The Bachmann Spectrum 0-6-0T

The Bachmann Spectrum saddle tank 0-6-0T dates from a very early Bachmann model that was available from 1972 to 1978. A 1975 catalog page can be found here. The prices in the 1970s ranged from $12 to $16. At the time, I had just moved out on my own and was building a shelf layout in a walk-in closet. I was interested in a small layout along the lines of the Gum Stump & Snowshoe and was focusing on equipment from about 1900-1920, because it was compact and interesting.

I saw the Bachmann saddle tanker when it came out, and I got one, probably for $12, fully aware of what to expect from Bachmann at the time, but willing to take a chance given my interests. Unfortunately, the chassis disintegrated from Zinkpest as soon as I got it out of the box. For $12, I wasn't upset; the body was good anyhow, and I kept it around.

Sometime in the late 1990s, Bachmann brought the 0-6-0T saddle tank back as a Spectrum model, with pretty much the same body over a state-of-the-art chassis. I was delighted. I found one for something like $40 at discount. The early version had no DCC, but it did have solder points on the PC board for a decoder. Not long ago, I dug mine out and installed DCC:

I followed the DCC install instructions here. It looks like there were several runs of this model in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and later ones have DCC as a factory item. They seem to be discontinued by Bachmann but can still be found on eBay or as new old stock elsewhere.

I was especially interested in the model, both in the 1970s and 1990s, becauks it is based on a J Harold Geissel drawing in the May 1958 MR. It was portrayed as belonging to the Leetonia & Cherry Valley Railroad. At the time, this seemed to me a fanciful name for a rural type operation.

In the 1970s, there were far fewer opportunities to research obscure shortlines. When I checked back on the May 1958 MR at the MR Digital Archive, I saw that it gave enough information on the Leetonia & Cherry Valley to show it was a real railroad. I noted, though, that the low cab made me think it might be a steel mill locomotive. But in 1958 or 1975, we didn't have Google. (The only options at those times would be to find a really good library with collections of Poor's Manual of Railroads, ICC reports, or, a real longshot, Official Railway Equipment Registers -- but you'd be spending a lot of time going through them no matter what.)

It turns out that the Leetonia & Cherry Valley was a property incorporated in January 1910 to take over the railroad of the United Iron & Steel Company in Leetonia, Ohio, near Youngstown. At that time, the line consisted of 4 1/2 miles of yard tracks and sidings, to which the L&CVRR added 1.6 miles of new track. All of it served the steel mill, connecting with the Erie at both ends of its lines and with the Pennsylvania at the western end.

A major feature of the line was a set of beehive coke ovens. It looks like the L&CV received interchange hoppers of coal from the PRR (Lines West) and Erie and moved them to an unloading trestle, seen at the top of the photo here. A horizontal-rib Erie hopper is visible on the trestle. The coal went into larrys hauled by small electric locos, also shown, from which it was unloaded into the beehive ovens.

Once the coal was cooked into coke, it was unloaded from the ovens at a lower level and then loaded back into railroad hoppers, which hauled the coke to the Leetonia blast furnaces. The hoppers are barely visible on the lower left in this photo.

The track where the hoppers were unloaded was eight feet below the level where the workers are standing in this photo.

The Cherry Valley coke ovens remained, but abandoned, after the whole Leetonia operation shut down in 1930. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Village of Leetonia began a partial restoration project. Below is a more recent view of the ovens:

The track where the hoppers were reloaded with coke was in the trough at the bottom of the photo. So far, I haven't located any photos of the prototype Alco Brooks locos in service on the L&CV, but I would guess that they were standard steel mill locos in any case. Here's a shot of a Bachmann model with an Accurail as-delivered USRA hopper, the kind of car it seems to have handled routinely on the L&CV: