A French-built 2-6-0T which served from 1891 to 1929 in Puerto Rico, and then came to the U.S. by way of the Edison Institute finished up its U.S. career in front of a bank in Traverse City, Michigan.

Some time in the 1990's it was repatriated to France, and restored to operating condition by a tourist railway. Alain Paillard provided steamlocomotive.info with photos of the locomotive in operation. You can see them at the link below, a beautifully done restoration.

French-Built 2-6-0T
dougb@sunserver.com

> You can see them at the link below, a
> beautifully done restoration.

Well, you could have seen the locomotive and its photos if I'd had the link right. See below. Sorry

Doug


French-Built 2-6-0T
dougb@sunserver.com

> A French-built 2-6-0T which served from 1891
> to 1929 in Puerto Rico, and then came to the
> U.S. by way of the Edison Institute finished
> up its U.S. career in front of a bank in
> Traverse City, Michigan.

> Some time in the 1990's it was repatriated
> to France, and restored to operating
> condition by a tourist railway. Alain
> Paillard provided steamlocomotive.info with
> photos of the locomotive in operation. You
> can see them at the link below, a
> beautifully done restoration.

Sure looks like a 4-4-0T to me. Or is it a Metric 2-6-0T?

K3PRR@earthlink.net

> Sure looks like a 4-4-0T to me. Or is it a
> Metric 2-6-0T?

The first posting had a link to the wrong locomotive. Sorry 'bout that.

French-Built 2-6-0T
dougb@sunserver.com

I came across some photos of this locomotive in the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton R.R. archives at the Henry Ford Museum. One picture was of it operating in Panama noting that an employee of the DT&I operated it as well as added American locomotive appliances. The other was of it arriving on a flat car to the shops in Dearborn, MI. No other information was in the file. It's neat to know that it's back in France.

It is a 2-6-0t. You can see an axle forward of the cylinder.

She is meter gauge and left TC in the early/mid 90's; she was gone when the Grand Traverse Dinner Train started in the spring of 1996. The bank was located in the former Pere Marquette depot and I remember looking at her as a kid. I believe the bank owner was also a rail fan as there was a standard gauge boxcar and caboose also on display towards the east end of the depot and on the west end there were a couple of old C&O passenger cars that were used as part of the bank. While I was an exchange student in Stuttgart, Germany, I met a couple of guys who had helped to rebuild her to operating condition.

Here is a video from 2009 of the locomotive (plus others) in operation at the Somme Bay Railway.
The locomotive shows up at 1:06.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSekoPB1N_4

Jeff, I remember seeing a picture of this locomotive on Eddie's Michigan Railroads a long time ago and figured it was sold and/or moved to languish elsewhere since it was foreign.

Well...here's a photo (from steamlocomotive.info) of the locomotive in operation at the Baie de Somme Railway in France:

And here's the photo (by Eddie Gross) of the locomotive when it was in Michigan:


And of course, the complete page at steamlocomotive.info
http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=1482

Interesting water tank, flush with the smokebox door. Almost looks like an armored train locomotive like that...
Funny how few European locomotives there are in the US.

If they had saved our butts in 1945 we'd be running with Chapelon pacifics and British 2-10-0s. It was the other way around, so we sent them what they needed to rebuild their infrastructure. It was a great investment not only financially as it raised all ships on a very high tide, but built a web of alliances that we're only recently squandering, and provided thousands with a civilized standard of living.

dave