Just A Car Guy: If you'd like to buy a 1944 Baldwin 2-10-4 ( "Texas" type locomotives ) from the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, for the price of a McLaren, you're in luck, and this might be in better condition than any other similar size train engine on the market

Friday, May 17, 2019

If you'd like to buy a 1944 Baldwin 2-10-4 ( "Texas" type locomotives ) from the Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad, for the price of a McLaren, you're in luck, and this might be in better condition than any other similar size train engine on the market

The 1940s saw seventeen more "Texas" types added to the B and LE roster. They were acquired in three orders.

Ten of them designated as Class H-1g with road numbers 638 through 647, came in 1943 and 1944.

The H-1gs weighed 523,600 pounds.

The entire B and LE fleet of forty-seven "Texas" type locomotives was built to the same basic specifications which included 64" diameter drivers, 31" x 32" cylinders, a boiler pressure of 250 psi and were rated with a tractive effort of 96,700 pounds. These locomotives were equipped with a trailing truck booster, which added 13,100 pounds of tractive effort making the total tractive effort 109,800 pounds.

The firebox was of radial stay construction. The combustion chamber extended 49.5" into the barrel of the boiler. There were three thermic siphons, two in the firebox and one in the combustion chamber. The evaporative heating surface was 5,912 square feet and the superheater added 2,368 square feet. The boiler evaporative capacity was 84,300 pounds per hour (nearly 10,500 gallons per hour). At 250 psi and 250 degrees of superheat, boiler horse power was 4,690 HP. The piston valves measured 15" in diameter.

All of the engines had an 8,000 US gallon/hr capacity except for the first five 1936 engines. Filled to 2 gauges of water, the boiler held 5,890 gallons weighing 41,937 lb; sand box capacity totalled 6,736 lb.

The first tenders carried 22,000 US gallons of water and 23 tons of coal; they weighed 377,600 lb loaded. Later tenders carried 1,000 gallons more and three more tons of coal.

This is the only surviving B and LE "Texas" type locomotive. It was previously stored west of the P and LE shops in Mc Kees Rocks, PA and is now at AGF warehouse, "bottoms" section of Mc Kees Rocks, PA.

this is the last page of the definitive article on this class of train, I recommend you take a look if you're into steam locomotives: http://ctr.trains.com/~/media/import/files/pdf/0/b/6/winter_2000_ctr_bessemer_article.pdf
of course, like most everything that seems like something you'd like to do, if it's easy and not a pain in the ass, this is indeed going to prove to be a pain in the ass.

They have already removed the tracks that are needed to get this back on the main line. Yeah, it's landlocked.

Not that some enthusiasts and a railroad company couldn't just build some railroad, replacing the missing section, and have this back to rights, so this could be towed or pushed somewhere the buyer wants to fix it up... there is very little that is impossible if enough money and enthusiasm is thrown at it. Hell, scientists have taken a photo of an atom, operated a remote control robot on the planet Mars, and all sorts of other incredible things.

The Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad ran 153 miles from Lake Erie to North Bessemer, PA near Pittsburgh, PA. From early spring until the first freeze the B and LE hauled iron ore from the lake boats to the steel mills and carried Pennsylvania coal back to the lakefront.

Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, a 2-10-4 locomotive has two leading wheels on one axle, ten coupled driving wheels on five axles, and four trailing wheels on two axles, usually in a truck. These were referred to as the Texas type in most of the United States, the Colorado type on the Burlington Route and the Selkirk type in Canada.

The 2-10-4 Texas wheel arrangement originated and was principally used in the United States of America. The evolution of this locomotive type began as a 2-10-2 Santa Fe type with a larger four-wheeled trailing truck that would allow an enlarged firebox. A subsequent development was as an elongated 2-8-4 Berkshire type that required extra driving wheels to remain within axle load limits. Examples of both of these evolutionary progressions can be found.

Some 2-10-4 tank locomotives also existed in eastern Europe. One extraordinary experimental 2-10-4 tender locomotive, built in the Soviet Union, had an opposed piston drive system.