Carowinds Melodia
Carowinds opened on a rainy day in March 1973. As with most all other theme parks at the time, it featured a railroad that encircled everything. Though all of us regular guests only saw two locomotives running the rails, there were three on-hand, the third never making it into service.
But it’s the first, #1, that we want to look at for now. Unlike her sister, and many others that were ordered brand-new from Crown Metal Products, Melodia was old. Really old. She began life as a lowly plantation engine pulling loads of sugar cane. Built by H. K. Porter in 1897, the little engine was a totally unimpressive 0-6-2T. Purchased by the Barker & LePine Company in Louisiana, she was joined soon afterward by a Baldwin named Maud L., which would eventually serve at Cedar Point (and another even more famous park). Melodia was originally Melodia B; the name presumably came from the Laurel Valley and Melodia Plantation where she worked; the bill of sale listed Melodia Switch as the shipping destination.
After retirement, Arthur LaSalle, an individual in Florida who had bought several locomotives for restoration under his company’s name of American Railroad Equipment Company, took over Melodia and contracted Crown Metal Products of Pennsylvania to rebuild the little engine into a 2-6-2. Crown was the go-to manufacturer for amusement park trains, and so Melodia took on a new identity before being sold in 1964 to Hubert Mitchell Industries in Alabama for use at the short-lived Space City USA park. She supposedly ran for one summer before being passed on to James Freeland in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Freeland owned a tiny amusement park called Daniel Boone Village.
E. Pat Hall bought the locomotive in 1971, retaining the name Melodia on one side of the cab and EPH on the other. She now had a road number for the first time in her life—#1—and began operating on the Carowinds & Carolina Railroad as a preview until the park’s delayed opening in 1973. By 1977 the railroad was finished and the equipment eventually disbursed to far corners of the universe. Melodia was eventually sold to George Roose for his personal collection (co-owner of Cedar Point) and leased to Wild World in Largo, Maryland, (Six Flags America) for a short time before being returned to Sandusky in 1984. In 1988 Melodia was leased to Nebraska Central in Grand Island, Nebraska, for a couple of years before going into storage.
Sold again in the mid-90s to Bill Norred in California, she got significant modifications and restoration before being handed off for the final time in 2000 to the Pacific Coast Railroad, a private organization located at the Santa Margarita Ranch in California, which actively maintains and operates the locomotive to this day. Now known as #3 Melodia (or FrankenPorter, due to its mash-up configuration of Porter and Crown components) the little engine that could proudly pulls her consist—of original Disneyland coaches, no less!
