Wednesday morning preservation and railfan news:
Northwest Railway Museum fires up Northern Pacific 0-6-0
The Northwest Railway Museum has fired up Northern Pacific No. 924, an 0-6-0 built in 1899 by Rogers Locomotive Works for the St. Paul & Duluth Railroad. The locomotive returned to steam on May 18, operating under its own power in testing on the shop track of the museum in Snoqualmie, Wash. Work on the locomotive, in progress since 2016, is continuing with “completion of vital systems” anticipated for the second quarter of this year. Those wishing to support the project can make donations here.
St. Paul’s Train Days go virtual
Union Depot in St. Paul, Minn., will take its annual Train Days event online with a six-part video miniseries because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The depot’s marketing manager, Lindsay Boyd, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that it was clear in March that the event, which drew 11,000 people in 2019, would have to take a different form, “so we had some time to plan the virtual series.” The first part of the online series, detailing the history of the station and railroading, was produced in collaboration with the Friends of the 261 and Minnesota Transportation Museum. It will debut June 7 at 5 p.m. CDT on the Union Depot website.
