Steam & Excursion > Which one to chose?

Take your pick--beauty(?) or ugly.  Texas & Pacific class G-1b could hardly be recognized from one picture to another. Acquired in 1919 the 524 was a run of the mill Baldwin 2-10-2 with southern valve gear.  They were slow machines but by far the largest engines on the  T&P. Another order of 2-10-2 came from Alco with walschaerts valve gear and completed the number of 2-10-2's at 44.  They were  all drag engines pure and simple.  The first bunch came as coal burners were converted to oil when online oil fields were discovered..   The coal T&P burned came from the Thurber area of Texas and was only one step above lignite.  Funny that word should come up.

The price of oil began to rise causing T&P management to wonder if their engines could actually burn lignite which was plentiful and cheap in east Texas. A combustion engineer by the name of Fogg was given the control of # 524 and the shops were told to give him all the assistance needed.  The engine was equipped with a sealed firebox, a huge fan on its left side and in the smokebox and other items deemed necessary.Instead of chug  chug it made a whirring sound when running.  The engine was given the yellow dog freight  from Marshall Tx  35 miles to Shreveport La on a round trip. to test.  It was soon found that the engine a big appetite for the lignite and coal boards had to be added to increase the amount carried to make the run.  Even with that on occasions it ran out of fuel on the trip and had to be towed in.  Soon the engine got the nickname of  Snuff Dipper because the lignite looked like snuff.

The pressure on the firebox made the engine leak an awful brown soot everywhere that would get on everything.  Crews looked horrible when their shift was over. The engine was constantly undergoing changes in an effort to make it more efficient.  The tests went on for over a year but, one day a call came to convert the engine back to oil.   Fogg  was not told about it and arrived at work to get on "his" engine and  found it in the shop with many items already removed from it.  T&P was cancelling the whole experiment.

Later the superintendent gave orders to make the best engine they could out of the 2-10-2's.  A feedwater heater and trailing truck booster were added along with the largest tenders on the railroad, 15000 gals water and 5000 gals oil.  The feedwater heater made them easier to fire and gave the ability to increase their running speed. Most were all scrapped by late 1947 although a few made it to 1949. 3 of them served as hump engines in Ft Worth.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/16 22:04 by tomstp.

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Very interesting!  I guess we should give them points for at least trying. 

Andy