Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Salt of the Earth

Chuck Amstein also visited a salt mine museum in Hutchinson, Kansas, and sent us these pictures.  The most on-topic item is this unusual electric locomotive from the Hutchinson & Northern, on display outside.

It was built by GE in 1919 as a demonstrator for their inside-bearing truck design.  I'm not sure exactly what the advantages of this design were supposed to be, but it didn't catch on.  The demonstrator, however, was sold to the H&N, and used until 1963.

 It appears to be in excellent cosmetic condition, although it's missing its poles.




 The rest of the mine looks pretty interesting, too, if you like this sort of thing.


 Sort of like the coal mine at MSI.







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2 comments:

  1. David WilkinsSeptember 12, 2012 at 10:17 AM

    Orange Empire Railway Museum has the sister locomotive to this, also from the H&N.

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  2. Frank HicksSeptember 12, 2012 at 10:32 AM

    I know of at least three of these inside-bearing steeplecabs that GE built. H&N #1, the one at OERM mentioned by David, ran in/near Hutchinson for its entire service life. H&N #2 was built as a demonstrator and was used on the East Erie Commercial Railway, GE's own switching line, from 1919 until it was sold to the H&N in 1926. The third was Delaware Lackawanna & Western 4001, which was used to switch the DL&W Wallabout Terminal in Brooklyn, NY until 1940, after which it was sold to a line in Canada. More info at http://members.trainweb.com/bedt/indloco/dlwwallaboutterm.html

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