2023 Santa Train Minersville PA to Schuylkill Haven PA on 12/9/23 with CNJ 113

2023 Santa Train Minersville PA to Schuylkill Haven PA on 12/9/23 with CNJ 113

CNJ 113 began life in June of 1923 at the Schenectady Works of the American Locomotive Company, one of five B7s 0-6-0 switchers built for the Central Railroad of New Jersey, numbers 111-115, Alco order number S-1419. In common with most of the steam locomotives on the Anthracite Roads (those that hauled hard coal from the Pennsylvania fields), these engines had wide, Wootten fireboxes (first designed by the Reading Company's John Wootten not long after the Civil War) so they could burn the same coal that they hauled. Intended solely for yard service, the B7s locomotives had no leading or trailing wheels and six driving wheels (thus the 0-6-0 designation, or wheel arrangement); with all of the engine's weight on the small drivers, one of these workhorses could move almost any cut of cars a yard track could hold, although not very fast. In common with all short-wheelbase locomotives, 113 and her sisters did not ride smoothly, and they rarely got beyond 15 miles per hour -- a speed at which 113's fireman would have to hold on for dear life and could probably not successfully aim a shovel through the clamshell fire doors!

113 and her sisters worked the CNJ's freight yards for almost three decades; in 1945, the railroad changed her class to 6S46 -- "6-wheeled Switcher, 46,000 pounds tractive effort" and by 1951 placed her out of service as diesels took over.

The Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co., now Reading Anthracite Co., bought 113 from the CNJ circa 1953 and used her at the colliery in Locust Summit, outside of Ashland, until she last steamed in 1960 -- the last CNJ engine to feel a fire on her grates; the CNJ itself ran a few fan trips with 4-6-0 #774 in 1954 but then had the engine scrapped. Stored outside, eventually with trees growing up all around her, 113 sat for many years until the coal company donated her to Historic Red Clay Valley in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1980. In 1986, Robert E. Kimmel, Sr., bought her and later moved her to Minersville. (Only one other CNJ steam locomotive survives, 4-4-2 #592 at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Md.)

Work to refurbish the locomotive to operating condition got under way in 1999 took more than twenty years, more than $600,000, and countless hours of volunteer labor. Many parts had long since vanished before restoration started; because no commercial builder has produced steam locomotive parts in decades, the Project 113 crew had to make many from scratch.

Retrieving some parts of the locomotive took detective work: As an example, Reading Anthracite removed 113's bell after the engine went out of service and gave it to an official of the coal company; he put it on a post at Lake Wallenpaupack. Eventually, Project 113 located the bell and it got returned to the locomotive, through a trade for another bell. After further investigation, we found that 113 has a bell from a Baldwin-built camelback ten wheeler, stamped with a Baldwin class number. 113 probably picked up the "foreign" bell during a visit to the Elizabethport shops at some point in her career.

https://www.rrproject113.org/