Photo by Ken Hulsey
I found out yesterday from Everett Lueck that the former Illinois Central steam locomotive #333 that had been rotting away on the property of the defunct Tioga Heritage Park had been acquired by a group from Ohio for possible restoration to working condition. This news was both exciting and disappointing because on the one hand the locomotive had ultimately been saved but it was my hope that it could had been restored and displayed somewhere here in Louisiana.
Everett posted this to the Train Orders website:
Former Illinois Central 1918 0-6-0 #333 left the closed Tioga, LA heritage museum for Ohio, and a rumored operational rebuild. I have been told that the locomotive was the depot switcher at Jackson, MS before coming to Baton Rouge, LA where the locomotive was donated to the State of Louisiana and put on display at the Louisiana Arts and Sciences Center in the Baton Rouge Yazoo and Mississippi Valley station. When the railroad display was removed the engine went to the Tioga museum as a displayed as a "typical Louisiana logging train" along with a steel Illinois Central caboose. Efforts to obtain it for a railroad museum in Jena, LA were unsuccessful, and so it goes to Ohio.
When asked where in Ohio the locomotive was headed Everett commented, "All that I have been told is that it is NOT going to the Age of Steam museum. The rumor is that it is going for an operational restoration for some sort of planned new tourist railroad, but I can neither confirm or deny that. Almost anywhere is better than where it has been for the last 60 years."
Photo By: Brian Allison
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