The Original Parktrains Website

The History of Parktrains

A Short (?) History of the 36" Gage Crown Metal Products Locomotives

by Denis M. Larrick

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The Later Engines

Around 1970, Crown redesigned its 36" gage 4-4-0 engines as 5700 lb. tractive effort machines (at 175 PSI) to handle up to six 80 passenger coaches.  The catalog claimed they could move 2400 passengers per hour on a nine minute, one mile ride with a 1% grade and 150' radius curves.  The engine and tender were approximately 22 tons dry (25 tons in working order), with a 42" diameter, 400 gallon boiler of 22.6 Boiler Horsepower (boiler horsepower is a measure of heating surface).  Engine and tender were 45' long and 12'-6" high over the stack.  They were given 10"x16" cylinders, solid pilot wheels, and the drive wheels were reduced to 42" diameter with beefy spokes resembling 2x4's, resulting in 130 Brake Horsepower at 180 PSI boiler pressure (brake horsepower, on the other hand, measures actual mechanical engine power for a given RPM at the wheels).  When Kings Island contracted for their trains (1970-1971), an engine and tender cost $ 72,500, and a 37' long, eight ton coach cost $ 13,500.  By the time the 1983 catalog was published, the price had risen to $ 288,000 for an engine and tender (in Year 2001 dollars, that would be $506,313), and $ 58,000 for a coach (remember double digit inflation?).  Here is a list of the "later" Crowns, again not necessarily in chronological order:
 
#5 and #6 were built for Six Flags St. Louis (then Six Flags Over Mid-America) for the park's opening in 1970.  They were standard "later" design Crowns with gabled cab roofs and rectangular windows.  Apple green balloon stacked #5 had three domes while deep red diamond stacked #6 had two domes.  Both were propane fired and the air pumps were mounted on the right running board, while turbogenerators sat on the left running board.  When I visited in the summer of 1975, #6 had acquired a wrinkle in the 1/2" plate smokebox door when someone tried to light off the engine without clearing the propane out of the firebox first.  Crown's propane fired engines had electronic "fire eyes" which would shut off the gas line if the fire went out, but that wouldn't prevent some fool from holding the manual override open too long or forgetting to run the blower when lighting off.  The SFSL engines were supplied with four coaches and a caboose each (Crown's cabeese were steel but made to look like a center cupola wood caboose).  The ride went THROUGH the enginehouse on an upgrade (the train stopped for water with the coaches in the enginehouse), and the trackplan was a dogbone with the two stations at the narrow part of the dogbone, making it faster to walk to the other station !!  The ride is now called the "Tommy G. Robertson Railroad" and #6 is still in operation at SFSL (good pictures appear on the SFSL website and on "Julie's Coaster Pictures" website), but #5 was sold sometime around 1984 to Busch Gardens Florida.  I have not seen a picture of it in Florida, so I don't know if the appearance was substantially altered.
 
One person reported that a Crown (SFSL #5, maybe ???) had run at Six Flags Great America north of Chicago for a while (not to be confused with the Great America in Santa Clara, CA which is now owned by Paramount.  Both parks were built by Marriott around 1976 and were originally identical).  Although I have no confirmation, the story does seem to have some credibility: (1) the Mt. Pleasant, Iowa newspaper reported that the Crown coaches shipped to California (see Carowinds #2 below) had come from Six Flags Great America, even though both Great America parks were originally equipped with diesel trains from Custom Fabricators, not Crown, (2) the Crown caboose donated to the LaPorte County Steam Historical Society in Indiana in 1999 or 2000 is said to have come from the Chicago area (and there were no other 36" gage Crown trains in Chicago), (3) Great America had at one time wanted to augment the diesels with steam.  During Marriott times, the Chicago park commissioned a "Chicago Elevated" 2-4-4T steamer from Karl Auhl at Keystone Light Railways in Irwin, Pennsylvania (which was delivered to Great America but never used) and when I visited in 1978, there were also four derelict steamers on the Great America back lot (once belonging to International Amusement in Dayton, Ohio.  Great America sold these to unknown parties in the mid-1980's), and (4) why would the St. Louis management want to sell a perfectly good backup train unless upper management decided it was needed at Chicago?  If this is true, when did it go from St. Louis to Chicago, and then when did it go from Chicago to Florida?  Can anyone help me out here?

