:: Flagg Coal Company 75 ::

This is the original builders photo taken in 1930 when the engine was ready for delivery. It was obtained from the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. This museum has many of the original builders photos from the Vulcan Iron Works of Wilkes Barre, PA.

The engine was purchased from Vulcan Iron Works by the Flagg Coal Company of Avoca, PA. We have no knowledge of how it was used when it belonged to them. We can only assume that it was used for switching coal cars in preparation for shipment. In 1935 the engine was sold to the Solvay Process Co. in Jamesville, NY. There its number was changed to 75.

At the Solvay Process Quarry engine number 75 pushed cart loads of rock from the steam shovel to the rock crusher. The pictures to the left are not of 75 but similar engines that were used in the same quarry. Number 75 worked in this manner from 1935 until 1953 when the quarry converted to using only trucks.

In 1954 Number 75 and 12 other engines used at the Jamesville Quarry were sold to Dr. Stanley Groman of Syracuse, NY. Dr. Groman built Rail City Museum, the first operating railroad museum in the country. The engines were moved to Sandy Pond NY, the location of Rail City. The engines, including Number 75, were unloaded on a storage track where they stayed until the fall of 1991. Rail City Museum closed in 1974. After Dr. Groman passed away his son Robert put the equipment up for sale. In October, 1991, Byron and John Gramling purchased Number 75 and moved it to their shop at Ashley IN. The father-son team spent the next ten years restoring Number 75 to operating condition. In the spring of 2002 Number 75 was leased and moved to the Steam Railroading Institute of Owosso, MI.

	Rail City Museum storage track, November, 1991 (Number 75 is the engine without a cab as we had begun taking it apart in order to truck it home to Indiana).
	Number 75 as it appeared the day we purchased it, October, 1991, Sandy Pond, NY.