An offshoot of a thread in Interchange.

Kevin Kohls scanned three articles on the USATC Consolidations and an Alaska Railroad 4-8-4 from the Baldwin Locomotives magazine so they could be incorporated into the archives we have compiled to support the restoration of USATC Consolidation #3523/Alaska Railroad #557. Shared with his permission.

The first is from January, 1932. Early in WWII the Alaska Railroad had a second identical Mountain to the one in the article on order from Baldwin and wanted to order more, but material shortages for items such as boiler plate were causing unacceptable delays. The U.S. Government owned ARR learned that they could obtain 2-8-0s under the Army's contract with a lead time of a few weeks. They were reluctant, but ordered six. Apparently satisfied with them, they later obtained six more of the 2-8-0s. Two still exist, ARR #556 is displayed in a park in Anchorage, Alaska, and ARR #557, under restoration for operation in Wasilla, Alaska (http://www.557.alaskarails.org).

Our old friend USATC 1702 was featured in this article as well as in newspaper coverage of the time. After serving the Army and a couple of short lines. 1702, now with a different smoke box door and tender, is currently operational as Great Smokey Mountains Railroad 1702. Although Baldwin built roughly 1,000 of Consolidations, they apparently made builders photos of less than ten, including 1702, one of the examples modified for the Alaska Railroad, a 5' gauge USSR example, a 5'6" gauge Indian example, and USATC 2737 (see other post).

One of the USATC Consolidations was Baldwin's 70,000th locomotive.

All great info on the S-160 Class. There's a good story also hidden in there about "Maj. J.W.Marsh". He was very personally involved in all the development of the S-160 from it's beginnings as S-159.

As best as I can tell, the "S" designations for USATC locomotives were created by Tourrett, although they were apparently derived from ALCO class designations for some of the locomotives. I follow suite in using he "S160" designation because that's what everyone else calls them, even though it apparently wasn't used by USATC when the locomotives were being built and deployed.

I've spent hundred of hours researching the S160 as part of our restoration of Alaska Railroad 557, including looking at a lot of original documents. The closest reference to "S160" that I have found during the 1940s was an ALCO builder's card for USATC 1624, which identified its class as "280 S 161." I have found nothing in the BLW or Lima technical documents nor in minutes of several meetings where design decisions were made and which were attended by Major Marsh and representatives of the three builders. Baldwin's class designation was 280 19S. One of these days I plan on going into detail on the S160 designation on our Facebook page.

Other than wheel arrangement, there is little in common between the eight USATC 2-8-0s with 50" drivers and the S160s. I recently wrote about the earlier USATC 2-80 on our Facebook page, "557 Restoration Company."

I did some research and found that J.W. Marsh was John William Marsh. I wrote a biography for him that is included in his Findagrave memorial at

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.c ... 11&df=all&

Great Post!