On the other side of the coin, it is reported that the Crown caboose from Chicago, donated by Mike Stark to LaPorte, had wood sides which had to be replaced.  I don't think Crown ever built a wooden caboose.  Was this added by whomever owned it between St. Louis and LaPorte, or was it not a Crown caboose at all?  And could the Mt. Pleasant newspaper have really meant Six Flags over MID- (not Great) America, which was the original name for Six Flags St. Louis?  Aha !!  If life is not without mystery, it is not life at all !!
 
#4 (apple green) and #9 (red) of the "Trans Veldt Railway" were built in the early 1970's for Busch Gardens Florida in Tampa, FL, and were the first of "European" appearance.  A small picture of #9 is currently on the BGF website.  Both had European style pilots, round top domes, round roof cabs with porthole windows, straight stacks with British caps, and British style tender tanks.  They are propane fired.  Each had five standard American style clerestory roof coaches supplied.  Originally the ride was just a safari through a wild animal area, but now it also serves as transportation in the park.  With the acquisition of SFSL #5 and Kings Dominion #601 (see below), Busch Gardens Florida now owns four 36" gage Crown 4-4-0's !!  I'd love to see a picture of all four lined up at the engine house !!  Does anyone have any contacts there who could take such a picture?  The railroad is said to have been recently relocated or expanded, and at least at some point in time contained a narrow gage / standard gage diamond crossing where the full sized Anheiser-Busch brewery spur crossed the park railroad.
 
#12 ("Tecumseh") and #19 ("Simon Kenton") at Paramount's Kings Island (Cincinnati, OH) were built in 1971.  #19 arrived that fall and was the last engine delivered before Ken Williams' death (the Kings Island station originally had a sign over the door which read "K.S. Williams, Stationmaster" in his honor).  #12 arrived in February 1972.  Both were stock propane engines, but the cabs were more ornate than the previously built engines.  Apple green #19 had an arched roof with arched windows, while baby blue and red #12 had a gabled roof and gothic windows.  The cabs were 10 gage steel trimmed in commercially available wooden cove and crown mouldings.  For some reason, the stacks on these engines were uncommonly skinny, #19 (three domes) having a skinny diamond, and #12 (two domes) having a skinny balloon stack.  The engine crew replaced #12's balloon with a cap stack that they fabricated sometime in the late 1970's.  Air pumps were mounted on the left running board (perhaps for appearance because that was the station side?).  Both trains came with six standard 80 passenger coaches.  Originally a 1.1 mile one station ride through animation, the track was modified in the 1980's to provide two station transportation to the waterpark.  Although Crown specified 150' as the minimum radius curve, the new station is an S curve on a 1.5% upgrade and immediately goes into a 90' radius horseshoe!!!  But in dry weather, they engines handle it without a whimper.  Crowns were built stout.  Kings Island's engines are perhaps the most babied of all the 36" Crowns.  Through the years, the engine crew added 32 VDC, 500 Watt Pyle-National turbogenerators (batteries originally supplied electricity to the lights and sound system and the trains had to be plugged in at night), steam heat to the fuel compartment, sand dome, and lubricator, converted all stick grease fittings to zirc fittings, added "remote" lubrication to the eccentrics (no more crawling between the frames !!!), quill style cylinder lubrication, a continuous blowdown system at waterlevel with a flashtank in the smokebox, feedwater heat, and one of the crew members (Bob Maynard) built a crosshead pump for the engineer's side of each engine.  The plain looking plate smokebox doors were retrofitted with old patio umbrella bases, giving them the ogee curves of the Baldwin style.  Classification lights were also added to the smokebox to improve appearances, as well as fake rivets to break up the all welded appearance.  A valve was added to the rear platform of each train so the conductor could "pull the air" on the engineer and stop the train in the event of an emergency.  Sanders have been reworked, a lubricator was added to the stiff blowdown style throttle valves, injectors were relocated to be non-lifting, a regulator was added to the steam blower so the fireman can't inadvertently shut off the draft (it works on backpressure in the exhaust nozzle and shuts off the blower at the first exhaust from the stack), the bell ringer was modified, whistles were moved to the steamdome where they blow without drawing water, propane controls were moved to be more ergonomic, and the propane burners were replaced.  As delivered, the engines had torch burners blowing in through a hole in the firedoor.  The new Maxon burners installed inside the firebox, the new brick arch, and the crosshead pump / feedwater heat have dramatically improved steaming and significantly cut fuel costs.  With the old burners, the six 100 gallon propane tanks were emptied in about six hours.  Now an engine can run all day with fuel left over.  Pictures of #19 appear on the official PKI website as well as on "Julie's Coaster Pictures".  PKI is currently the only Paramount park which has not removed its 36" gage railroad.  Let's hope these engines are still running there for another thirty years !!
 
