Canadian National No. 89

Design and Construction

No. 89 is a class E-10-a 2-6-0 Mogul type steam locomotive, built by the Canadian Locomotive Company in Kingston, Ontario in February 1910 for the Grand Trunk Railway, one of the major Canadian systems of the early twentieth century. The Mogul wheel arrangement, with a single pair of small leading wheels ahead of three driving axles and no trailing truck, was already considered old-fashioned by 1910 even for secondary and branch line work, but the type remained useful for lighter passenger and mixed-traffic assignments where a larger locomotive’s weight could not be supported by the track.

Grand Trunk and Canadian National Service, 1910 to 1958

The locomotive originally carried Grand Trunk road number 1009, and was renumbered 911 in 1919 as part of an internal renumbering scheme. In 1923 the Grand Trunk Railway was absorbed into the Canadian National Railway system, part of a sweeping consolidation of Canada’s financially troubled private railways into a single government-owned network, and the locomotive became one of thousands of pieces of former Grand Trunk equipment now carrying Canadian National reporting marks. It was renumbered again in 1951, this time to 89, the number it has carried ever since. Detailed records of its day-to-day assignments during the Canadian National years have not survived in full, but it appears to have spent much of its later working life in Quebec on secondary passenger and local freight duties, fairly modest work for a locomotive that had already been in service for decades. Canadian National formally retired No. 89 in late 1958, and the locomotive was placed in a line of condemned equipment awaiting disposal in Montreal.

F. Nelson Blount and the Green Mountain Railroad, 1961 to 1972

No. 89 was rescued from scrapping in 1961 by F. Nelson Blount, the New England seafood businessman and steam locomotive collector whose personal preservation efforts eventually grew into Steamtown, U.S.A., one of the most important early steam museums in the United States. Blount had the locomotive restored to operating condition, returning it to steam on January 25, 1965, and used it to haul excursion trains on his Green Mountain Railroad in Vermont, often taking the throttle himself. Blount died in a plane crash in 1967, but his collection, including No. 89, continued operating under the Green Mountain Railroad banner for several more years.

Sale to the Strasburg Rail Road, 1972

The Green Mountain Railroad sold No. 89 to the Strasburg Rail Road in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1972, and the locomotive’s trip south to its new home produced an unplanned adventure. While in transit, No. 89 sat in Penn Central’s Buttonwood Yard in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania at the exact moment Hurricane Agnes struck the region in late June 1972, causing the Susquehanna River to flood large portions of the Wyoming Valley. The locomotive survived the flooding with little to no damage and finally reached Strasburg on July 15, 1972.

Restoration and Excursion Service, 1973 to Present

Strasburg’s shop forces refurbished No. 89 after its arrival, and the locomotive entered regular excursion service on March 17, 1973, taking up the half-hour scheduled runs between Strasburg and Paradise, Pennsylvania that remain the railroad’s core business. A major overhaul that occupied most of the 1980s concluded in November 1988, after which No. 89 returned to its familiar duties, later joined on the roster by former Norfolk and Western 4-8-0 No. 475 in 1993. No. 89 has remained one of Strasburg’s principal operating locomotives ever since, cycling through the periodic Federal Railroad Administration inspections and boiler work that keep any operating steam locomotive certified.

Recent Notability

Beyond its regular excursion duties, No. 89’s photogenic, old-fashioned Mogul profile and Strasburg’s proximity to film and television production centers in the Northeast have made it an occasional stand-in for period rail scenes. The locomotive appeared, running with an unlettered tender to disguise its modern ownership, in a 2022 episode of the HBO series The Gilded Age, and it has also appeared in family programming filmed in the area. These appearances have become a minor but genuine part of the locomotive’s recent history and a source of local pride for the railroad.

Recognition

No. 89 is one of the oldest operating steam locomotives on any tourist railroad in the eastern United States and a rare surviving example of a Grand Trunk era Mogul still doing daily work more than a century after it was built. Its path from a condemned locomotive in a Montreal deadline, to a Vermont preservationist’s personal excursion engine, to a mainstay of one of the country’s oldest continuously operating tourist railroads, reflects the broader story of grassroots steam preservation in North America during the 1960s and 1970s, when private collectors like F. Nelson Blount saved locomotives that railroads themselves had already written off.