Sunday, November 10, 2019

The Last Mason Bogie - another look

We visited the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield village again in October 2019 and caught a bit of footage of the Torch Lake, the last remaining Mason Bogie in the world.  One of the docents explained that she was hidden (intentionally?) in the back of a shed behind other locos when taken out of service.  This is what allowed her to avoid being scrapped (like DSP&P 57 was scrapped) for the wartime scrap drive during WWII.

The Torch Lake was originally narrow gauge, just barely.  She was built as 4 foot 1 inch gauge, but later standard gauged.


Another bit of interesting info from the Henry Ford site:
"The last time the Torch was fired-up by the Calumet & Hecla Mining Co. was in 1933. Being the last of their steam locomotives and after 50 years of service, it was decided to place the Torch Lake in indefinite storage. The locomotive had to be towed on the mainline part of its journey to storage due to it not having air brakes. When the main line portion of the trip was completed, it was left on a siding at Lake Linden. The boiler was fired up and it continued under its own power. As they crossed a bridge and main highway on the way to Ahmeek, Mich., engineer Edward Carter blew a long whistle thinking this would be the last steam train whistle heard in the Keweenaw Peninsula. It was placed in a storage shed at the C & H facility in Ahmeek, drained of water and left there untouched until 1966.

"That same year the Torch Lake was pulled out of the shed and towed to Calumet, Mich., to become part of the Calumet & Hecla Centennial. The train was cleaned, painted and put on display. After the Centennial, C & H offered the locomotive to the Edison Institute (now The Henry Ford) as a gift."

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