27 August 2007
Canadian Pacific Railway Number 1293
Ex-Canadian Pacific Railway 4-6-2 G5d
Pacific Ohio Central number 1293.
Type: 4-6-2 "Pacific"
Class: G5d
Builder: Canadian Locomotive Company
Date Built: June 1948
Builder's Number: 2450
Cylinders: 20 x 28 inches
Boiler Pressure: 250 psi
Diameter or Driving Wheels: 70 inches
Tractive Effort: 34,000 pounds
Tender Capacity:
Coal: 14 tons
Oil: Not applicable
Water: 8,000 Imperial gallons
Weight on Drivers: 151,000 pounds
Remarks: This locomotive can be made operable with some work. Sold January 1964 to Steamtown.
History: "No railroad has contributed more toward the perfection of the steam locomotive in North America than the
Canadian Pacific," wrote locomotive historian F.H. Howard as the opening sentence of his article in Trains & Travel Magazine
on Canadian Pacific's last series of 4-6-2 locomotives, built on the evening before diesel dominance transformed North
American railroads. He went on to say, "Its progressive attitude has been especially apparent in boiler matters: the first
superheater, the first nickel-steel barrel, and the world's largest collection of welded boilers all breathed steam into
CPR cylinders."
Henry Vaughan, in charge of Canadian Pacific Railway motive power, initiated construction of the railway's first two series of
4-6-2 or "Pacific" type locomotives in 1905 to meet the demands of rapidly expanding passenger train service.
Class Gl locomotives with 75-inch drive wheels would pull passenger traffic over main lines in relatively flat terrain
such as the prairies of central Canada. The G2 class with smaller 69-inch drivers would be assigned to trains in hilly
country. These engines began rolling out of the erecting shops in 1906, and during the next seven years before World War I, Canadian
Pacific placed more than 200 of them in service. Then after the war ended in 1918, the company went on to build, for the most part,
larger and heavier power.
In March 1911, Gl No. 1011 appeared with a completely enclosed "all-weather" or "vestibule" cab, a
feature destined to become common on Canadian locomotives that greatly increased the comfort and safety of the engine crew.
It was during the long tenure of Henry Blame Bowman as chief mechanical officer of the Canadian Pacific (1928 to 1949) that the company
again envisioned a need for smaller classes of locomotives. Bower had presided over the development of such behemoths as
2-10-4s and modern 4-6-4s, but in 1935 his office designed the first of two classes of streamlined
4-4-4 locomotives intended to haul the new high-speed, "lightweight" passenger trains. Then in
1943, Bower's office designed a new class of 4-6-2 locomotives. The Canadian Pacific in 1944 still operated 495 Vaughan
Class D10 4-6-0s and 150 Vaughan Class Gl and G2 4-6-2s, but all were more than 30 years old and beginning to
wear out. The question of replacing this rapidly aging fleet of small locomotives for postwar assignments to principally secondary and
branch lines concerned Bower. Locomotives Nos. 1200 and 1201 of the new class, which rolled out of Canadian Pacific's Angus Shops in
April and June, 1944, was a modernized version of the Vaughan Class G2 4-6-2 of 1906.
4-6-2 No. 1200, first of the new series of light
"Pacific" type locomotives built after World War II. This original model of the G5 class rolled out of the Canadian Pacific's
own Angus Shops in 1944.
The railway sent No. 1200 out west and assigned No. 1201 to the Montreal-Perth passenger run. No. 1201, incidentally,
proved to be the last steam locomotive to be built in the Canadian Pacific Railway's own shops, though the railroad would order a
hundred more of these Pacifics from the Montreal Locomotive Works and the Canadian Locomotive Company.
Trains Magazine reported on the new class of light Pacifics in its July 1944 issue, featuring a builder's photo of No. 1200 and a
description of their features:
The design of these Pacifics, Class G5, is based on the earlier Class G2, but the engine has been modernized and lightened. The portion
of the cab extending forward over the fire box has been eliminated and the cab upper structure has been made of aluminum. The boiler
steam dome was omitted, following the recent trend. Engine trucks are fitted with roller bearings. Morel-metal staybolts
are used experimentally where it was customary to use flexible staybolts in the past, and one locomotive is fitted with a complete
installation of Morel-metal staybolts on one side and standard steel staybolts on the other side.
The weight distribution of the new G5's is such that they can be used on most of the CP's branch lines. It is proposed that this design
will eventually replace 495 of the D10 class Ten-Wheelers, and 150 of the G1 and G2 class Pacifics, engines which were
built in the early years of the century and which were originally used on mainline trains row hauled by heavy Pacifics.
