Eckhart Branch Railroad - Operations

Operations

Service on the Eckhart Branch was hard, as evidenced by a series of correspondence with the Winans works in Baltimore in 1856. On June 16, 1856, CC&I ordered a replacement right-hand crosshead for the Braddock. The Braddock had gone into service on July 1, 1854. On September 24, they needed the same part for the Eckhart. The Eckhart had been placed into service on August 1, 1849. A frantic telegram on December 9, 1856, emphasizes the need for urgency for shipment of the replacement left-hand crosshead for the Eckhart. The engines Black Monster and Cumberland were at work at that time. The parts were delivered to the B&O Railroad at Cumberland. It is not known whether the repair work was done at Cumberland, or at Eckhart. The engine Eckhart was later rebuilt at the C&P shops in Mount Savage in 1868.

At the opening ceremony of the railroad on Wednesday, May 13, 1846, a special train took the board of directors and guests from Cumberland to Eckhart, and returned. About two weeks later, an accident occurred on the line near the junction with the Mount Savage Rail Road, at the west end of the Narrows. A dozen passengers were injured when the brakes burned out on the train, and it overturned due to excessive speed. It was noted in a contemporary newspaper account that these were the same brakes commonly used on the B&O line, but they were not adequate for the grades of the Eckhart Branch. Flooding in July 1846 also caused extensive damage to the line's lower end.

From 1846 to 1870, the Winans Camel engines of the Eckhart Railroad eased the heavy coal loads down the mountain, around the horseshoe curve, and through the tunnels to Cumberland. These were the days of manual car brakes, and link-and-pin couplers. Brakemen ran across the tops of cars, in all sorts of weather, to manually set and release the handbrakes. Later, the Camels would haul the empty coal hoppers and the lone passenger car back up the mountain in preparation for another day's work. The legacy of the Eckhart Branch railroad continued with the C&P, and with Western Maryland Railway equipment into the 1950s.

Before World War I, locomotive manufacturer Baldwin and the C&P management discussed the building of a small articulated engine to work the Eckhart Branch. The catalog Baldwin 2-4-4-2 was rated at 44,200 pounds of tractive effort, and grossed 188,000 pounds. It was rated for 475 trailing tons on a 3 percent grade. It used 51-inch (1,300 mm) wheels, and 200 psi boiler pressure. It was a Mallet design, with the high pressure rear cylinders rigidly attached to the frame, and the front low pressure cylinders pivoted, in the manner of a pilot. The high pressure cylinders were 19” x 26”; the low pressure ones were 29” x 26”. Baldwin built at least two engines to this design for the Little River Railroad in Tennessee. The first was rejected, and eventually went into logging service on the West Coast.

C&P’s Master Mechanic Sarby calculated he could get the same tractive effort by boring out the cylinders out on a C&P Class L 2-8-0. Engine number 23 was selected. Number 23 was a Mount Savage-built engine that entered service in October 1904. For some reason, Sarby was fired a short time later. The engine remained in service until scrapping in July 1944.

There are no details on the conversion, but if we assume that the cylinders were bored an additional 1”, the tractive effort would have increased by about 10 percent. This is following Baldwin’s published formula for tractive effort (ref. 78). Boring out the cylinders would have required new pistons, of course. The weight of the unit would not have changed significantly. The steam capacity of the boiler would have been sufficient for the low speed operations of the Eckhart Branch. One of the limitations of the Eckhart Branch, besides the tunnel clearances, curves, and grade was the load capacity of the Wills Creek Bridge, at the West End of the Narrows.

After the acquisition of the C&P by the Western Maryland Railway, the Eckhart Branch was worked by WM number 1102, a Baldwin Decapod (wheel arrangement 2-10-0). This class of engine was noted for its light axle loading, and had no flanges on the main drivers, for negotiating sharp curves.

The figure of merit on the Eckhart Branch was the number of empty hoppers that could be pulled uphill. This figure depends on the rolling resistance of the car, the grade resistance, and the curve resistance. The Winans engine could handle 40 hoppers, based on a tare weight of 3 tons for the Winans-designed 6-wheel hoppers in use in 1854. The later engines would haul 55-ton capacity hoppers, of tare weight 20 tons. The capacity of a standard C&P class L engine would have been 21 cars. The articulated engine could have handled 24. The later Decapods pulled 28 cars.