any info on the Tampa Northern Railway

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I am researching the Tampa Northern Railway during the steam era. Larry Goolsby and I are looking for info on this shortline for a periodical article. I have a black & white photo of an 0-6-0 locomotive, and I'm trying to solve lots of puzzles about it. The photo was found in my mother's attic, and since the accompanying letter was written in a foreign language, I don't know the rest of the story. Things that I do know include ; the engineer's name is R.E. Dunbar, he was a Mason, the photo was taken by Burgers Bros. Co. of St.Pete , the road number of the switcher is 50, there are several men in the photo, and one man resembles my grandfather (Walter Poneleit) - maybe his brother. Any info is helpful and will be noted in the article. JWL

-- James Walter (Jim) Leach (valeagle@powwwer.net), May 09, 1999

Answers

Jim, The TN 50 was built by Baldwin in Nov. of 1907 (c/n 31940) and was an 0-6-0 type with 19x26" cylinders and 50" driving wheels. It weighed 110,000 lbs on its drivers and developed 28,721 lbs of tractive effort. The 50 became SAL 2nd 1001 in 1929 and was scrapped in Savanah on 10/31/1930 so it had a very short life on the Seaboard. Makes one wonder why they even renumbered the locomotive in the first place as it was evidently in such bad condition that Seaboard decided to scrap her. The name of the photographers in question is actually the Burgett Brothers of Tampa, their collection of negatives and glass plates are now owned by the Tampa Public Library.

I have quite a bit of material on the TN including a few photos(see my web site at http://www.greenepa.net/~taplines for my negative collection) and I would be willing to correspond and trade material on the TN and related railroads and companies, like the Brooksville & Hudson and Apreika SawMills.

Don Hensley

-- Donald R. Hensley, Jr. (taplines@greenepa.net), May 10, 1999.


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