Steam & Excursion > McCloud River Compound Double locomotive

Have been reading the other recent posts on compound locomotives and saw Volume 2 of Baldwin’s Record of Recent Construction listed on that auction site today.  Wanted to see what was in it, and found a pdf of it on line.

In Vol 3 found this interesting locomotive - a compound double locomotive built for the McCloud River Railroad company.  

This document and three others ones can be found at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

I could not find a date anywhere. The description of how these two locomotives are connected and operate is cool!

Tom


 

Tom Daspit
Morgan Hill, CA
Tom's Trains

---

---

---

More description

Tom Daspit
Morgan Hill, CA
Tom's Trains

---

---

---

The rest of the description

Tom Daspit
Morgan Hill, CA
Tom's Trains

---

---

Here is McCloud #5 after she was sold to a lumber company in Oregon.  Lystol-Lawson.

The next show shows McCloud #6 after she was seprated and used on the McCloud as a single engine.  She later went to a contractor on Treasure Island.

#6's spot plate remains today.

Martin

---

---

---

Martin:

I had a feeling that you would have at least one photo of these engines.  I had a feeling that they were seperated at one point.

Tom Daspit
Morgan Hill, CA
Tom's Trains

My understanding is the engine(s) spent a lot of time on the ground.  Knowing how well the rear of a trailing truck-less locomotive kicks and dances going into into and out of curves, and seeing how the rear of the engine is well anchored to the other engine, I could see it the front end not wanting to head into curves well - if at all.  The back end would want to kick the opposite direction of the curve, but the other engine would not want to move at all until it was into the curve as well. This would do a number on the reverse gear connections too.   Making the two halves as 2-6-0's might have helped.