NNG - Cass Railfan Weekend

Last weekend was the annual Cass Railfan Weekend co-sponsored with the Mountain States Logging & Railroad Historical Association, which is kinda-sorta the "Friends of the Cass Scenic RR". We had 3 days is insanity involving 4 different trains on Fri and Sat and 3 trains on Sunday. Fri and Sat involved a short log/work train out of Cass powered by Shay #4, escorted by a passenger train pulled by WM Big #6. While this was going on, on the other side of the mountain, Heisler #6 pulled a freight train from Spruce to Cheat Bridge, escorted by a passenger train pulled by a pair of FP-7's. Passengers rode one of the trains one day, then swapped to the other train the second day.

Running a train over the hill from Cass on the old Greenbrier, Cheat & Elk RR (later Western Maryland/Chessie/CSX) is abit more complicated in that we need to be able to get water and coal. There is a water hole (tank) at Spruce. We can get a dump truck to bring coal to Cheat Bridge and the Durbin fire dept can bring us water there also. But midway along we needed a supply in case the number of runbys exceeded the water capacity of Heisler #6. So, we grabbed a serviceable tank car, filled at the tank in Cass and hauled it up the hill past Whitaker to Old Spruce, then down the hill to (New) Spruce to set it out on the siding. The deadhead move bringing the freight cars from Elkins would take the car 8 miles down the river and set it out at Hopkins siding.

So..... here we have #6, tank car in tow getting water at the Cass Tank before heading up the hill.


This is at Spruce where we paused to refill #6's tender before heading down to the siding to set out the tank car.



Another shot at Spruce. There are 2 plastic water tanks set into the ground here for us to syphon the water out of and into the tender.