L&N in Clark County: Steam power!

Without ques­tion, the “Age of Steam” was the gold­en era of rail­road­ing.  I remem­ber when I was young, dad would often take us to the C&O sta­tion in Mt. Sterling to watch the George Washington come in from Winchester.  Seeing the 200-ton steam engine round the curve and come scream­ing into view would raise the hair on my neck.  It was always a thrilling expe­ri­ence, no mat­ter how many times I saw it.

Seemingly alive, these mas­sive crea­tures nev­er failed to enter­tain.  They were nev­er qui­et, whether stand­ing in front of the depot exhaust­ing steam and black coal smoke or chuff-chuff­ing out of the sta­tion to start their east­ern jour­ney.  One could only dream then how excit­ing it would be to ride this train all the way to Washington, DC.

Steam engines once pulled all the L&N trains.  Since Patio is the top of grade for the lines com­ing from Ford and Ravenna, north­bound freight trains had to be double-headed—it took two loco­mo­tives to pull a ful­ly-loaded coal train up the hill.  These were usu­al­ly a pair of Berkshire engines (2−8−4) built by Lima Locomotive Works.  L&N dubbed these their M‑1 class engines.  Built between 1942 and 1949, they were nick­named “Big Emmas” by crews.  By late 1956, fol­low­ing a nation­wide trend, all of L&N’s Berkshire loco­mo­tives had been retired from ser­vice and scrapped.  (One C&O Berkshire escaped this fate and is being restored by the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corporation in Ravenna.)

Steam pow­er dom­i­nat­ed freight and pas­sen­ger ser­vice in the United States until the 1950s when they were rapid­ly replaced by diesel-elec­tric engines.  The last steam loco­mo­tive passed through Patio on November 3, 1956.

Although rail fans still mourn the loss, dieseliza­tion offered too many advan­tages to ignore.  Diesel loco­mo­tives required sig­nif­i­cant­ly less time and labor to oper­ate and main­tain.  Diesels could be refu­eled from a tank car, in con­trast to the com­plex infra­struc­ture required to pro­vide coal and water for steam engines.  They could be parked and idled unat­tend­ed for days with lit­tle fuel use, where­as steam engines had to be con­stant­ly tend­ed if not shut down.  Bottom line:  diesels had much low­er oper­at­ing and sup­port costs.

Today many tourist rail­roads still oper­ate old-time steam loco­mo­tives.  If you’re lucky, you might get to vis­it one this summer.