No date or place, but apparently before sale to the iron company at Birdsboro in 1946:

http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?j ... dg1187.jpg

Bob,

Looks like it could be Allentown Yard. I remember sitting on a road behind and a little above the yard to watch them hump cars. Just a guess, anyone else?

Alan, I don't think this is Allentown Yard. The background doesn't look right.

It could be nearby, though, at East Penn Junction. The lack of landmarks makes it really tough to tell, though. Perhaps an email to the poster might help figure out the location, although you'd think that info would have been added to the photo caption if it was known. -Walter

I remember hearing somewhere that it was always thought that SRC #4 and RDG 1187 were one in the same but lacking hard proof. Is this the case or is that just another crazy rumor flying around?

Thanks,

One and the same. SRC kept the CF&I number.

That might be a Rutherford yard near Harrisburg, Pa. That was own by the Reading Co.

Len.

I'm no Reading expert, but it seems the tender is up against another steam engine tender, and it might be very late in its career, as though sitting on the dead line. I don't know of the Reading working the hump in Allentown, since it was a CNJ yard.

Since the road rises rather steeply in the background, my guess would place the yard as St. Clair yard, and the road would be Highway 61. Nothing of the yard exists now, to my knowledge, and I may have the yard location wrong, but that's my guess. Almost all of the coal territory looks like this.