By Railfan & Railroad Staff

Pennsylvania’s Colebrookedale Railroad has acquired a former Canadian National 4-6-2 that has spent the last two decades down south on the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. The locomotive, CN 5288, will join two other steam locomotives in the Keystone State that have recently been acquired by the tourist railroad with the hope of one day restoring all three to operation. 

Cokebrookedale officials said the locomotive would move north from Tennessee to Pennsylvania in the coming weeks. It will initially be put on display at the railroad’s Boyertown depot. 

“We are absolutely overjoyed to welcome the 5288 as a star in Colebrookdale’s growing stable of steam locomotives,” said Nathaniel Guest, executive director of the nonprofit Colebrookdale Railroad Preservation Trust. “We portray that halcyon era of passenger railroading in the first decades of the 20th Century. The noble lines of 5288 absolutely capture the look of that period.”

The locomotive was built in 1919 for the Grand Trunk and later was transferred to CN. In 1961, it was purchased by F. Nelson Blount for his Steamtown collection. In 2001, Steamtown sold the locomotive to TVRM, in part because it looked an awful lot like one of the Southern Railway’s iconic 4-6-2 locomotives. TVRM decided to sell the locomotive to Colebrookedale so that it could focus on other projects. 

Colebrookedale’s other two steam locomotives include Grand Trunk Western 4-6-2 5030 and Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2-8-0 18.