By Justin Franz
Ontario’s Waterloo Central Railway announced over the weekend that it had purchased Canadian Pacific 4-6-2 G5 1238 and plans to restore it to operation.
In July, the Waterloo Central and Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society announced they needed to raise $150,000 before the end of the year to buy the locomotive that is currently in storage at Prairie Dog Central Railway in Winnipeg, Man. According to Waterloo Central, the locomotive is a good candidate for restoration and if they are successful it will be the second-largest operating steam locomotive in Canada behind CP 4-6-4 2816.
Waterloo Central has one other steam locomotive, 0-6-0 9, built for the Essex Terminal Railway by Montreal Locomotive Works in 1923.
The CP’s G5 Pacifics were among the most modern steam locomotives ever built in North America — the first emerged from CP’s Angus Shops in early 1944 — but they had an elegant style that looked as if they were built decades earlier. But the class was doomed from the start and by the time all 102 were built, diesel-electrics were already taking over some assignments. As historian F. H. Howard wrote in Trains in 1954, the G5s were “destined to die young.” But the locomotives’ youth and classic looks undoubtedly made them ideal candidates for preservation. In all, six G5s would be saved including 1201 (Canadian Science and Technology), 1246 (Railroad Museum of New England), 1278 (Age of Steam Roundhouse), 1286 (Privately owned and stored at Prarie Dog Central) and 1293 (Age of Steam Roundhouse).
Locomotive 1238, along with sister engine 1286, moved to the U.S. in the 1960s and was used on excursions up and down the eastern seaboard through the 1970s and 1980s. The locomotives were purchased by Jack Showalter in 1973, and used on his Alleghany Central tourist railroad out of Covington, Va. Locomotive 1238 was also loaned to the Southern Railway briefly for main line excursion service. In 1988, Showalter moved his locomotives to Maryland to operate on the former Western Maryland and Cumberland & Pennsylvania between Cumberland and Frostburg. The line’s owner, Scenic Railroad Development Corporation, would eventually begin operating its own excursions under the name Western Maryland Scenic. Showalter’s last tourist operation was the Virginia Central out of Gordonsville, Va. The Virginia Central would prove to be short-lived and by the mid-1990s, both locomotives were in storage. Showalter died in 2014, and the locomotives were sold the following year before being moved back to Canada.
The Waterloo Central is raising money for the move of 1238 and its operational restoration. For more information, visit their website.
