I recently purchased a book and to my surprise found that the Southern Pacific had a fleet of five fire train locomotives, equipped with extra apparatus for fighting fires. It also points out that during the summer they were manned and kept under steam to be ready at a moments notice.
Leave it to SP to be ready for anything. I think it was a good idea, trains can set fires as they travel, one here did a few years back, set small brush fires along the tracks. Maybe they had a particularly bad problem with it so the fire fighting train.
I believe many logging railroads had locomotives so equipped, with tank cars full of water at the ready.
It was also quite common to move fire apparatus on flat cars to towns suffering major conflagrations.
Rail grinder trains are equipped to fight the fires they start…
A major problem until the end of the friction bearing was hot boxes starting fires along a stretch of ROW.
Remember, too, that SP had a significant investment in its snowsheds, which were built of wood.
In the late 1800’s with all of the roundhouses there were many fires and my guess is that each major terminal had them. I have seen photos of Santa Fe fire fighting locomotives at Needles and Barstow.
I do not know about other locations, but the SP had firefighting engines at Donner–remember all the snowsheds?
SP had the fire fighting trains specifically to protect the snowsheds on Donner Pass. They also had their own fire lookout across the valley where he could see most of the portion of the line with snowsheds. Signor’s Donner Pass explains all this.
Mac
Both steam locomotives at Golden Spike have steam fire pumps on the tender. Although rare, cinders from these locomotives have started small fires and the steam fire pump come in handy. Having 2000 gallons of water available within 30 - 60 seconds is useful.
dd
For a peek at a fire train go to google type: WMC SP Fire train, a complete fire train in brass.