In 1984, I did a fuel cost comparison and determined that at that time the propane required for one train running a ten hour day at Kings Island was about $ 174 per day ($ 0.29 per minute).  In comparison, Opryland was spending $ 330 to $ 495 per day on their oil burners, and Cedar Point was spending about $ 50 per day on coal.  After Opryland converted to diesel (ugh !), their fuel costs (they claimed !) were $ 40 per day per train plus the savings in not having to pay a crew for steamup time (but they did pay several thousand dollars that year to replace failed hydraulics equipment).  When you take that times two trains and a 120 day season, it adds up.  Imagine how that would translate to today's dollars. 
 
#17 was built for Lakeside Park, Salem, Virginia, in 1972.  It was an American style with a fluted sand dome and Crown steam dome, and had the more ornate gothic windowed cab like PKI #12.  I'm told it had a shotgun stack.  Sadly, Lakeside was a small traditional park which found itself in competition with the newly built Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Kings Dominion.  A flood in the Roanoke valley in 1985 wiped out the railroad roadbed, and a lawsuit over a fatal coaster accident closed the park for good at the end of the 1986 season.  The rides were sold to Emerald Point park in Greensboro, NC where a railfan reported seeing #17.  I don't know if it was ever actually used there.  That park also closed at the end of the 1991 season.  Five or six years ago, #17 was shipped to the Tweetsie Railroad shops in Blowing Rock, NC where it was restored and rebuilt for Busch Gardens Williamsburg.  As rebuilt, it has a red snowplow instead of cowcatcher, and a smaller, more European round headlight.  It is now painted dark green and red.  The four American style coaches and caboose have been decorated with fake snow, and at BGW the train now goes by the name "Alpengeist (Ghost of the Alps) Express".  Does anyone have a picture of it when it was running at Lakeside?
 
When the coaches were restored for BGW, the medallion on the ends of the benchseats was ground off.  I'm told that the original medallions were of crossed pistols.  Was that Lakeside's logo, or is it possible that the coaches might have come from Six Gun Territory #4 which is now in Atlanta?  Probably not... Lakeside bought their engine in 1972 or 1973 and I don't believe Six Gun Territory closed until the early 1980's.  The crossed pistols also appear on the Old Hickory #7 (believed to be from Frontierland), so maybe the crossed pistols were just the "default" medallion if a park didn't specify otherwise.  All in all, Crown would have built in the neighborhood of one hundred 30"/36" gage coaches.  Add the number of coaches they built for 15" to 24" gage, and they could have easily carried over 10,000 passengers !!
 
I'm told that just before the Jim Bakker / Jessica Hahn scandal, the Tweetsie Railroad was contracted to build and operate a 36" gage steam railroad at Heritage USA (I believe they already had a 24" gage Chance gasoline 4-2-4T train).  Of course, that fell through.  Does anyone know if that was to involve Lakeside #17 (or possibly Pioneer and Western #3)?

Worlds of Fun (Kansas City, Missouri) had #33 (named "Eli", Crown construction number 27636) built for the park's May 26, 1973 opening.  They have always owned only the one train which has five standard coaches.  #33 is a standard balloon stacked, three dome with lefthand airpump design very similar to SFSL #5, and is painted apple green with red wheels and yellow and white trim.  A good picture appears in the "unofficial" WOF website.  The track is a 1 mile single station ride through an animated area, and has eight bridges, 150' radius curves, and 2.0% to 2.5% grades which make it work.  It is also propane fired and is still in operation at WOF.  The WOF RR was (is?) sponsored by Burlington Northern (BNSF?).
 
#1865 (I think that's the number) is running at Fort Fun in Bestwig-Wasserfall, Germany.  A couple of photos appear on the Fort Fun website under "Santa Fe Express".  To my knowledge, it is the only 36" gage Crown outside the United States.  It appears to be a copy of SFSL #5, Carowinds #2, and Worlds of Fun #33, so I would guess it was built in the 1970-1973 era.  Last year I e-mailed the park (in my best broken German) for more information but have not yet received a reply, probably because they are still laughing.
 
Carowinds #1 "Melodia" (Now Paramount's Carowinds in Charlotte, NC) [actualy south of Charlotte in Ft. Mill, SC --ed.] was the only 36" gage Crown built on an historical chassis and the only one which was not a 4-4-0.  It started life as an 1897 Porter 0-6-2T (c/n 1790) with 9"x14" cylinders at the Barker and Lepine Plantation in Lafource Crossing, Louisiana, then moved to the Laurel Valley Plantation in Tribodaux, LA at an unknown date where it was named Melodia.  At another unknown date, it became a part of the Arthur LaSalle collection.  In 1960, it was sold to Hubert Mitchell Industries and was stored in Hartselle, Alabama.  It was then sold to James Freeland who owned Daniel Boone Village near Hillsborough, NC where it was run at the owner's whim.  Freeland subsequently advertised the engine in Hemmings Motor News and sold it directly to Carowinds.  Sometime between Hartselle and Carowinds, it was rebuilt by Crown into an oil burning 2-6-2 with tender.  In the process, it received a Crown boiler (Dave Barnhardt tells me that he thinks the boiler was already on the floor at Crown before the project was initiated so maybe it was pushed ahead of another project), Crown tender, arched roof cab, cowcatcher, headlight, steam dome, and a tall, skinny diamond stack.  It retained the hemispherical Porter sand dome, the inclined Porter cylinders (with the Porter name cast into the steamchest), the Porter (Route 66 shaped) builder's plate, and the Porter smokebox door, also with the Porter name cast in.  This rebuild supposedly happened in 1963, but the boiler appears to be more the size of the post-1970 Crowns.  At Carowinds, #1 carried the name "Melodia" on the left side of the cab and the letters EPH on the right side of the cab for E. Pat Hunt, the developer who built the park.  Melodia is reported to have run at Carowinds on June 13, 1972 for a publicity day, even though the park did not open to the public until March 1973.  The ride circled the park which was divided in two by the North Carolina / South Carolina border (I wonder which state inspected the trains?).  The station was at the front of the park, but unlike Disney where the station is over the main street, at Carowinds it was a depressed platform under the park entrance.  The railroad was partially dismantled after the 1977 or 1978 season (one account says 1975) to make room for a new theme area (I'm told they didn't want grade crossings), so the equipment stayed at Carowinds for a few years unused.  Melodia was sold in June 1980 to the George Roose collection in Cleveland, Ohio (George was part owner of Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, OH and he built the 36" gage Cedar Point and Lake Erie RR in 1963 out of his pocket when the park's Board of Directors wouldn't build it !!).  One account had it going to western New York, possibly to a park near Springsville, but I have no evidence of it being used or of a park existing there.  There was also a rumor that it went to Rome, NY, but that has been proven false.  In 1982, it did arrive (and possibly run) at Wild World (now Six Flags America) in Largo, Maryland but returned to Sandusky, Ohio by 1984 where it stayed until at least October 1985 (there is no evidence that it was ever on Cedar Point property, so it must have been stored at Roose's home).  George Roose died in 1992 or 1993.  One individual told me that after a couple of years it then passed through Shop Services in Iowa on its way to a developer in California.  That's where the trail stops.  Does anyone know anything more about this lost locomotive?  Carowinds is said to have built four of Melodia's coaches themselves from D&RGW steel chassis (which have more of a "trolley car" roof than the Crown coaches), and one is now at the LaPorte County Steam Historical Society railroad in Hesston, Indiana.  John Harbeck tells me that several were available in the Roose collection at the time.  I do not know the whereabouts of the others today.
 
While I'm talking about coaches, the standard gage open coaches at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan look like they could have been built by Crown.  Does anyone know for sure?
 
Carowinds #2 (construction number 37936) was a standard design Crown 4-4-0 built in 1973 to burn oil (does anyone know the name on the side of the cab?).  Except for a wider balloon stack, it was a spitting image of SFSL #5 and Fort Fun #1865.  It was painted royal blue and silver with red wheels and was quite attractive.  It originally had three domes.  Four standard Crown coaches came with it, I believe.  A picture of it appears on the website "Carowinds, The Early Years".  After the Carowinds and Carolinas Railroad was dismantled, #2 was sold to Charlie Kelton in Vermont who was planning to use it as an attraction at his car and truck dealership (he might have already had some 24" gage equipment).  Whether it ran there or not is not known, but while in Vermont someone put out the time and money to repaint the whole train (no small task !!).  In its new color scheme it had a red boiler, red wheels and blue domes, light yellow cab, and light blue, red, and yellow tender, and resembled a large toy circus train.  The four coaches had light blue roofs and seats which alternated red and yellow.  In the fall of 1992, it was still in remarkably good condition, sitting on a hillside with four coaches overlooking a highway in Vermont with only the number plate missing and some surface rust on the smokebox and cylinders.  It possibly changed hands at least once in Vermont, because in April 1993 a secretive party bought it from a different individual.  The engine, tender, and coaches were shipped to Shop Services in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, where it was kept indoors and out of sight during the restoration (according to the newspaper at the time, the Tweetsie Railroad shops also bid on the restoration, but Shop Services had work in progress at the time of the client's visit which impressed them).  Under terms of the contract, the staff of Shop Services were not even allowed to tell their own spouses who owned it and where it was going.  The new owner never came to Iowa, but he did call Shop Services at least a dozen times to check on the progress of the project at a time when he was staying out of the public eye.  In the fall of 1993, it made its test runs on the Midwest Central Railroad in Mt.Pleasant (including its first encounter with an open switch !!  No damage done.).  It had emerged as a totally different engine equal in appearance to the Disney engines, though Disney never had anything to do with it.  It had a new smokebox door, new headlight, new stack, new Baldwin style domes, new brass cylinder jackets and head covers, and a new, solid teakwood cab.  It even had fake rivets added to the tender (the paint on the tender alone cost $ 11,000 since the new owner was very fussy).  The polished brass domes were adorned with the initials of the new railroad's owner and the engine's new number (#1) in beautiful hand painted script, and the side of the cab proclaimed its new name "Katherine".  It had been converted from oil to propane, and to this day it is the only steam locomotive with completely automatic firing and water level controls.  The new owner wanted anyone to be able to run it (a 50 ton train and a 180 PSI boiler !!) with only 10 to 15 minutes of instruction.  When it arrived at its new home, an engineer was placed on round-the-clock retainer to run the train at the new owner's whim.  On November 20, 1993 (only six months after purchase), the engine, tender, and one coach (of the two coaches under contract) left on lowboy trailers, destined for a new life in California.  As it rode down the highway, the tender told everyone that this engine now belonged to the Neverland Valley Railroad.  The name Katherine, by the way, refers to the mother of the new owner, singer Michael Jackson.  One account tells me that his Neverland Ranch is near Modesto, while another tells me it is at Santa Ynez, near Los Angeles.  Which is right?
 
The coaches shipped to the Neverland Ranch are said to have been 1969 models from Six Flags Great (MID?) America, not Carowinds.  Since St. Louis was the only Six Flags park to run Crowns (and the equipment would have been built in the year prior to SFSL's 1970 opening), I suspect that they might have come from the SFSL #5 train which was sold to Busch Gardens Florida.  As rebuilt for Michael Jackson, the two coaches had varnished wood slat benches in place of the original Crown steel benches.  Originally, the Carowinds coaches were to have been restored for Neverland as well, but due to Michael's legal situations at the time, that contract was cancelled.  On a very cold day In the fall of 2000, I visited the Midwest Central in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and one of the Crown Carowinds coaches was sitting outside, torched into a flatcar and used for storage of signal parts (I assume the roof and seats were sold for scrap).  There was no sign of the other Carowinds coaches, but the railroad was locked up so they could have been inside.  That means that at least three of the original "in house" Carowinds-built coaches and at least three of the Crown coaches from Carowinds are "missing".  Does anyone know where they are?  I also found the fuel oil tank from Carowinds #2's tender sitting on the scrap pile at Mt. Pleasant.
 
As a side note, the track at Neverland was laid by a professional contractor, but was found to be too tight and the engine would not negotiate the curves without undue drag.  When the track was regaged wider, the engine ran fine.  We had the same problem at first with the Kings Island trains.  Is it possible that two track contractors made the same mistake (they don't get much practice laying three foot gage anymore)?  Must have been, since I have seen video of the Neverland engine being tested at Mt. Pleasant, and it ran fine there.
 
Another rumor exists that there may have been TWO 36" gage Crowns in Vermont at one time, possibly at a place called Timber Rail Village.  Mike Thidemann reports seeing a tender and two coaches at White River Jct. in 1986.  The orange and yellow coaches were closed with end doors and open vestibules, and the lettering ended "& Mexico".  The tender was painted orange and yellow as well.  It is believed that the railroad at South of the Border in South Carolina ended in "& Mexico", so is it possible that both of the Carowinds 4-4-0's went to Vermont before #2 went to California and #3 went to Alabama?

