looking for general info on 0-4-0t and 0-6-0t switchers,i.e. were they used only in yards, or were they used to place cars from an industry or branchline onto a mainline siding? any info would be helpful, not sure what to do with the ones i recently received. thank you in advance.
They were used primarily in yards. Some of them were rigged as Frankenstein creations used as shop switchers. Some shortlines used them as road power. One of my favorites is a nominee for the most pathetic and interesting road ever, the ill fated Palantine, Lake Zurich and Wauconda…had one who was given the moniker “Old Maude”…spent half her time running backwards because they had no facilities to turn her at the end of the line… This one story below is typical; “The right-of-way was platted to cross the northwest comer of the Lake Zurich Golf Club (LZGC) near the third hole. This very exclusive golf club was founded in 1895 by two Chicago lawyers and it’s membership was, and still is, limited to 40 members. Naturally, these members were very prominent people. The club did not intend to grant the right-of-way so the railroad proceeded to have the land condemned under the right of eminent domain. Lawyer members of the club knew that cemetery land could not be condemned in this manner and drew up legal papers for declaring the area a “cemetery.” Other members who were physicians with medical school connections arranged to have four bodies brought to the club and buried in an elaborate ceremony, accompanied by a Chicago jazz band. A gravestone was erected and still stands to this day with the following inscription. Stranger pause and bare thy head, here lie buried four men in this bucolic spot in-terred to foil the vile machinations of a huge and heartless railroad corporation who, through the iniquitous law of the right of eminent domain, had thought to seize this beautiful spot for its own fell purposes. May these four rest in peace.”
Tank engines of any kind were real rarities in the United States. Most of them were used as shop switchers or as plant switchers where space could be tight.
They are not that rare at all. Tank engines were quite common. Not only were they used by industrial facilities, they were also used extensively in logging operations. For most of the mountainous regions of the USA and Canada, you could probably spit and hit one. However, most of those engines were larger, such as 2-8-2 configurations. For mainline railroading, tank types were not common, however.
The Rayoneer logging operation had 2-6-6-0 Mallet articulated tank engines, later sold to the Uintah RR, which connected with the D&RGW main line (at Mack if my memory is correct) where they were made into tender engines.
The B&O had a fleet of “Dockside Switchers”. 0-4-0T, which could take the sharp curves on stret trackage around Baltimore’s waterfront. The Varney model was the lowest price scale-model locoomotive on HO.
Unitah bought two 3-foot gauge 2-6-6-2t’s new from Baldwin in 1926, where they were used until abandonment in 1938. They were then sold to Sumpter Valley Railway. SV added tenders and removed the tanks - but the resulting change in wieght distribution made the engines more slippery. The engines eventually went to Guatemala where at least one operated until the mid 1960’s.
dd
The “dockside” capital of the world was New York City. There were lots of isolated terminals along the East, Harlem and Hudson Rivers. Then they discovered diesels! The camel got his nose in starting there, and the game was over for steam! (But one dock carrier used steam well into the '60s.) They were the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal RR! I think one of their engines is preserved. But I am not sure.
Two Rayonier engines does not make tank engines common in my opinion. I also dispute that New York was the center of “Dockside” engines. The true Dockside is a B&O creation used around the port of Baltimore well into the diesel era.
It was more than two Rayonier mallets that were tanks. Alco made many 2-8-2 tank engines for logging service. While production was dwarfed by conventional style rod engines, tanks were not “rare” by any means. They just weren’t mainline / class one power.
Sorry about my reversal of the history of the Uintah 2-6-6-2 narrow guage mallets. I guess a lot depends on the definition of “tank engine”. To me it is any locomotive that has the coal (or oil) and water on the same running gear as the boiler, cylinders, and cab. Is that a good definition?
Before electrification, the narrow gauge Boston Rever Beach and Lynn (E-1928 or 1929), the Illinois Central Suburban (E-1927?), and the Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Chicago Elevateds (E-1899-1902) used tank engines almost exclusively, and their total probably would exceed over 500 just for this kind of rapid transit and suburban service. They came in two varieties, the Forny type, more frequent, where the boiler was on rigid frame, with or without a pony truck (single axle in these cases), and a four or in rare cases (one or two BRB&L) six-wheel truck was located under the tender portion of the cab structure. This truck had to have sidewase motoion, usually somewhat restrained by sprining, as well a pivot, or the engine would not stay on the track. But actually the BRB&L and most British examples were Fairlies, not Fornies, and the connections to the two cylinders were through flexible pipes, as they are to the forward cylinders of an articulated, and the driving wheels’ frame could pivot under the boiler. The Festiniog narrow gauge in Wales has a double Fairly with two boilers and four cylinders, the cab, coal, and water between the two fireboxes!
