It’s with heavy heart that I announce that I have found the Virginian Railway’s Triplex locomotive! Baldwin built this locomotive for the Virginian Railway, who classified it as the “XA”, and it had a top speed of 3-5 mph or even as high as 10 mph, which I’ll nickname this locomotive the “Tortoise”, since many locomotives are considered the “hare” in terms of speed.
Looks like the news was wrong, Baldwin made that as a cover-up. By building two locomotives using the same blueprints from the XA, with the 2-8-8-0 being serialized as 44448-1 and the 2-8-2 being serialized as 44448-2, and then instead of scrapping the Tortoise, they dumped the one-of-a-kind locomotive into storage at a siding in an unknown area that later grew into a forest, and has been taken good care of ever since.
Now, I’ve been trying to find a museum, so then the Tortoise can be put on display, never to run again.
This is the photo of the Tortoise in TWENTY-TWENTY SIX (2026):
Source: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/missing-triplex-locomotive-thought-to-be-scrapped-now-found/
Posted this on April 1, 2026 at 7:30 am
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In late news: the Coalition for Sustainable Rail has indicated that they are interested in pivoting the Project 130 emphasis to this locomotive, by implementing Chapelon’s method of IP injection to balance and modulate the effective receiver pressure, and otherwise improving the steam circuit, steamchest volume, and valve operation to produce the necessary cyclic for the anticipated high speeds. Use of suitable hypergolic firing and proper Parkerization of the gas path is anticipated as a separate research effort at U of Minn (replacing the previous efforts at torrefied-biomass co-firing).
A spokesman for the T1 Trust has reportedly welcomed the potential competition, agreeing to share the repository information on instrumented wheelsets as the testing grows closer to actual operation on the MxV fast loop.
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I’m a bit surprised at the Trains people for posting the picture without photoshopping the numbers a bit more. If Baldwin made two XAs, why did they have the same number from the factory? And why doesn’t the tender for the ‘second’ engine read ‘Baldwin Locomotive Works’ as on the 60000 demonstrator? Surely there are enough railfans at Firecrown to have weighed in on this before posting…
Not too late to fix it, folks, is the message… <and again, where is the whistling emoticon/emoji when it’s soooooo needed>
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Does anyone get the easter egg in this post by the way? clue is “hare” and “tortoise”.
No, but I did get very satisfactorily Rick-rolled without expecting it. No fair to get us boomers that way!
And I also forgot too, alongside in the same forest were the XA was, just 200 meters away adjacent to the Tortoise is the Baldwin centipede, PRR 5823.
Source: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/baldwin-centipede-in-same-forest-as-the-triplex/
Now it’s 9:54 am on my end
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Was the original post made on Australian Time?
Quite a lot of discoveries. What a most… curious… day…
So this guy gets to post AI pictures with no criticism or negative comments? Geesh.
It’s an April Fools Day joke.
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