Bruette
Well-Known Member
Kevin Bunker - Steam Locomotive Photographs
Southern Pacific 3-cylinder 4-10-2 No. 5004 in 1925 fresh from the Alco factory and standing outside SP's Sacramento Shops to be ogled. While it still seems hard to believe, SP intended to place these on the Donner Pass line in passenger service to eliminate double-headed smaller locomotives and the use of Cab-forwards in passenger use. These enormous locos were accordingly fitted with air-powered clamshell smoke deflectors to reduce the blast effect on snowshed roofs.
It took little time for the railroad to realize its folly: engine crews still had to wear gas mask respirators on "the Hill" as the 4-10-2s and their superheated exhaust flooded in and around the locomotive working hard uphill in tunnels and sheds. And the enormously long rigid wheelbase -- even with several "blind" (flangleless) driving wheel tires, was torturing curves on the mountain.
In fairly short order these locomotives and their sisters were moved down into the great Central Valley and line across Beaumont Pass east of Los Angeles, and also doing some duties up the Sacramento River Canyon to Dunsmuir and over Cascade Pass in Oregon.
In the end, they mostly wound up fully reassigned to Southern California. There, the last survivor No.5021 remains as a "display queen" at the Pomona County Fairgrounds as part of the R&LHS Southern California Chapter collection housed there.
SP Photo - David W. Joslyn, California State Railroad Museum Library & Archives.
Southern Pacific 3-cylinder 4-10-2 No. 5004 in 1925 fresh from the Alco factory and standing outside SP's Sacramento Shops to be ogled. While it still seems hard to believe, SP intended to place these on the Donner Pass line in passenger service to eliminate double-headed smaller locomotives and the use of Cab-forwards in passenger use. These enormous locos were accordingly fitted with air-powered clamshell smoke deflectors to reduce the blast effect on snowshed roofs.
It took little time for the railroad to realize its folly: engine crews still had to wear gas mask respirators on "the Hill" as the 4-10-2s and their superheated exhaust flooded in and around the locomotive working hard uphill in tunnels and sheds. And the enormously long rigid wheelbase -- even with several "blind" (flangleless) driving wheel tires, was torturing curves on the mountain.
In fairly short order these locomotives and their sisters were moved down into the great Central Valley and line across Beaumont Pass east of Los Angeles, and also doing some duties up the Sacramento River Canyon to Dunsmuir and over Cascade Pass in Oregon.
In the end, they mostly wound up fully reassigned to Southern California. There, the last survivor No.5021 remains as a "display queen" at the Pomona County Fairgrounds as part of the R&LHS Southern California Chapter collection housed there.
SP Photo - David W. Joslyn, California State Railroad Museum Library & Archives.