Philip -

Interesting (and certainly cheaper) alternative to lengthening the cab, but I wonder how much trouble it was to get the coal into the tender with that canopy in the way?

Les

No trouble at all if all you did was shovel the coal over the side from a gondola on the next track.

Dennis -

You are probably right. The next question then would be; which operation actually lengthened the cab? The Catskill & Tannersville or the Bellevue-Cascade line there in Iowa?

Les

A canopy over the coal bunker seems to have not been too uncommon in the 19th century; here is one example from the Lehigh & Susquehana:

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/images/tr_ls_wap.jpg

Note that this 4-6-0 also appears to be deckless.

Another example is this Baldwin 2-8-0 that was sent to Brazil:

http://vfco.brazilia.jor.br/historia/bi ... EFCB.shtml

http://www.frateschi.com.br/site/index_ ... dation_eng

The original Lehigh Valley 2-8-0 of 1866 had the canopy, too:

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/145317 ... 169314375/

The canopy is barely visible in this famous Baldwin photo, but it is there:

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u45/ ... dation.jpg

The size and location of those canopies almost suggest the effort was to keep the coal dry, not the fireman!

That USP cab design really IS a puzzler, they've got two reflex glasses with night lights, one where the fireman can't see it, and one where the engineer can't see it. In my infinite wisdom, it looks like the only way to fire that hog would be with the rear cab doors latched open.

Deckless cab 2-8-0s were pretty typical of Mexico, Guatemala & El Salvador, here in Colorado we have the FIdeCA 40, 44, & 111 of this type. In general, we watch the reflection of our fire on the tender tank, rather than peeping. There is no back wall to speak of.

My theory is that the back bulkhead and doors were on the USP engine for when it was parked, not for when it was running. With that arrangement, the water level could be observed from ground level by a watchman, while the cab was locked up.

At risk of venturing even further off the original topic, I suspect deckless cabs were probably much more common than we realize now. There just aren't a lot of photos of them.

For example, back in the 1880s and 1890s, the Long Island had a class of Rogers 4-4-0s with deckless cabs. They were the workhorses of their era, and were well photographed despite not being terribly elegant in appearance. However, of these many photos, the only one I know that actually shows the backhead of one of these engines is this Hal Fullerton shot of a plow train that went off the rails in the Thanksgiving snowstorm of 1898 -- and there it is, a deckless cab.

I'm sure there were lots of others out there, working in unexpected places.

-Philip Marshall

Back to the topic... did anyone conclude where the engines were sent? I'd be interested to know where the NP yard was that was mentioned earlier in the thread where the Tweetsie engines were shopped and the docks where the engines were sent north and where they arrived when they came back south.

The engines were shopped at the Northern Pacific's South Tacoma Shop which was located just west of South Tacoma Way at about 74th Street South. Odds are the locomotives were shipped through either the Port of Tacoma or the Port of Seattle. Both of the dealers that bought the locomotives from the government were located in Seattle.

I've asked around among two retired NP yard guys from Auburn who were there at the time the WP&Y engines were scrapped. They both recall them there and the scrapping but neither can recall if they were scrapped there or where in the yard they'd been held.
I guess I should have previously mentioned where the shops were. That said, I did mention that there is no sign of the shops today in one of my first posts here: