Service Stop
For Steam Sunday here's another from what was unquestionably the longest train chase of my life...well over 500 miles from DeQuincy, Louisiana to the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas (though not in one day)!
This is Canadian Pacific 2816, the famed 'Empress', an H1b class 4-6-4 Hudson built by Montreal Locomotive Works in 1930. Orignally retired in 1960 after there decades of pulling CP passenger trains the locomotive was purchased by F. Nelson Blount for preservation as part of his Steamtown collection in Vermont. It later moved with the rest of the collection to Scranton until CP purchased it back from the National Park Service in 1998. Returned to service in 2001 she operated until 2012 when E. Hunter Harrison took the reigns at CP. Eight years later Keith Creel (EHH's successor) reversed course and she was fired up for a test run and then a second restoration began which was completed in 2023.
As a way of celebrating the approval and consummation of the Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railway merger on April 14, 2023 CPKC is running a tri nation tour across the length of their newly combined network. The trip began in Calgary on April 24th and concluded in Mexico City on June 7th before returning home for a total of three months on the road and 9000 miles round trip!
Here she is paused for a service stop in a strange land far from her historic home rails operating across Union Pacific trackage rights on modern day UP's Houston Sub the former Southern Pacific (T&NO) Sunset Route mainline. She is sitting just east of the Van Hut Lane crossing at about MP 350.8 near the eastern city limits and will soon be on the move toward Englewood Yard and through downtown on her way to Sugarland, Rosenburg and ultimately home rails in Kendleton where she'll rest for a couple nights.
Unincorporated Houmont Park
Harris County, Texas
Saturday May 25, 2024
Service Stop
For Steam Sunday here's another from what was unquestionably the longest train chase of my life...well over 500 miles from DeQuincy, Louisiana to the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas (though not in one day)!
This is Canadian Pacific 2816, the famed 'Empress', an H1b class 4-6-4 Hudson built by Montreal Locomotive Works in 1930. Orignally retired in 1960 after there decades of pulling CP passenger trains the locomotive was purchased by F. Nelson Blount for preservation as part of his Steamtown collection in Vermont. It later moved with the rest of the collection to Scranton until CP purchased it back from the National Park Service in 1998. Returned to service in 2001 she operated until 2012 when E. Hunter Harrison took the reigns at CP. Eight years later Keith Creel (EHH's successor) reversed course and she was fired up for a test run and then a second restoration began which was completed in 2023.
As a way of celebrating the approval and consummation of the Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern Railway merger on April 14, 2023 CPKC is running a tri nation tour across the length of their newly combined network. The trip began in Calgary on April 24th and concluded in Mexico City on June 7th before returning home for a total of three months on the road and 9000 miles round trip!
Here she is paused for a service stop in a strange land far from her historic home rails operating across Union Pacific trackage rights on modern day UP's Houston Sub the former Southern Pacific (T&NO) Sunset Route mainline. She is sitting just east of the Van Hut Lane crossing at about MP 350.8 near the eastern city limits and will soon be on the move toward Englewood Yard and through downtown on her way to Sugarland, Rosenburg and ultimately home rails in Kendleton where she'll rest for a couple nights.
Unincorporated Houmont Park
Harris County, Texas
Saturday May 25, 2024