Last week, New England Steam Corp. announced it had signed a contract with Millinocket Fabrication & Machine to construct a replacement tender body for Maine Central 4-6-2 No. 470. If everything goes according to plan, the tender will take three months to complete.
“Considerable discussion between [the steam organization] and MF&M over the past year has determined the best method to achieve a modern but nearly exact copy of the original tender tank,” New England Steam officials say. “Manufacturing technology has been considerably upgraded since the age of steam, so there will be welded fabrication inside the cistern that will vastly extend its service life over that of the original.”
In an effort to stay true to the “old fashioned methods,” the tender will be riveted to the frame. Fixtures like the tender doors, grab irons, and more from the original tender will be installed on the new one. When No. 470 was built in 1924 it did not have a stoker but the Maine Central added one later. New England Steam plans to restore the locomotive without a stoker initially but the new tender will be constructed in a way that will allow for easy installation of the mechanism at a later date.
New England Steam has been restoring No. 470 at the Downeast Scenic Railroad since the group purchased it from the City of Waterville in 2015.
No. 470 was built by the American Locomotive Co. in 1924 and powered the Maine Central’s farewell to steam excursion in 1954. After the trip, it was put on display in Waterville, near the railroad’s classification yard. Decades of Maine’s rough and raw winters took a toll on the engine and in 2012, the city put out a request for proposals to have the engine removed or restored. Six proposals were received and the one from New England Steam Corp. was selected. In 2013, the city council voted to sell the engine to the group for $25,000 if the group could raise the funds in two years.
If successful, No. 470 would be the largest operating steam locomotive in New England and the only operating standard gauge steam locomotive in the state. It is one of three Maine Central steam locomotives in existence. The group expects that it will take about $1.75 million and a decade to restore the locomotive.
More information is available online.
I don’t know where the “classification yard” is in Waterville, but when the 470 was first put on display there it was located, facing north, just a few steps from the passenger station, on the east side of the tracks. I saw it there in early-Sept 1960 while riding one of MeC’s very last passenger trains.