Rare images of Reading 2102 on the P&LE

Of all the mainline steam locomotives running these days — and there is an uncanny amount of them — I can’t think of one with as many distinct transitions as Reading 4-8-4 No. 2102. By my count, she’s a cat with at least five lives, with four more to go, if you believe that sort of thing.

The original engine (or its boiler, at least) came out of Baldwin in 1923 as a fat, 2-8-0 Consolidation, one of 50 on the roster. Just 22 years later, the Reading Co. saw fit to turn it into one of 30 hugely successful 4-8-4s, built in the company’s own shops to muscle more anthracite coal out of the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Then, just when the scrapper presumably loomed, the railroad put four sister 4-8-4s aside — plus the 2102 a bit later — to hang around into the early Sixties for the famed Reading Rambles excursions.

When the Rambles came to a stop, the 2102 entered into private hands under the banner of Akron-based Steam Tours Inc., which over the next several years ran the big 4-8-4 in all kinds of unusual places: Chicago, for instance, via Grand Trunk Western, and West Virginia’s Greenbrier Branch via the C&O, and, pertinent here, a series of trips in western Pennsylvania that included Conrail over Horse Shoe Curve and the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie out of its namesake city.

We all know what happened next. In 1986, Andy Muller of the Reading, Blue Mountain & Northern short line swooped in to buy the engine. His 400-mile regional has since become a case study in how to mix standard freight railroading with first-class steam operations.

In 2022, the railroad, operating under the name Reading & Northern, completed an incredibly thorough overhaul of the 2102 at its own shop in Port Clinton, Pa. When the gleaming 4-8-4 emerged from the shop, it took its place among the front rank of operating mainline engines and has been dazzling steam fans on an intermittent schedule ever since. Writing in June 2022, I called the locomotive “the comeback kid.”

This whole 2102 timeline went rushing through my head a couple of weeks ago as I sifted through various photos files at Kalmbach, as Classic Trains — now published by Firecrown Media — prepared to move its library and photo files to a new space. I knew I’d lose access to the files for a few weeks, and I wanted to “load up” for this blog, so to speak.

Instinctively, I ended up in the “Excursion Steam” cabinet and found myself reconnecting with a number of 8 x 10 prints by my dear friend and frequent collaborator John B. Corns, specifically his images of the 2102 on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie in May 1976. These excursions were a classic “fish out of water” experience, bringing the 4-8-4 far outside its old comfort zone in Reading anthracite territory.

John covered the trips as Steam Tours’ official photographer. In retrospect, what he came up with is evidence of several outstanding operations: two weekends, May 15-16 and May 22-23, covering 50 miles of P&LE’s Monongahela Division from the P&LE Terminal in Pittsburgh down to Brownsville Junction and back. Tickets were $19.50 per adult!

There was also a celebrity along for the trip, none other than Trains Editor David P. Morgan, attending at the invitation of Steam Tours President Fred Neusser. In a cover story that ran in April 1977, D.P.M. confessed he went to Pittsburgh a bit of a Reading T-1 skeptic, but eventually was won over by what he described as “big, burly, honest-to-gosh steam.” He thought enough of the engine to put the 4-8-4 on that issue’s cover, a first for 2102 (and 1 of 14 covers for Corns).

I always thought John’s photos of those P&LE trips were among the best he ever made, so I was delighted when I figured out how many remained in “outtake” status, unused by Morgan the first time around in that original six-page article. Hence the presentation of some of them here.

In these photos, the 2102 is truly a beast, showing off that big boiler and those handsome 70-inch drivers as it leans into the big curve at Newell, Pa., or as members of its crew ride atop the coal bunker, or as it creeps across the bridge over the Youghiogheny River at McKeesport, or strides down Railroad Street in Elizabeth smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood. The flanks of the tender display the temporary name “Allegheny” (a marketing nod for western Pennsylvania), but the gutsy profile is all Reading.