Paramount's Kings Dominion #552 and #601 (north of Richmond, Virginia, which opened in 1975) were basically copies of PKI #19 and #12 respectively, but the stacks were made more full and prototypical (#552, from the certain angles, is a stunningly well proportioned engine and is my favorite of all of Crown's work).  Both had wood cabs which looked like the steel PKI cabs.  #552, the "Stonewall Jackson", (one fluted dome, one Crown dome, diamond stack, arched windows, round cab roof) was red with blue domes and a blonde wood cab.  #601 (two Crown domes, balloon stack, gothic windows, gabled cab roof) was blue with red wheels and domes and a blonde wood cab.  Uncommon to Crown practice, the engines had jacketed cylinders and steam chests.  Does anyone know the name of #601 and the name of the railroad when they were running at Kings Dominion?  The railroad was a one station ride through animation similar to Kings Island, and for a while the tracks crossed the queue line of the Grizzly roller coaster at grade, which I'm sure made for some interesting operations.  A member of the Kings Island crew with which I worked told me the Kings Dominion engines were in pretty sad shape when he saw them.  I'm told by another source that ridership was dismal (the train only ran a few hours per day towards the end) and at the close of the 1994 or 1995 season the railroad was ripped up and replaced with another roller coaster.  Two stories have been heard: (1) Busch Gardens Florida bought both trains and the Dry Gulch Railroad bought one from them, or (2) both trains were to have gone to Dry Gulch and somehow BGF got one.  At any rate, #601 went to BGF (I have not seen a picture of it down there), and #552, six coaches, and the PKD track went to the Dry Gulch RR in the spring of 1996 at a religious retreat called Camp Dry Gulch on Lake Hudson near Adair, Oklahoma (the camp's website features #552 in the masthead).  There, it is operating on 1.4 miles of rugged track along with a couple of restored 1940's era Porters.  #552's cab encountered a tree on its way from Virginia and all the woodwork had to be replaced.  It was also repainted with blue boiler jacket and red domes.  At least some of the coaches at Dry Gulch (the steep grades and tight curves limit them to three car trains) have been "winterized" with aisles and removable windows for use on their popular Christmas Train.
 
During my first year at Kings Island, management asked us for suggestions to improve the ride when it was duplicated at Kings Dominion.  I suggested more prototypical colors (dark, not light blue, and more red), jacketed cylinders, wood cabs, better stacks.  It was almost twenty five years later when I finally saw a picture of PKD #601, and they did it all !!! See?  Management does occasionally listen !!
 
In 1975, Busch Gardens' (Williamsburg, Virginia) opened with a European theme, and the two Crown engines were built to match for the "Old Country Railway".  Though the chassis were standard, they were themed as a blue British engine (the "Balmoral Castle"), and a red German engine ("Der Hochbeinige") with short cap stacks, a single hemispherical brass sand dome, drivewheel "splashers", fake Belpaire fireboxes, buffers, and round roof cabs which are made to look like the European style which requires the crew to stand up (these two really have seats, though).  The engines are identical except the British engine has a crest on the front in place of the German engine's "elephant ears" (smoke deflectors), and the tenders are built to resemble the engines of the individual countries.  The two five coach trains are standard except for arched European roofs instead of American clerestory roofs.  The three station ride around the perimeter of the park is relatively flat, but includes many curves, numerous grade crossings for railfan photography, and two beautiful high trestles over the "Rhine River".  Instead of an enginehouse, the trains are kept under roof in the French styled trainshed type station.  With the addition of Lakeside #17 (now the Alpengeist Express), BGW has three 36" gage Crown 4-4-0 trains, and all are in operation simultaneously during peak hours.
 
A rumor exists that the locomotive wrecked in the movie "Bridge over the River Kwai" was also a Crown.  Although that is possible (it is a 4-4-0 of approximately the right size), the movie was filmed in 1957 (before Crown was really active in larger scales) and the film was shot in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), right across the Bay of Bengal from India where hundreds of steamers were still in operation, some of which were probably available as scrap at a reasonable price.  In my mind it is more likely that the engine in the film was of local ancestry, but if anyone has any info that might confirm it as a Crown, I would appreciate hearing of it.

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