520 at Hagerstown, Maryland, 9/55:

http://abpr2.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi? ... prr520.jpg

And this A5 0-4-0 with a string of cars, no date or place:

http://abpr2.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi? ... prr477.jpg

It didn't survive, but sister 94 did.

Those A5s sure are cute. "Honey, I shrunk the H10!!!!"

I have run across many photos of the A5s on the ABPR, but haven't posted links as our main focus is on things that exist today. They were little, but had a heavy axle loading.

I don't think I'll ever understand the numbering system of the PRR, as engines of many types could be found with one to four digits, and I don't have any PRR motive power books. The C&NW had a similar odd numbering system. For anyone who wants to try finding PRR photos, try typing PRR into the ABPR search feature - it might work. The captions on the historic photos seem to have less idle gab and more factual words in them than the recent diaharrea-of-the-trigger-finger photos of modern day stuff, thus the search feature might actually be able to find something.

Hi,
If I recall correctly, the PRR had thousands locomotives. At one time it had as many 2-8-0's as any other railroad had all types of locomotives on their systems. I want to say I read that in Trains magazine years ago under a title something like How Big Was Big? It was the largest terminal system in the world as I recall.
I can not find the book I want and do not recall the exact name but it has all the PRR construction numbers from Altoona since about 1906. It also had sorting by class and by locomotive number.
New classes were able to be held together in a single group frequently (GG4, P5, I1) but others like the K4 kept having small batches added and instead of having to keep renumbering all locomotives, the PRR started filling in the "vacant" numbers that were salt and peppered throughout the total numbering system.
I might not have the details 100% correct, but this is my understanding and I think it is basically correct.
Doug

George Drury of Trains Magazine once speculated that the PRR motive power department had a big fishbowl of unused numbers in the Philadelphia offices, and every time a loco was completed at Eddystone/Juniata/Etc., a phone call to that office would get them the number to be assigned.

Hey, makes as much sense as any other theory. <:-)

Up until the mid-1920's, if PRR had any numbering system at all, it was by subsidiary railroad and not by wheel arrangement or class. This pretty well died out around 1900 except for the Lines East - Lines West distinction, where any locomotive built for Lines West was numbered above 7000. The 4000 number series was reserved for the Northern Central Railway, which did not have all that many locomotives, permitting both the Baldwin Decapods and the electrics to carry numbers between 4000-4999.

There is a searchable list of PRR steam locomotive numbers at http://kc.pennsyrr.com that can be searched by both engine number and class.

My understanding is that this "system" was "designed" so that once given a number, a locomotive would not need to be renumbered in the future. Thus new locomotives were simply given whatever numbers happened to be vacant at the time. As noted, in earlier years number blocks were assigned to subsidiaries, but in most cases this went by the wayside. Probably the longest-lasting was the 6000-block, which was assigned to the West Jersey & Seashore and was carried over to PRR locomotives turned over to the PRSL.

Herb Harwood

How many 0-4-0's got to run on mainline track like that!

PRR steam made its last stand in Hagerstown a few months before I was born. I wish I could say I saw scenes like this one.

John Bohon

And what wouldn't we give to have seen, say about 5 or 6 sold to shortlines and somehow preserved? There is something undeniably appealing about A5's. I hate to call them "cute", but they look something child-like, compared to even a B6sb.

Probably all of them. A (Trains?) magazine article mentioned that after work that required a trip to Altoona Shops, they would be broken in by running under their own power light at 15 m.p.h. back to Philadelphia or wherever else they were assigned next.

And it would be interesting to see how many of them would have same design "defect" that 1361 has. It will be interesting too one day, perhaps, to see if the LIRR's G's have it as well.

Bob