J&L Steel 58, the largest and most powerful American two foot gauge locomotive, is now fully operational. We ran her yesterday for several hours over our "extensive" 700 foot long railroad (soon to be expanded if all goes well) and will be running again next weekend May 11 and 12 at the Youngstown Steel Heritage Museum.

You would think that she would be bulky and cumbersome due to her weight, but she is quite responsive to the throttle and rather easy to run. With the side entrance to the cab and side step, visibility is actually pretty good. I estimate the total cost, in supplies and fuel, to operate for a day to be under $100. And she sounds great backing up our 2% grade with plenty of bark!

The 58 looks great Rick! All that hard work has paid off.

I concur, she looks great!

Now all you need is a steel plant for her to work at!!

Move over 4014, the #58 is coming through!

That is really great, congratulations for a job well done.

Chuck

Nothing small about that achievement, Rick! Run her to delight and feed the steam frenzy, especially among the young.
This is job well done that serves everybody in railroad preservation.


Now there's the matter of a certain Berkshire you started working on... :-)

Congratulations, friend!

Let's ponder this, considering that #58 is very, very, heavily built.

So, how many carloads worth of built-in steel ballast is #58 moving when she just moves herself? In other words, even when she runs "light', she is still "loaded", dragging around a considerable load, right?

Kind of reminds me of the "Heavy When Empty" NASA Helium cars...

Kimball

I would think this little puppy could drag that Berk around all over the place.

I always thought these little steamers were odd/ugly looking but this one has really grown on me. Nice work!

Looking at Steam Locomotive Information the weight of #58 is 93,000 pounds --- that is 46.5 tons.

Congratulations on you achievement. The #58 looks to be an excellent example of "form follows function". There is noting that isn't esentual to doing the job.