It's not the most beautiful locomotive ever built, but it is a sight. A long, skinny boiler, an Elesco feed water heater and big arc headlight cluttering up the top of the smokebox, low pressure cylinders you could park motor scooters in and a pilot beam big enough to serve a dinner party of six. I don't know why I can see it and you can't. Check your settings.
Chicago & Eastern Illinois Motorailer 342 "Mt. Vernon" (AC&F 1938), Danville, IL, March 1938 (Ralph H. Payne) Colorado & Southern 4-6-0 329, Peoria, IL, late 1930s (Photographer unknown)
That 4-6-0 is absolutely sparkling clean and shiny! What a beauty... The depot in the background is pretty handsome too.
Denver & Intermountain Combine 903 (a former Colorado & Southern narrow gauge car), Denver, CO, 1930s (Photographer unknown) D&RGW 4-6-0 795, Denver, CO, July 9, 1947 (Ralph H. Payne)
D&RGW 4-6-2 801, Salt Lake City, UT, July 29, 1949 (Ralph H. Payne) D&RGW 4-8-2 1520, Denver, CO, August 7, 1948 (Ralph H. Payne)
A rare photo of a rare engine. There were only six, built in 1912, big and able but not very fast. The invention of the Mountain type about that same time ensured the Rio Grande would quickly lose interest in the 4-6-2.
Looking at D&RGW 801 and 1520, I just noticed the the tender lettering leans forward on the engineer's side and leans backward on the fireman's side. I wonder if that was standard lettering presentation? Beautiful machines.
I must have known that but forgotten. All my N scale locomotives that I have decaled are done correctly. Here is an HO decal sheet. All my N scale ones are chopped up and half gone.
The one on the starboard side certainly was, as in the photo of the Pacific. On the left, as on the Mountain, was only ever done on the left side of tenders, that I know of. For obvious reasons; what else did they have that wasn't just as likely to be going the other direction?
The 1520 had a trailing truck booster, raising TE from about 67000lbs to over 78000lbs. The book: An interesting tidbit on pg.13:
D&RGW 2-6-6-2 3350 (ex-N&W 1453), Bingham, UT, July 28, 1949 (Ralph H. Payne) D&RGW 2-6-6-0 3375 (ex-D&SL 216), Denver, CO, June 20, 1948 (Ralph H. Payne)
The N&W heritage of 3350 is visible in the sheer massive size of that engine. One could set up housekeeping in those low-pressure cylinders!
D&RGW 4-6-6-4 3703, Somewhere in Colorado, Late 1940s (Ralph H. Payne) Denver & Salt Lake 2-6-6-0 206, Denver, CO, 1930s (Guy L. Dunscomb)
That's one virile machine. Looks like single-expansion, and a huge firebox! Plus a front end that looks like it means business. That beauty must have been quite an experience to see it thunder by back in the day. Keep'em coming, Bill!
Absolutely. Meanwhile, the old Mallet with her slide valves on the low pressure cylinders, dinky boiler and gaggle of auxiliaries that make her big pilot beam look like a yard sale, is quite a contrast! Great post!
I often wonder which of these articulated monsters played a part in a story my mom told me. During WWII, as an Army Nurse, she was returning from the Pacific front on a hospital train. Not as a working nurse but as a stretcher bound casualty off loaded from a hospital ship at Long Beach. The train was caught in a snow slide somewhere on the Moffat Route. It was determined that the cars were all still on the track and that the train could be pulled out of the pile of snow. Steam from the locomotive was making its way to all the cars to keep them warm as well as rumors and actual information about how they were going to get out the predicament that they were in. Several "Very Large" locomotives were to be coupled onto the front and rear of the train to pull and shove it out of the snow. After a good bit of whistle blowing and with a lot of jolting, the train began to move slowly and was able to clear the slide zone. After arriving in Denver some of the more ambulatory patients we able to get off the train for a while to try to procure some distilled medicinal potions and report back. They said that snow was still packed in between and under the cars, filling the clerestories of heavyweight cars.
My dad also had a troop train story about WWII. It's not as good as your Mom's, but since you mentioned jolting... I don't know if it was his theory or fact, necessary or habit, but he said a freight engineer was running the engine and was just used to running freight trains. In any case, for some reason someone was backing to put slack in the couplers, and yanking the train into motion the way they did drag freights in the days of steam. He was in a bunk car with bunk beds stacked three deep, and mounted crosswise to the car. So, more than once he awoke that night in mid air. Unluckily, he was in a top bunk.
I love those kinds of stories. They make railroad history come alive. I'll bet no one needed a spoonful of sugar to make that medicine go down...
