‘Modern Marvels’ in Strasburg
Sunday, January 6th, 2008History Channel chugs into town to film locomotives.
By Jon Rutter
Sunday News
At one minute past 11 in the morning, Andy Sellers opened the throttle and sent the six-car Strasburg Rail Road train steaming into history. Make that The History Channel.
A camera crew visited the railroad Friday to take a special excursion and collect footage for an upcoming installment of the network’s “Modern Marvels” series.
Producer, writer and director Greg DeHart said he expects the Strasburg steam engine to puff across television screens sometime in March.
DeHart said his project will showcase the technology and the human story behind railroad locomotives.
The Los-Angeles-based documentary filmmaker returned from exploring locomotives in Panama two weeks ago.
After Strasburg, he said, he’ll travel to Canada to check out a modern-day locomotive builder and to France to see “the fastest locomotive on earth.”
DeHart will also visit the Brookville Equipment Corp., a steam engine maker in northern Pennsylvania, among other destinations.
Seven more shooting days are planned.
The Strasburg line, with its coal-black engines towing carefully restored coaches past Amish farms, will star in the documentary’s romance chapter.
Even if you don’t like locomotives, DeHart said, you can’t help but admire the massive symmetry of the steam engine.
“They look so complicated but there’s something aesthetically beautiful about them.”
Locomotion
DeHart, whose previous work for the History Channel included a 2002 look “Inside Pol Pot’s Secret Prison,” said he didn’t start out raving over locomotives.
But then he became fascinated.
Friday, he arrived at Strasburg to capture the sights and sounds of the iron horse with cameraman Dan Lantz and soundman Adrian Sam, both out of Philadelphia.
“We’re really here to get the ins and outs from a technical standpoint,” DeHart said.
In fact, said Hope Banner of Scheffey Integrated Marketing, which represents the Strasburg Rail Road, the shop where Strasburg rebuilds locomotives weld by weld was a key factor in wooing the filmmakers.
The shop is rebuilding a Rio Grande Southern narrow-gauge 10-wheeler trucked in from Colorado, among others, said machinist Erich Armpriester.
“Most of the parts are custom-made. Obviously, you can’t just go to Baldwin Locomotive supply and order parts off the shelf anymore.”
But you can still commute 3 1/2 miles by steam on the country’s oldest short-line.
Before setting out, Sellers, whose friends call him “Doc,” swooped his hands through the air, explaining the geometry of Engine 90.
The cylinder bone is connected to the piston bone, said Sellers, standing before steel drive wheels nearly as tall as a man.
Up in the cab with the filmmakers, he stomped on a pedal. Angled doors parted, exposing a firebox stoked to a volcanic red glare by fireman Richie Maggs.
A feather of steam hissed from the boiler-top safety valve outside, letting off pressure.
The engine was made in Philadelphia and hauled freight for the Great Western Railroad in Colorado before Strasburg got it in the late 1960s.
Each locomotive has quirks that make you love — and sometimes hate — them, said Strasburg Rail Road President Linn Moedinger.
So does the terrain, added Moedinger, who once piloted an engine up a slippery hill by getting a run for it, just as a car driver would.
Number 90 waited in the freezing morning air, panting softly.
That characteristic sound means the locomotive is pressurizing the air brake system, explained conductor Mark Andrews.
“If you don’t hear panting we don’t have brakes.”
Andrews called “All aboard!” and climbed into the turn-of-the-20th-century Boston & Maine Railroad coach he had helped restore.
Number 90 jingled its bell and chugged out of the station on its special journey (the line is normally closed to tourists in midwinter).
“It’s pretty exciting,” said Moedinger before stepping into the coal stove-warmed coach. “We’re thrilled” to be featured on The History Channel show, he added.
Driving in reverse for the first half of the trip as usual, the train ambled northeast up the track, introducing the filmmakers to classic “Road to Paradise” sights.
Seven bundled-up Amish kids stood at a crossing and waved as the coaches trundled by.
The train paused once and blasted its whistle across the bare fields until an answer echoed back.
The “ghost whistle” is supposed to be from an engine on the long-defunct Lancaster, Oxford and Southern Railroad, Andrews explained with a twinkle in his eye.
Coal smoke perfumed the air. Puffs of backlit steam whiffed past the coach windows, as if the train were flying in and out of the clouds.
In Paradise, where the Strasburg corridor parallels the trunk line between Philadelphia and Lancaster, Sellers shuttled Number 90 to the other end of the cars before heading back.
Suddenly, an Amtrak express shot past at more than 90 mph, dragging the falling-note blat of its horn behind it.
The scene made a perfect picture of locomotives then and now.
“If they would let us back on the main line,” Andrews joked, “we would’ve caught ‘em.”
