Kings Dominion 4-4-0 No. 601
Tampa, FL, United States 		Location: Busch Gardens
Status: Operational
Posted: Dec 8, 2010 @ 15:12:59 by Al Myers
#601 a 4-4-0 (narrow gage 36”) originally named Patrick Henry and had blue on the boiler jacket. The engine was fired by propane. The tender had a compartment that carried batteries that ran the speaker system for the cars. These batteries were charged each night in the train shop. The train line, at Kings Dominion, was called The Old Dominion Line, and had a hick theme. Originally, there was a shotgun wedding that was preformed when the train was stopped in the woods, this was a live production done by park actors. In addition to the shotgun wedding there were about four other scenes that were mechanically operated (air operated figures and actions). These were triggered by a magnet (that activated a magnetic switch that was trackside) that was located on the front bottom of the tender. The engine originally had a wooden cab and only had two domes on the boiler the second dome (sand dome) and the dome located directly in front of the cab (the steam dome), other than these changes it looks substantially as it did when it ran at Kings Dominion Park in Doswell Virginia. Some upgrades that were installed during this time - the copper piping from the injectors to the boiler were fitted ( this has been removed), the air compressor was refitted with Teflon rings on the air side, sand dome blowers were reworked, boiler was acid cleaned (around 1979), engine was completely disassembled and all drive boxes were checked and machined as needed (valve timing was adjusted at this time as well), Teflon wear plates were added to the tender trucks, the inside of the water tank was sanded and painted with rust resistant coating, All of this work was preformed at the KD train shop, which had a lift installed for lifting the engines. I was involved in the work listed above and fired and ran this engine, as well as the other engine, #552, Stonewall Jackson, now at Dry Gulch USA, Adair, OK.
Posted: Mar 25, 2008 @ 14:03:50 by Dale Russell
601 was built with a wooden cab two domes and was blue/orange/yellow when at KD. When sold to BGT a steel cab was added and whistle was swapped with KD532 so all BGT engines have 5-chime whistles. Whistle was moved from the steam dome to a homemade dome behind the stack to more closely resemble the other BGT engines which are 3 dome crowns.