Maybe someone from the SRR can help me with this-

I was looking through Kalmbach's Guide to North American Steam Locomotives and an interesting tidbit caught my eye-

It said that the early N&W M classes, including 475, were built "deckless," meaning they had no deck plate between engine and tender, leaving the fireman to shoveling coal all the way from the front of the tender to the firebox.

This sounded very strange to me. Is 475 actually deckless?

The info is on page 296 of the book.

"Deckless" cabs don't lack a deck plate. That would require some mighty fine aiming, wouldn't it?

"Deckless" means that the backhead is roughly at the back wall of the cab, meaning that the fireman and engineer are separated by the boiler when seated, instead of both sitting behind it.

The photo below shows two deckless cabs. On the left is C&TS' ex-D&RGW Rotary Snowplow OY; on the right is EBT 2-8-2 17. (Ignore that foamer vandalizing the handrail.)

In addition to 475, other deckless engines that have operated in recent memory are:

all the EBT engines.
ex-CNR 2-6-0 89, also at Strasburg.
ex-L&N 4-6-2 152.
ex-Reader 2-6-2 11 now in Kentucky. (I think - memory may be failing me on that one.)

JAC

While I am not sure of a true definition of a deckless locomotive, I have never considered L&N 152 to be one. You do not have the doors at the back of the cab like on the EBT engines. The back head ends with about 3 feet left to go in the cab. It's close enough that a fireman still has to stand partialy on the plate in order to fire it, which makes it interesting trying to fire it while moving.

If memory serves me correctly, (Mr. Moedinger, or any of the Strasburg guys correct me here), the backhead of an "M" is about a foot forward of the rear edge of the cab. It would be very tight for a large engineer to be on the seatbox. N&W's older classes were commonly deckless designs, including the W's, G's, V's, and the A class 4-6-0's. I believe that ET&WNC 12 at Tweetsie RR is also deckless.

Gary is correct.

There is a some griping among our engine crews about the narrowness of the cab. But we love No. 475 for what she is: a glorious freight hog from 1906.