Re: C&TS #19 ex. Ohau Railway & Land Co.

I painted the 19 in green/black sometime around 1986. My original thought was paint it a nice dark green with aluminum lettering, zebra stripes and tri-color button heralds. I thought it looked pretty bland, so I added the black to the cab and tops of the hood. I thought it looked real sharp, then noticed the similarity to BN. oh...oops... that ought to give the fans something to think about. Years ago it had its switcher footboards removed per FRA regs so we made up a pair of boiler tube pilots.
The 19 got badly damaged in the winter of 1987-88 when it was allowed to set outside for the winter and the shop foreman at the time neglected to tell the person who he delegated to winterize the engine to drain the water from the engines. This was not discovered until the next spring when I went out to fill it with water and start it. One engine survived because a leaking water pump drained all the water except for one small line that had to be replaced. The other engine suffered a badly cracked block. The person sent out to winterize it knew better, but insisted he was not told to drain the water. To me, it sounded like a set up to get the foreman in trouble.
We tried to run it on one engine, but discovered the charging system of the usable engine had some fatal flaw we couldn't sort out, and the other engine (the dead one) had been charging the batteries for years. We used it a few times this way, recharging the batteries before each use, then gave up as it was way too much hassle.
A pair of engine-generator set were purchased for parts and used to put the 19 back in service. I remember it running around without its hoods in the winter of 1990-91. It looked like a pair of '32 Ford hotrods running back to back. John also replaced the mechanical fuel pumps with electric ones that could prime the fuel system without the original hand pumps - a major pain in the rear to getting it started. Mr. Bush with the assistance of John Hammond up at the Georgetown Loop did a lot to make the 19 a useful piece of equipment.