I can’t believe it. But on page 30 of the Fall 2005 S.P. Trainline is a picture of a Southern Pacific Railroad 4-6-0 camelback locomotive in Los Angeles. I thought camelbacks were produced to burn anthracite (hard) coal. But in the Southwest U.S. (i.e. California), the little coal there was poor, mostly lignite (very soft) coal, requiring the Southern Pacific to import coal from the U.K. and Australia before it converted to oil for fuel. Gollllly!. I speculate the S.P. purchasing agent was acting like a 12-year-old. I should know. My first two model locomotives were 0-4-0 and 4-6-0 camelbacks imported from M.B. Austin around 1960 when I was twelve, growing up in SP’s heartland (San Francisco Bay Area.) I’ve come to my senses since then.
Having worked for the SP for nearly 30 years, this does not surprise me much, but I did not know that they had any camelbacks. I would think that they came with the purchase of a shortline which is how most of SP’s “weirdies” got on the roster.
It is possible. Here in the east, it was common for railroads to use poor burning coal in their locomotives, even where the good stuff was available. The Reading Railroad was one of them. The famous T-1’s (4-8-4) had a wide firebox for burning a poor grade of coal, and I believe it WAS lignite. Earlier models with the wide firebox had to move the cab to the center of the boiler for clearance reasons. Hence, the Camelback.
Yeah. The photo caption says the locomotive was built for FC de Sonora in 1900, acquired by the SP in 1901, and ran as a cab-over-boiler engine until 1906. Wonder if it was converted to a conventional rear-cab loco or was disposed?
Rdg,and other Anthracite roads, burned anthracite coal not lignite. Anthracite is a hard, mostly carbon,coal. Lignite is a few steps above peat and has relatively low btu/lb.
Er, ah, didn’t the UP have Camelback 2-8-0s?
Old Timer
I read that oil burns 500 to 600 degress f. hotter than coal, and that it took some experimentation in design to avoid burning out fireboxes. OIl has a lot more energy in it than coal: the S.P. found that a fuel-oiled loco had twice the range of a comparable coal-burning loco.
I seriously doubt that any Esspee camelback was a coal burning locomotive. IMHO they were very likely oil burners. There just was no reason for a camelback outside of the eastern US which was the only area of the country where locomotives burned anthracite coal.
Doubters!.. See the Fall 2005 S.P. Trainline magazine, page 30. The Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society published it. Check www.sphts.org and order a copy (and join!). The photo shows a camelback 4-6-0 on a turntable. On the cab side it says “SOUTHERN PACIFIC” and on the tender it says, “S. P. CAL. 2282.”
Life is hysterical. This is another example there is a prototype for (almost) everything. See the first post on this topic.
Was there ever anything like a combination coal/oil fired steam engine? The locomotive equivilent of a beer, with a whiskey chaser?[;)]
It is true. There is even a pile of coal visible in the tender.
The Reading engines had Wooten fireboxes that were designed to burn anthracite coal, a very high grade coal. the burning characteristics of anthracite require a thinner bed of coal on the grates than bitumonous. That means you need a big firebox. Since the Wooten is above the drivers, they could be as much as twice as big as conventional fireboxes. Reading engines actually burned anything from culm (coal waste) to anthracite to an anthracite/bitumonous mix to bitumonous. I would imagine that the non-anthracite roads bought a camelback to try out the wide firebox.
Dave H.
I would love to know, might make a good model, it would certainly catch people’s attention.
The Southern Pacific had coal-fired locomotives until the end of steam operations. I’d guess about 10% of the fleet were coal-fired.
In the SP Steam Locomotive Compendium, it says “SP owned the only Wooten firebox locomotive known to have operated in California. Bought from Mexican Subsidiary, Sonora Railway, May 1901. Arriving on the eve of SP’s conversion to oil, the locomotive became an orphan, and was rebuilt at LA shops in 1906 with the class DA (T-1) boiler. She was scraped 4-20-1928, Los Angeles.”
Thom
This is a very interesting and informative article.Everyone should buy a copy of Trainline and read it! Better yet,Join the SPH&TS!
Sorry Mark, but you are wrong on this one.
I have in my possession a copy of “A CENTURY OF SOUTHERN PACIFIC STEAM LOCOMOTIVES” BY Guy L. Dunscomb, published in 1963. On page 155 of this volume there is a black & white photo of a camelback type of locomotive and there is a coal pile in the tender. The number on the side of the tender is 2282. According to the information in the caption, “Class T-27 2282 was the only “Mother Hubbard” type on the Southern Pacific. It was built by Baldwin in 1900 as #18 for the Sonora Railway. It came to the SP in 1901, and was rebuilt in 1906 and scrapped in 1928.” The wheel arrangement is a 4-6-0. In addition to this one camelback, the SP had a few other oddball steam locomotives on their roster.
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