STEAM LOCOMOTIVES
When I was ten my family returned to live in Philadelphia. Soon I met a boy named T. Martin Flatley, who was in the same grade in school as I, and who had a passionate interest in the locomotives of the Pennsylvania Railroad. A third young railfan was Bill Barnes, but Bill was somewhat separated from Martin and I because his main interest was in the engines of the Reading Company. For some reason none of us was very much interested in the Baltimore & Ohio, the other railroad that ran through Philadelphia. Martin and I were welcomed by railroad men in every engine yard and roundhouse in the area and thrown out of most of them by railroad detectives.
We "collected" engine numbers. This was slightly less trivial than it sounds because the Pennsy, as the railroad was nicknamed, before 1920 had the unusual practice of giving a new locomotive the number of one that had just been scrapped. Thus number 1 was a small Consolidation (2-8-0) type, class H6sb, while number 8 was a large Pacific (4-6-2), class K4s, and number 16 was a large Atlantic (4-4-2), class E6s. All the numbers in between were taken by other engines of other types; I only happen to remember these three. Each of us, in the common practice of pre-teens, had a "favorite" engine. Mine was number 6872, a class M1 Mountain (4-8-2) type. I haven't a picture of it, but here is a mate, number 6940:
PRR No. 6940, Class M1, Mountain(4-8-2) type
built Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1926
The engine in the right background is a Consolidation, probably class H6a, built
around the turn of the last century, 26 or 27 years before I took the picture.
PRR No. 6797, Class M1a, Mountain(4-8-2) type, built 1930
The 201 M1's were so good that the PRR ordered 100 more Mountain types. They differed from the M1s in having feed water heaters. Also the cylinders and steam pipes were cast into the one piece cast steel frame, forming the bottom of the smoke box. The smoke box netting was also unusual. This scheme was tested on one of the two large Pacific 4-6-2 Class K5 locomotives built in 1929. The latter were never duplicated (PRR passenger locomotive needs were met until after WWII by electric locomotives operating on the Harrisburg-Washington-New York electrified lines). I don;t know how well the K5 ran, but the ten M1a's that were painted with gold striping for passenger service failed in that work. The boilers would not produce sufficient steam at high speeds, so when a heavy locomotive was needed for passenger service, the older M1's had to do the work.
In the summer of 1931 (or possibly 1930) I visited Missouri. I had an Agfa "Memo" camera, a 35mm camera which had a fixed focus lens and took "half frame" pictures. They were 18x24mm instead of the normal 24x36mm pictures of most 35mm cameras. I recently found a roll of negatives from that trip. The pictures are not very sharp! They were taken from the rear deck of the observation car of the Pennsylvania's crack New York - St.Louis train, called "The American". Here are some of them:
The top two are Consolidation (2-8-0) types.
The top left is probably class H8sb or H9s. The top right could be H8, H8a, H8b or H8c.
The middle pair are class M1 Mountain (4-8-2) types.
The first engine on the lower left is class I1s Decapod (2-10-0) type.
I cannot identify the second of these two helper engines pushing a freight.
The picture was probably taken in the Allegheny Mountains.
The lower right picture is a class K4s Pacific (4-6-2) type,
possibly the one that was pulling my train.
As the years passed the time I spent hanging around railroad yards decreased a lot. Even so, I have found a few pictures which I took about 1938-41. Here they are:
PRR No. 9851Class N2sa, Santa Fe (2-10-2) type, built for the United States
Railway Administration during WWI and drastically rebuilt by the PRR.
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