) lifting a coal train up the Mosel.
An Alco HH660 in a gravel pit at Stelicom (spelling probably not correct) WA
I’ll preface my entry by saying, the rarest still in operation. It is Emporia Grain’s Alco S2 switcher that was originally the Lehigh & New England 611. It was the first of 6 Alco S2 switchers acquired by the LNE. (The LNE was a small, eastern Pennsylvania, coal-hauling railroad that was abandoned in 1961) This Alco S2 may well be the only diesel on the LNE roster that remains in existence.
You can find a brief writ up and pictures of it today and in better days on the NYC Michigan Division page of the RRsofMadCty at: http://madisonrails.railfan.net/mi_div_2.html
I have a brass model and a pic of the SP 9802 which was an ALCo DH-643 taken at Roseville in Oct. 1971. and the KM is in storage at the CRSM.
I suppose the rarest thing I’ve seen is the TH&B steam generater car in the 80’s wich is made from a coal tender for a NYC Hudson (didn’t know that at the time but it looked interesting), possibly the only part of a NYC Hudson left on the rails.
I BELIVIE IT WAS A DM&IR SD18 WHEN I WAS A KID