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'Mystery man' rolls out relic for Laws |
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Thursday, 24 January 2008 |
 A crew of volunteers at Laws Railroad Museum unload a new exhibit, a 1959 diesel locomotive that made its way from Maryland to the West Coast and eventually, last Thursday, onto the tracks at Laws. Photo by Mike Gervais By Mike Gervais
Register Staff 1-24-2008
Laws Railroad Museum now has a new addition to its inventory of historical relics, thanks to a mysterious donor.
The mystery man, Evan Chapman, owner of E.R. Chapman Construction of Mt. Baldy, Calif., showed up at Laws about a month ago. After touring the museum grounds, he approached members of the Bishop Museum and Historical Society and offered to donate a diesel locomotive that he owned. There was only one catch: Laws must agree not to scrap the antique that had been housed in his yard for the past six years.
Laws, of course, agreed to receive the donation and give it a good home.
A month after offering up the piece of equipment, the man delivered it and vanished again, leaving no more than his name.
According to Laws Board Member Max Cox, Chapman came across the 1959 Rogers Brothers 10-ton diesel-hydraulic drive industrial locomotive in a scrap yard in Ontario, Calif. Chapman saw a treasure in the old rusty machine, and saved it from the cutting torch with his checkbook.
Cox noted that, “since that time Chapman has been looking for a home for it to keep it from the torch.”
About a month after Chapman made the offer he arrived late last week at Laws touting the “new” locomotive. Cox and other volunteers at Laws prepared the grounds by laying out a new set of 21.5-inch gauge rails for the new addition.
A crew of four, including Chapman and Cox, used two hardy pieces of steel as a temporary ramp, and a truck and a back hoe to move the locomotive from the truck to its new resting place on the rails. While Chapman pulled the machine off the truck and onto the ramp, Cox manned the back hoe in the rear to keep it from sliding down the ramp and into the truck.
The crew met with some problems when the rails from the ramp didn’t meet up with the wheels of the locomotive. While trying to get the multi-ton piece of equipment onto the tracks the team nearly lost control of it twice. But thanks to some quick-thinking and a set of jacks, the locomotive was resting on the new set of tracks about four hours after its arrival at Laws.
The Bishop Museum and Historical Society is currently in the process of researching the history of the almost 50-year-old locomotive and its manufacturer. But already Cox has learned a little of the machine’s long and interesting history.
According to Cox, the gauge system on the locomotive, though it was built in the late 1950s, was developed before 1900.
A plaque on the locomotive tells a little of its history. It was built in 1959 for the American Smelting and Refining Company’s Baltimore, Md. refinery.
When that refinery closed, probably around 1975, the locomotive was moved to one of the company’s West Coast refineries, eventually making its way to the Ontario scrap yard.
Upon first examination of the locomotive, Cox has got a pretty good guess as to when it left its original home in Baltimore. He said that the crew that unloaded the locomotive found an empty beer can from Baltimore that was definitely made in the mid-to late-1960s, meaning that the locomotive was almost undoubtedly in operation in Maryland until about that time.
According to Cox, the locomotive was used at the Baltimore refinery to haul copper – crude, finished or otherwise – inside the refinery. He noted that the machine, because it was used indoors, “has the same kind of turning radius as a fork lift.”
Laws doesn’t have any grand, immediate plans for the locomotive, but Cox said that one of the museum’s board members has made a hobby of repairing and working on diesel engines. “We might sick him on it,” he said.
After taking a look under the hood, Cox said, “it looks like it’s all there except for a transmission oil cooler, but those are really easy to come by.”
Currently, museum staff is planning to throw a new coat of paint on the locomotive to protect it from the weather and dress it up.
“Other than cleaning it up and making it presentable it’s just going to be on open display,” Cox said of the locomotive.
Volunteers at the museum are also planning to make a plaque for the new display explaining its origins and how it came to be at Laws.
Cox said the new locomotive will be a great addition to the museum’s current collection of machines.
Laws’ “Old Smokey” locomotive from the Pine Creek mine and another piece of equipment from Plymouth, Ind. are both industrial diesel locomotives from the same era as the new addition.
“All of a sudden we have an industrial (locomotive) collection,” Cox said.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 08 March 2008 )
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