LAST BALDWIN’S FIRST OUTING

Western Maryland Scenic Railroad and Trains Magazine on Feb. 25-27 kicked off the 2022 steam season at the Cumberland, Md.-based tourist railroad with a multiday photo charter for 100 enthusiasts spotlighting No. 1309, the former Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 returned to service after an arduous restoration process.

The 1949 articulated was restored in late 2020 and spent most of 2021 being fine-tuned and awaiting rebuilding of the Western Maryland Scenic’s right-of-way. After the locomotive appeared on Polar Express runs in December 2021, the February weekend trips were the first for railroad enthusiasts.

The event featured a Friday night trip behind steam to Frostburg, Md., and two days of photo runbys with No. 1309 on an 11-car photo freight. Photo sessions focused on world famous Helmstetter’s Curve, the legendary horseshoe curve on the Western Maryland main line just west of Cumberland. Passengers rode a dieselpowered passenger-consist chase train, powered by two authentic Western Maryland SDs now part of the Western Maryland Scenic roster.

No. 1309, with an appreciative audience, began teaching about compounding (using steam twice) with a mushy “chuff-chuffchuff ” that followed (occasionally) brief, crisp exhausts while being run as a simple (running live steam through both sets of cylinders) articulated steam locomotive.

In a strange twist of irony, the same weekend that No. 1309, the last Baldwin, was running on this special event, across the continent in California, Baldwin’s first Mallet, 1909 2-4-4-2 was running on the Niles Canyon Railway in the Bay Area. The fact that both exist is a miracle; the odds of both being in operation on the same day are astronomical.

For those who want to see this remarkable locomotive, No. 1309 enters regular service in May and runs long weekends through October. And if seeing and photographing it on the point of freight cars is to your liking, you can also join us for our next Trains magazine outing with

No. 1309 on Nov. 4-6.

Walter Scriptunas II photo, Sol Tucker lighting Perched high on the dike that forms the inlet from Wills Creek and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in downtown Cumberland, Md., No. 1309 and its 11-car photo freight with caboose poses in a night photo session on Feb. 26, 2022.

Walter Scriptunas II Sunrise on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022, sees No. 1309 and its freight greet the day in the Narrows, just west of Cumberland, Md. This is where Wills Creek, the preservation railway, U.S. 40, and CSX’s former Baltimore & Ohio main line all squeeze through a narrow mountain gap.

Casey Thomason High atop the Allegany Mountains, No. 1309 steams triumphantly into Frostburg, Md. The elevation between here and Cumberland, Md., the start of the 16-mile-long Western Maryland Scenic Railroad, changes some 1,400 feet, making this climb no easy task.