The Canadian Pacific eventually purchased three subclasses of G5 Pacifics, the first two locomotives forming Class G5a, built in 1944.
Montreal Locomotive Works produced the first G5b in August 1945, 13 more in September, 13 more in October, and one in November 1945. It
rolled out one each in January 1946 and April 1946. Fifteen of these 30 locomotives went into service or western lines, 15 to eastern
Canada. Then in 1946, the company produced four of a new subclass of G5c, 11 more in June and five more in July.
Production then switched to the Canadian Locomotive Company, which produced two G5c locomotives in September 1946, nine in November
1946, and three in December 1946. That company turned out two more in January 1947 and another four in April 1947. After a hiatus of a
year, the Canadian Locomotive Company produced sever of the new subclass of G5d in April 1948, then went on to produce eight more in
May, seven more in June (of which No. 1293 was the last of the month's production), four more in July, and four more in August 1948,
No. 1301 being the last steam locomotive built for the Canadian Pacific Railway.
All G5 4-6-2s featured 70-inch diameter drive wheels, cylinders 20 inches in diameter, with a
28-inch stroke, 250 pounds-per-square-inch boiler pressure, and tractive effort of 34,000 pounds, and were
identical in most other dimensions, variance between the G5a and G5b through d subclasses consisting only of difference in some weights
and appliances. All had Elesco Type A superheaters and HT-1 type mechanical or automatic stokers. The G5b type differed
from G5a locomotives in Elesco exhaust steam injectors under the fireman's side of the cab. The G5c subclass featured a coaming around
the top of the water compartment or the tender and differently located injector piping than predecessors had. The Class G5d engines of
1948 featured a revised Elesco feedwater heater in the smokebox, with a water pump on the left side of the boiler.
The operational history of locomotive No. 1293 awaits further research in Canadian archives.
F. Nelson Blount purchased the locomotive for excursion service on the Green Mountain Railroad out of the Riverside Yards north of
Bellows Falls, Vermont. He purchased Locomotive No. 1293 in the name of the Green Mountain Railroad in January 1964. The Steamtown
Foundation purchased No. 1293 from the Green Mountain Railroad in 1973.
Rebuilt in 1976, No. 1293 was the first Steamtown locomotive to be given an overhaul since F. Nelson Blount's death in 1967, nearly a
decade earlier. After being broken-in on the excursion train in June 1976, No. 1293 powered the state-funded
Vermont Bicentennial Train over 13,000 miles that year, featuring a green and black color scheme for that use.
In 1979, the Steamtown Foundation leased No. 1293 to a Hollywood company for the filming in Canada of a motion picture starring Jamie
Lee Curtis entitled Terror Train. The film company renumbered the locomotive "1881" and painted it black with silver stripes,
along with the five Steamtown cars used with the engine in filming near Montreal. As implied by the title, the film was a typical
horror film involving a number of gruesome murders during a college fraternity excursion party aboard the train.
In 1980, the Steamtown Foundation restored No. 1293 and relettered it Canadian Pacific, painting it in the black, gold, and Tuscan red
CPR passenger color scheme that had been inspired by a 1933 visit to Canada and the Chicago World's Fair of a British train in maroon
and gold livery, the Royal Scot, whose colors the Canadian Pacific had begun copying between 1933 and 1936. The restoration of the
locomotive to a historic color and lettering scheme proved immensely popular among railroad enthusiasts, who descended on Steamtown in
droves for the annual "Railfan Weekend" photography spree. But there was no documentation to prove that No. 1293 ever had
that particular color scheme historically.
On 4 Feb 1982, the locomotive was in the Steamtown storage and shop building when it collapsed at 7:45 a.m. under an
unusually heavy load of several feet of fresh wet snow, damaging the upper parts of the locomotive, including such features as
headlights, handrails, cab roof, and the like.
In Canada, the second of this series of G5 locomotives, Pacific No. 1201, is preserved by the National Museum of Science and Technology
in Ottawa, Ontario. It is the only one of the G5 type in Canada.
Condition: No. 1293 is basically an operable locomotive, given some routine repairs.
Recommendation: This type of locomotive did operate into New England occasionally, perhaps as far south as Boston in
international service. While perhaps too light to handle long excursion trains on the stiff climb to Pocono Summit, this locomotive
might be usable for smaller special trains or for occasional use on other lines in the Scranton vicinity.
1293 was acquired by the Ohio Central Railroad - date unknown.
|
