The Muskingum Electric Railroad, from Guy Wicksall, June of 1995

[@MERR_Preservation]

Greetings railfans -- thanks for checking this video out. I am always looking for MERR-related material -- especially slides or photos, but also artifacts, documentation or whatever else. If any of you have MERR-related material, I would be very interested to acquire it; please contact me using the email in the 'About' section of this channel. I don't have a huge budget (this is a one-person operation), but I am willing to pay fair prices for such things. Their home would be the Preservation archive library, and any slide / photos would be digitized and shared on a copyright-protected photo site. Thanks again!

[@pigalero]

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[@AndyTheCharles1990]

Any idea what happened to the equipment once the line was shut down?

[@MERR_Preservation]

Greetings; thanks for your comment. The line ceased operations in ~Spring of 2002 (I have the near-exact date in a TRAINS mag, but I don't have it handy just now). Shortly afterward, the two E50C locomotives were sent back to GE in Erie for scrap -- I have 2 shots of them in one of the back-shop areas, looking pretty rough. Back in Ohio, the catenary actually remained energized for quite a while after the E50s were gone, in order to prevent theft of the copper wire, (TRAINS and anecdotes). The Ortner hoppers were stored on the loop track (and some off the rails actually) just south of Cumberland until they were shipped out for scrap as well. By ~2004, everything was gone except the obvious roadbed, (TRAINS and USGS satellite imagery from the area). I really hope the E50C Builder's plate was saved by someone. I have original blueprints, as well as the maintenance, operation manuals and parts renewal catalogs for the E50C, but the Builder's Plate would be a 'holy grail' of sorts.

[@AndyTheCharles1990]

@@MERR_Preservation Its a shame neither of them survived to be preserved in some form. They would be a rare example of modern electric freight hauling locomotives in North America. The automation of the system was a unique feature. I don't know of other American railways that operated this way. In Canada there is a small line like this hauling iron ore back and forth.

[@MERR_Preservation]

Indeed, the automation was revolutionary for 1968. I have the schematics for most of the automation scheme, but there is one 'black box' that I have a manual and part reference to, but I am not sure exactly how it works. It communicated on microwave, and had a fairly robust fault tolerance. I talked to a gentleman who was there on #100 for an open house, and they had a heck of a time getting the motors out of automation for basic demos; the system assumed their efforts were faults. Even so, the automation didn't last that long until they started sending engineers in the cab at all times. It was a novel concept, but ended up being less so in practice. According to one of the trade mags I have from that time period, the Black Mesa and Lake Powell dabbled with an automation scheme of their own, but they couldn't get it to work.