What Era, Railroads, & Locomotives are you set on?

[rrinker]

They had the E44 open for Reading Railroad Days this year, so I was able to go inside. ALl the times I've been to Strasburg and the museum, I had never been in that one. They also had a Reading Blueliner they just finished up open to go in. Not that I hadn't been in one beofre, but those were all converted to passenger cars and had the controls and gauges removed. They did have one thing messed up in their haste to have it ready - the seats were all installed inside out! The angles on the backs where the handles woudl go to turn the seats around were installed facing the window sides instead of the aisle. oops.
As for steam loco sizes, inside the museum, they have PRR 1223, a 4-4-0. It used to be in service across the street. I've ridden behind it. But as Strasburg got more popular and they added more cars to the train, 1223 couldn't handle it anymore, so they has to move tot eh bigger locos they now run. Actually, early on Strasbug pulled trains with the little Reading 0-4-0 camelback - I may have ridden behind that but I was too little to remember. Also quickly grew too small to haul the required train lengths.
Some of those other locos seem 'bigger' than the live ones at Strasbug but partof that is illusion - the 4-4-0 and 4-4-2 have tall drivers as they were high speed passenger locos, the operational locos are former freight haulers with smaller drivers, but more pullign power. Given the length of the heavyweight passenger consists used at Strasburg, plus the nearly continuous grade, and the relative shortness of the run, pulling power is more critical than top speed. It's hard to get a good comparison because when you get into freight locos over at the museum, you are looking at some really large examples which do make the Strasbug locos look kind of small.

--Randy