The USA’s longest lasting suburban operation with tank engines was the Boston and Albany’s (New York Central subsidiary) serving the western Boston suburbs, including the Highland Branch to Riverside that was electrified with regular trolley wire and connected to the Green Line subway, now the D line. It did see some diesel commuter operation with road-switchers for a few years before the rebuilding into light rail. Up to the summer of 1950 4-6-4T locomot
I just want to say thanks to all who replied to my question, especially to Mr. Klepper, the info everyone gave will be quite useful.
I think I’ve read that the Ffestiniog Fairlies had just the one through firebox, fired via one door at its mid-point, with a sort of baffle arrangement to prevent the phenomenon where, if one bogie was to slip violently, the extra exhaust would cause cold air to be drawn down the blast-pipe at the other end of the locomotive !! I’m sure one of the other Brits would set the record straight on that.
The numerically largest class of Tank Engines in the UK would have been the Great Western’s 5700 Pannier Tank 0-6-0s, which ran to over 850 IIRC. Added to them were other classes of similar engines, designed for perhaps more bespoke duties - 6400s for Auto Train services needin brisk acceleration, 5400s identical but not fitted for Auto Train work, 7400s lighter and less powerful but good on rural mixed traffic duties, and the 1600s smaller dimensioned to fit any awkward over-bridge but with quite a bit of grunt to shift a respectable load. The later 8400/9400/3400 family looked rather different in having Belpaire Boilers with different tank dimensions.
Martin
Would that number be greater than more than 1300? See this link (in German) to the Prussian T3:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_3_(Preußen)
Anzahl is German for number built.
greetings,
Marc Immeker
Martin, about how many Brighton Terriers were built?
I guess I should have restricted my number race to North America, where the B&O Dockside was clearly the winner. It was not the standard Reading 0-4-0, however which was a camelback, and the B&O had some of those also for specific duties where the wide Wooten firebox was desirable because of the coal used. I am not clear also, whether the 0-4-0T docksides used by the Reading in Philly in WWII were originally built for the Reading or loaned or sold by the B&O, which had already begun dieselizing. Anyone know? Does anybody make the HO models of thse locomotives today? The Reading camelback was made by Mantua.
David,
I’m afraid I have no idea of the number of Stroudley Terriers built, but given the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway was overnwhelmingly a Passenger line (it had no coalfields, major industries, etc. to serve, its freight traffic was delivering traffic either generated by other UK lines, or docks and wharves along the south bank of the Thames in the London area) which had a very intensive service to London’s suburbs, and some rather rural routes through Sussex and the western end of Kent, there might well have been between 50 and 100. Hopefully our other UK contributors might be able to answer with more authority.
In passing, when penning my earlier post on Fairlie articulated tank engines, and the Great Western Pannier Tank classes, I completely overlooked that one of the lines taken into the Great Western Railway in the 1923 amalgamation did operate a standard gauge Fairlie. Between 1978 and 1990 I lived at Burry Port, the hub of what had been the Burry Port & Gwendraeth Valley Railway, one of South Wales’ Anthracite lines, and made friends with many current and former railwaymen who passed on their accounts of life on the line.
The “main line” was not very long (tiny in comparison with the Lehigh Valley, Central of New Jersey, etc., etc.) , but was distinguishable in that it was laid in the bed of an earlier canal, and consequently suffered from both waterlogging of its tracks at times of heavy rain and the estuary’s spring tides, and by the restricted dimensions of its overbridges. Further handicaps were the two steep ramps at just under 3% grade, where the line was laid on the site of two separate inclined planes to ift the barges from one canal level to the next up in altitude.
IIRC the story, just before the turn of the 20th. century, a railway ordered that single Fairlrie locomotove, but failed to come up with the funds at completion, and the builder understandably went looking for a buyer. The BP&GV thought it might have