I lived in Stettler from 2006 until 2014. I always loved the historic steam engines, especially the 6060!!I even got the pleasure of being invited into the cab one time. What a wonderful locomotive 🚂!
Thanks for posting this video! I saw the photo and thought it was familiar as my wife and I took this exact trip one month later on June 20, 1999! Got to speak with Harry Home, the man who saved this loco from the scrap line way back in '60 or '61. Rode the trip to Coronation in a coach and the return trip in the cupola of the caboose while she pulled the entire train backwards. This was a great re-acquaintance trip to take as my family had moved back down to the States in '76 when I was 16 and that was the last time I had seen or ridden her while she was making the Toronto-Niagara Falls runs Wednesdays and Saturdays. Lived in Hamilton at the time. $10 tickets from Hamilton in '75, an extra $6 if you stayed with the train on the Y turnaround trip to Yeager. $120 if I recall correctly for this trip! On our June 20th trip we kept seeing a brown van chasing and video taping the train - only later came to find out it was Greg Scholl from Greg Scholl Videos in Ohio who had made the trip and was getting video for a future release. I contacted him and he made me a special video of some of the footage for me and my family. I look in some of my photos from this trip and can see him further down the yard by the switcher shooting 6060 and we are in the video completely unaware that he was there! As I recall, we were doing about 35 as a top speed because of the light prairie rail. We even had a female moose running parallel to the tracks at one point! Great trip! Great folks at Alberta Prairie in Stettler as well as the folks from RMRS who now own and operate 6060 - Harry Home, Don Totten, Al Watch, Mr. Gillespie (APST's owner) to name only a few. Talking with Harry was great. Reminisced about the 70s trips and the history of the loco. Was not aware of the bell coming from 6069 though. I did ask Harry about the use of parts from either 6069 or 6077 and he said most parts were just made new if they needed any. Thanks again!
It's great to see the 6060 got to make some runs east down 55 odd miles of the former CP Lacombe subdivision out to Coronation before the trackage was pulled from Botha eastward. Hopefully the trackage for the Alberta Prairie Railway excursion is successfully extended north to Donalda, and dare I hope to Meeting Creek?
Would CN allow a mainline excursion or are they pretty much like CSX and want nothing to do with steam excursions? CP had a program, but it was killed off by Hunter Harrison who took the CEO spot at CSX and then passed away.
I can answer that one. When coming back to Jasper AB from Vancouver, lashed with Royal Hudson 2860 after Expo 88, during “The Great Steam Circle Tour, 6060 encountered mechanical problems and even derailed on too light a rail, which caused a lot of overtime to be pais by CN, along with deployment of equipment and she was never again allowed to run on any CN mainline. I saw her being overhaualed in
+Hal Edmondson Since they uncouple the second tender and tank car at Coronation I suspect that they both contain water and the first tender has fuel oil and water. Also on shorter runs 6060 runs with only the first tender so it must contain both fuel and oil (see ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dgJBUWi4Zkw.html)
Track removed in 2003. Coronation's elevators were closed in August/Sept 2001, and demolished in summer 2002. The CP still owns/runs a portion of the Lacombe sub out to Stettler yards, and the Railway excursion makes runs to Big Valley and back to Stettler, and switches out the Viterra facility east of Stettler. Thebtracks only extend east as far as Botha now, and that last stretch is used for storage.
