The Dollywood theme park in Tennessee is converting two of its former White Pass & Yukon steam locomotives from coal to oil burners this year. The amusement park railroad is just the latest in a long line of operators who have adopted oil firing to ensure that steam can still operate amid drier summers and rising fire danger in forested areas. 

While in some cases — such as on the Durango & Silverton or with Reading Company 4-8-4 2100 — where the conversions involved engines that had always burned coal, the Dollywood conversion is actually a switch back to oil. Although 2-8-2s 70 and 192 were originally built to burn coal, the WP&Y actually converted them to oil in the early 1950s. After being retired in the early 1960s, the locomotives were sold and later converted back to coal burners. 

So far, the conversion of locomotive 70 has been completed, and Dollywood officials said engine 192 should be finished this year. The amusement park sought help from the Durango & Silverton after that railroad changed all of its operating former Rio Grande 2-8-2s from coal to oil.

Dollywood features a 2.5-mile loop-to-loop track that was first constructed in the 1960s and was originally called Rebel Railroad. Later, it was renamed Gold Rush Junction and then Silver Dollar City Tennessee. In 1986, country music legend Dolly Parton became a part-owner of the park, and it was renamed Dollywood. The train is known as the Dollywood Express. The park owns three former WP&Y locomotives, two of which are operational (70 and 192), and a third that is stored (71). It also has the frame and running gear of a fourth WP&Y locomotive, 72, which was damaged in a roundhouse fire in Skagway in 1969.

—Justin Franz