I have a question for the locomotive gurus of the board.
At the old Union Pacific Freight terminal in Kansas City, Kansas there is a odd looking locomotive that appears to be very old. It is on a yard track to the west of the freight house just off of I-70.
It is very rusted but in faded paint is the reporting marks GGIX and the label Garvey (for Garvey Grain) but no visible number. The front steps and rear platform are wood and the locomotive looks like a box. Has anyone in KC seen this locomotive or provide a possible make, model or year?
I have some poor photos but have no idea how to post them, maybe I could email them to someone and have them post them?
We’ll not quite. Garvey Grain @ Wichita became DeBruce Grain in 1997. The huge elevator south of Wichita on the Kansas & Oklahoma was the one which exploded in June 1998 killing six workers.
It looks very GE with the window arrangements, hood details and trucks but it’s far too small to be a 70Ton. I’m betting it was a evolutionary step to the 70Ton from the 44Ton design family. I’ll say the engine is probably in the 50-65 ton range and is quite rare.
I’d love to verify this with other photos of simmilar engines, but the problem is I can’t find anything like this one built by GE, Plymouth or well anyone. GATX does seem to collect some odd stuff though, like absolutely tiny 20Ton Plymouth switchers.
It is a Whitcomb. Whitcomb built industrial and smaller specialized steam,Gas and diesel locomotives in Rochele IL Starting in 1906. It was acquired by Baldwin during the reorganization of the company in 1931. The company’s full name had been the George W. Whitcomb Co. It had been set up to build mining machinery, and wound up in the locomotive business, too. Baldwin built smaller units there (with some notable exceptions) into the mid '50s when Baldwin consolidated locomotive work (what there was left of it , that is) at Eddystone, PA.
Bartlett Grain operates a terminal elevator in north Wichita switched by WichitaTerm Assn. The elevator has a old SF low nosed GP painted blue & gray that shuffles cars on the four elevator spurs. The unit has no number.
That engine has been there over ten years. I believe it belongs to Pavlich Inc., at one time it was used to spot the occasional car of crushed rock on their off load conveyor.
I haven’t seen it operate in almost as long.
Pavlich is a contract hauler specializing in dump trucks.
It has only one traction motor per truck and the other axel is chain driven. Somewhere I have photo’s I took several years ago of the interior and mechanisims. This engine may be much rarer than you suspect. It matches in design a Whitcomb 50 ton S-3 of which only 5 were built (between Sept. 1954 and Mar. 1956) with no Whitcomb builders plate or name anywhere on the engine. I had trouble identifying it at first but assumed they had been pilfered. These were built when production was being moved to Eddystone. They are generaly considered to be Whitcomb’s, on the evidenceof pre-1953 Whitcomb catalogs showing the design. They were Baldwin catalog number S-4300. I will try to go back before it dissapears and verify lack of a builders plate ever being present.
