A Short (?) History of the 36" Gage Crown Metal Products Locomotives
The Early Big Engines
#1, built for Legend City in Phoenix, AZ in the early 1960's. The engine
had a funnel shaped balloon stack (as did almost all of the early 36" gage
Crowns), three domes and was retrofit with a Pyle National turbogenerator
on the left running board. One of the engineers mounted his own Nathan
5 chime whistle on the engine for a time. It pulled two coaches and
a caboose. It was sold around 1980 to a park in the El Paso, TX area
which is thought to have gone under. Last word is that as of three
to four years ago it was still stored in the El Paso area but I don't know
where. There was a rumor of a 36" Crown running around a Ramada Inn
hotel in Laughton, Nevada (this one maybe?), but that is not confirmed.
Has anyone seen it?
#7? (c/n 43436) was built for Frontierland, Cherokee, NC in the early 1960's.
Frontierland later became the Magic Waters Fun Park (waterpark), and the
train (engine, tender, either four or six coaches, 1.5 miles of track) was
put up for auction by Norton auctions on October 1, 1986, but it did not
sell. Dave Barnhardt believes he was involved in selling it later.
I believe it is now #7 at the Old Hickory RR, Jackson, LA which was being
restored and running on air in summer 1996. It may be under steam by
now on up to 9 miles of museum trackage. In the picture on the old
parktrains website (before moving to Yahoo), it appears that the engine is
being retrofit with a much longer and more graceful sculpted wood pilot.
Note that Frontierland was not the same as Cherokee Wonderland which was
nearby. Cherokee Wonderland operated in the early 1960's with three
or four of Arthur LaSalle's restored engines which later went to Cedar Point
Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio.
#3 was built for the Pioneer and Western RR (does anyone know where that
was? The old newspaper picture I have shows what appears to be sandy
soil). It had three Crown domes, balloon stack, and a huge box headlight
with deer antlers. A 1965 period Crown catalog shows it loaded on a
flatcar for shipment with several coaches, one of which was named "Prairie".
I am not 100% certain where it is today, but I suspect it is the one which
in the early 1970's was owned (but not used) by Carowinds Amusement Park,
Charlotte, NC (their third engine). I believe it later went to South
of the Border park in South Carolina (unused there also), and is now on the
turntable at the Depot Museum in Huntsville, Alabama.
#4 and at least three coaches were built for Six Gun Territory, Ocala, FL.
Does anyone know the original name on it ("U.S. Grant", maybe?)? Originally
wood fired, it is thought to be later converted to propane. Three domes,
balloon stack, right hand air pump. The park opened in 1964.
The ride was 1.66 miles around an artificial mountain, and to enter the park
you had to ride either the train or the skyride (one account says "whichever
was not shut down" !!). The engine was sold at auction in the 1980's
to someone in the Atlanta area. Now painted light blue, silver, and
black, it is on static display outdoors without headlight, decorated with
Warner Bros. cartoon characters in the plaza between Underground Atlanta
(Georgia) and the Coca-Cola building.
A second #7 was built for Six Gun Territory, Ocala, FL. Named the "R.E.
Lee". Sold at auction in the 1980's. Originally wood fired, later
thought to be converted to propane. Two domes. Now pulling two
cars at the Jefferson and Cyprus Bayou RR in Jefferson, TX and was reported
still operating as late as 1999 on 5 miles of trackage out through the swamp
to a pioneer village. What are they firing it on now? It somewhere
acquired solid pilot wheels to replace the original spoked ones. Both
Six Gun engines had the lubricator cantilevered over the left cylinder, and
had tender grab irons which were not typical Crown practice (a modification
by the SGT?).
#119 was custom built to resemble Union Pacific #119 of Golden Spike fame,
and was donated by a private individual to the Omaha (Nebraska) Henry Doorly
Zoo in 1968. This engine is essentially a 36" gage Crown, but was instead
gaged to 30" (perhaps the Portland, Oregon Zoo railroad, which owns a locally
built 30" gage 4-4-0, was the precedent for that?). The engine has
two domes (the first engine built with the fluted sand dome), straight cap
stack, left hand air pump, and solid pilot wheels. #119 was supplied
with three coaches (which look more like Crown's 24" gage coaches scaled
up), but a fourth coach and a steel caboose were added in the early 1980's
when the second engine (an Austrian Krauss 0-6-2T) was acquired. One
source believes that the caboose and fourth coach came from another railroad,
but I have never seen any other Crown equipment of this size, so I believe
it was purchased new. Does anyone know for sure? The Omaha Zoo
line consists of nearly two miles of track with two tight muleshoe curves,
4% upgrades, and a 6% downgrade. The Crown and the Krauss have their
work cut out for them, but it is a mountain railroader's paradise.
Both engines are oil burners. For years, the Union Pacific trucked
the engines over to their Omaha shops each winter for maintenance.
A few years back, the UP demolished the Omaha Shops and donated some of the
shop machinery and $200,000 to build the zoo its very own state-of-the-art
shop right next to the station where tourists can look in the personnel door.
The shop even has a 61 ton crane from a shipyard which could pick up both
engines at once !! When I visited in August, 1999, the #119 was stripped
down to the bare frames and was is the process of being rebuilt. A
frame was straightened, a cracked cylinder was repaired, new pilot wheels
were cast, and a new larger cab was constructed. It is now practically
a new engine and is said to be able to handle the five cars on the 4% upgrades
with no trouble.
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