Gone as far as I can until a few parts arrive:
(http://i1082.photobucket.com/albums/j371/AlleghenyValley/2012/PC290001.jpg)
Meanwhile, I cooked up a crazy, but fairly plausible backstory: Many people today fondly wish for a return to America’s “gilded age”. Why not? It was a time when opportunity, progress and optimism were the order of the day! And even better, there were great fortunes to be made!.. One of the things a lot of people forget about the time is, while there was opulent wealth, there was also seemingly bottomless misery. There were a few great boom times, but there were many busts to go with them as well. While Dame Fortune may have smiled radiantly upon a blessed few. She ignored most. And sometimes, like a coquette, she teased then spurned a man - making him even more miserable than if he’d never succeeded. This is a story of the latter. In the middle part of the 1850s much of North Central Pennsylvania was still a wilderness. Villages and single homesteads dotted huge tracts of forest. There were thousands upon thousands of acres of virgin pine, hemlock and hardwoods, and the second industrial revolution needed that lumber! Experienced lumbermen from Maine and Canada, having already depleted much of their own great forests, flooded the area to feed that need. As technology advanced, so did the size and efficiency of the companies that cut the tress, and from this, modern industrialized logging was born! In the early years the hewn logs were assembled into great rafts and floated downriver to the mill. In dry years low river levels could cause serious supply disruptions. There had to be a better way. Shortly after the Civil War railroads became an answer to that problem. In parts of western Clarion County, that railroad was owned by the Clarion River Lumber Co. In the spring of 1872 CRLCo was doing well. So well that the owner, Mr ____ _, decided that he needed new, more powerful locomotives to get the logs to his mill even faster. However, he had a slight dilemma. His line, like most lumber railroads, had extensive mileage, but the tracks were hastily laid, and maintained only if absolutely necessary. He needed a locomotive that was not only powerful, but flexible. So one of Mason Machine Works’ strange looking Farlies was seen as a near perfect solution. Two were duly ordered, and they arrived that fall. Mason-Farlie locomotives #3 and #4 were found to be entirely suitable, and would become the foundation of a small fleet of similar engines destined to serve the CRLCo well for the next two decades. Fast forward to 1898, Mr ______ had become a very rich man, but the easy timberlands along the Clarion River were mostly logged out. The end was nearing, but fate would hasten it. On a bitterly cold December night tragedy struck, no-one was sure if it was started by a careless hosteler, or a vagrant trying to keep warm, but what is known is that the CRLCo’s enginehouse caught fire in the early hours of Christmas Eve. The hot fire, whipped by winter winds, spread to several nearby drying sheds. By morning 7 buildings and tens of thousands of board feet of valuable lumber were reduced to ashes. And the Clarion River Lumber’s entire locomotive fleet were just burnt hulks. Mr _____ was facing almost certain ruin. While quite rich on paper, he was actually overextended. He barely had enough ready cash for that week’s payroll! He also had a bill due from the Allegheny Valley RR for 25 carloads of lumber that he had shipped to Pittsburg that week… Desperate and not completely scrupulous, he telegraphed his acquaintance, AV director _____ - hoping that he hadn’t yet heard about the fire - and offered #3 and #4 in lieu of payment for the balance due on his bill. Mr _______, unaware that he was being duped, agreed. The resulting lawsuit would take almost a decade to settle… Meanwhile, expecting two intact locomotives that would only need regauged, the shop crew was rather surprised to see two forlorn looking hulks show up on flatcars the following week. One of the shop supervisors forlornly asked Master Mechanic Daniel St. Clair, “Now, what da Hell are we supposed to do wid dose tings?” The disgusted reply was simply, “Salvage what we can…” Upon further inspection it was discovered that while #3 was a near total loss, #4 still had possibilities, Her cab was gone, yes - but her boiler, frame and cylinders were still sound. Only a broken driver actually prevented her from being a relatively easy fix. Unfortunately for the AV, as Master St Clair soon found out, Mason had exited the locomotive business almost ten years earlier. Baldwin was willing to sell the AV new drivers at reasonable cost, but since they were two inches larger, all 4 would have to be replaced. In an attempt to salvage some pride, the AV Directors authorized a small budget, and the rebuilding of #4 was begun in April of 1899. While much of the original Mason was refurbished, many changes were made. Without patterns for a cab, the shop crew simply adapted the same style used on the line’s Moguls. During the rebuild it was also decided to add a 2 wheel pony truck for better tracking. After almost 7 months of part time work, the burnt hulk had begun to look something like a locomotive again. Master St Clair even indulged his sense of humor by painting "’s Folly" as #4 had now been dubbed, in the gay colors she had worn nearly 30 years prior… Anybody wanna volunteer to be a fictional crooked lumber baron?
