Yes, we are going to be restoring the 58 to her original 93,000 lb. self again. We have plans to construct a 23" gauge steel mill demonstration railroad at the Youngstown Steel Heritage Museum in Youngstown, OH. The first 80 feet of track, which is mostly built, is of 100 lb. RB rail, mainly because that is what i had laying around the property. I will comp. down to 85 lb. ASCE for the rest of the railroad as I can find 85 lb. No.4 switches and it will still support the axle loadings.
The original 23" gauge operation that this locomotive was used on was at the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. Pittsburgh Works. It moved ingot mold cars around, which are extremely heavy. I want to build a train of heavy flats with ingot molds so that we can replicate that part of steel industry rail operations. This type of two foot railroading is about as far from the lighter, more typical two footers as you can get.
Thanks to a tip from Wayne Laepple, I visited Kovalchick's Salvage in Burnham, PA on Thursday and found literally a pile of 23" gauge flatcars that were originally from Carpenter Steel. I am trying to get a price on them, and if the price is reasonable I may buy a couple. An alternative is to construct our own cars based upon the Carpenter design, but beefed up somewhat.
The 58 is due to arrive on the property soon, with boiler work taking place over the winter and spring. By summer we should have the boiler back on and be ready to test fire. Tank and cab reconstruction will take longer. Track construction and car fabrication/acquisition will take place as time permits. We also have to get new ingot molds cast for us. Fortunately the last ingot mold maker in the US is five miles away and the company is already a contributor to our museum, so maybe we won't have much expense in getting those.
https://flic.kr/p/qhnyq3This is a similar narrow gauge ingot mold operation at the US Steel Homestead Works.
https://flic.kr/p/qjmjWDThis is our trackplan. Red is track already built. Blue is track to be built.
