Steam & Excursion > The Birth Of A Shop Goat For Brooklyn In 1939-SP #208!

When Southern Pacific would wear out one of it's shop goats stationed at one of the SP roundhouse facilities on it's system, the call would go out to Sacramento for a "new" one.

Such was the case in 1939 when the shop goat in service at the Brooklyn Shops in Portland, Oregon was in need of replacement. The Brooklyn Shops had been using SPMW #566 an 0-6-0T originally built in 1882 as a 2-6-2T and converted to a shop goat in 1917.

All the Sacramento Shop forces had to do was to go out to the rip track and pick out an old 0-6-0 that had enough boiler and running gear life left in her to make her worthy of the conversion. In this case SP #1079 was chosen as the "donor" for this conversion.

By August 15, 1939 the conversion was completed and, as we see here, SPMW #208 was born! This photo shows her at Sacramento just as she is being readied for her trip up north to Portland. Her tender has been discarded and a new set of saddle tanks has been created to hold water in the front and oil in the rear. This, together with the new short cab, left the engine with great visibility for the crews when backing to couple onto engines that were being shuttled around the Brooklyn shops. It also reduced the length of the Shop Goat so she could fit on the turntable at Brooklyn together with the engine she was shuttling.

Such is the story of where shop goats came from back in the days of steam.

Martin



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 12/18/14 07:42 by LoggerHogger.

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It seems odd to me that a shop run to repair locomotives would need a different loco when the current shop switcher wore out? Maybe the boiler was shot, or such, and they did not have that capability?

It was a combination of factors. First, the old shop goat was a small engine built for the Central Pacific decades earlier. With the new and larger steam locomotives on the SP in the 1930's such as the Cab Forwards that in need of being moved about the shop areas, the larger and "newer" #208 made more sense.

Martin

Martin,

In shipment to Oregon, would the loco be shipped dead in train, or loaded on a company flat?


Ray
(Watts local)

She would have been shipped on rails not on a flat. She might have had a crew keeping her hot for lubrication or she would have had her rods removed and shipped dead in train.

Martin

For all the SP steam modelers this would be quite a prize to have on ones layout. Would keep all the nit pickers jaws running for days.

The old Roundhouse 0-6-0 kit would be a "reasonable" starting point for a model of this beast.
But you'd still have a lot of work to do!