Cedar point and lake erie railroad

I have a weird question for you. When riding the train a few weeks ago I noticed the water fill line comes from underground near the water tower. I was just wondering how the boiler feed water is handled - do they have their own treatment facilities on site or is it brought in from an off site facility? As justification to the question, I hold an Ohio Stationary steam engineers license... just a weird thing that popped into my head while riding the train.

The water tower hasn't held water in probably 20 plus years. There is a 1600 gallon poly tank by the shop with a pump in the shop that supplies water through the line to the tower. The fireman hooks the hose up, opens the valve and pushes the button till the tender is full. Now the tank is filled with city water that is ran through a standard water softener in the shop. It just has a float valve that keeps it full. We use an all in one boiler compound that is drip fed into the poly tank.
To feed the water from the tender into the boiler we use Penberthy injectors that use steam off the boiler to create a venture affect to draw the water out of the tender and force it into the boiler. We run water four times in a round and as needed.
Also we don't meet any of the requirements to need a boiler license more less because they are locomotives on private and would qualify as Ohio Specials anyway. My boss has his 3rd class engineers and I have the historical license which is geared more towards our operation. Someday Id like to take the High pressure test but I need to have the time to drive to Columbus and take it.

Just curious....

Does the CP & LE Railroad ever utilize volunteers to help out on the line? Most railroad museums that operate steam excursions could not operate without volunteers.

Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad uses mostly volunteers to work the service. They only rent a steam engine for about 2 weeks in September. They mostly use vintage diesel engines on their line. I ride the CVSR alot when I do the Bike Aboard on the towpath.

Thanks for the information. I had no idea the tower was out of service for that long, even though I make sure to ride the train at least one loop per visit to the park I never paid close attention to it. This last visit I was actually paying more attention to the set up and how the engineers were operating things.

Cedar Point should offer tours of the facilities, Disney used to, and maybe still does, have a tour of their steam trains. I never ended up going on it but it would neat to see how you operate them up close.

Ohio changed their testing policy for the stationary steam engineers license some time ago. It's now multiple choice computer based testing, instead of the old essay type. There are numerous testing centers across the state now where you can sign up to take the test after applying for it instead of having to go to Columbus.

You all do a great job on the trains, it's always one of my must rides every time - keep up the good work!

They had tours of the train facilities last year, for the 50th anniversary celebration.

It is by far one of the best rides in the park. I read some ridership stats somewhere and it looked that if there wasn't Gatekeeper last year, the CP&LE RR would have had the most riders in the park for the season.

Yep. Gatekeeper gave the most rides last year, followed by CP & LE RR and Millennium Force. I don't believe anything else came close.

https://www.cedarpoint.com/blog-article/online-fun/The-Numbers

Raptor wasn't too far behind those 3, but the list is also incomplete. Magnum has typically had numbers very close to those of Raptor, but was not listed.

With that being said, if they had the staff to run 2 trains all the time, I highly doubt anything would compete with the CP&LR railroad.

Okay, I suppose Raptor does count as relatively close to Millennium Force. Thanks for posting the link to the blog post. :)

Didn't see the numbers when Tony originally posted that. Gatekeeper - WOW, what a great high capacity ride. Going by the short time I always wait for the ride, I never would have guessed it gave more than two million rides! Also nice to see Sky Ride with really high numbers, one of my favorite rides in the park, glad it is popular among guests.

I'm surprised Maverick is one of the rides with the lower numbers on the list. It's even lower than TTD. Most likely low capacity is to blame for that.

Maverick's capacity is entirely to blame. 12 person trains dispatched infrequently = low capacity.

Yeah and what is worse is that Maverick is open for early entry and often operates for an hour after close to evacuate the line.

Before I thought removing the bins would help, but last time I was there I observed not many people putting items in there. I think removing bins would have very little impact, if any at all. The dispatch interval is more the culprit.

We are not a museum and cannot use volunteers. Now before anyone says anything Henry Ford and Greenfield Village are operating for profit museums and function with fulltime and volunteer staff.

That's probably true. Volunteering at a for profit is probably on shaky legal ground with FLSA. That's unfortunate as I bet there would be people willing to volunteer their time on the railroad.

cple_engineer said:
We are not a museum.

Neither is Cuyahoga Valley and they use volunteers. I do think they are non-profit, so that may factor into it.

The railroad within the Cuyahoga Valley is owned by the National Park Service. CVSR itself is set up as an operating museum. I do believe they have fulltime staffers that are paid through the NPS that maintain the equipment and the rest are volunteers.

I guess that makes sense. I think the staff may be paid from ticket sales, but I could be wrong. I know it's expensive to maintain those locomotives and refuel them. I mostly use CVSR for Bike Aboard where I can take the train back after biking the trail. I also ride it when they do Steam in the Valley with the NKP 765 in September. The guys that work in the bike cars and the conductors are volunteers as well as the ticket office workers. I think the engineers and mechanics are the only paid staff there.