Great Western Railway: "We do it better". Re-enacting a morning run from Windsor to Loveland, Colorado, Great Western Decapod #90 leads a freight train around Long Curve at Pennsylvania's Strasburg Rail Road on a chilly morning in February of 2013. Founded to serve the Great Western Sugar Company, this 80-mile regional line in Eastern Colorado was one of the last freight railways in the US to trade their trusted steam locomotives for new diesels. Doing a few internet searches, I found an old advertisement for the line's freight services, which carried the motto: "We do it better."
Built in 1924 by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, the big 2-10-0 that you see here served her original owner for 43 years, before being retired in 1967. A couple of years prior to her retirement, she caught the eye of the then Chief Mechanical Officer of the Strasburg Rail Road, which had recently re-opened as a tourist line. The Strasburg CMO was seeking bigger power with an eye toward the future. Although the 90 wasn't for sale at the time, the CMO managed to obtain a promise from the Great Western to give his line first dibs on purchasing the big engine, if and when she was no longer needed in Colorado. Three years later, the deal was done and the 90 has now been in Pennsylvania far longer than she ever was in Colorado. Not only that, but since her move to the SRC, she's run well over 350,000 miles, 9 miles at a time. Figure she's traveled as far as the moon and part way back. Pretty impressive!
Images of surviving Great Western Railway locomotives, painted in the liveries of their original owner, operating on photo charters on tourist railways today.
