Union Railroad’s 0-10-2: Largest switch engine
In the steam era, switch engines came in basically three sizes: 0-4-0, 0-6-0, and 0-8-0. They ranged from diminutive shop switchers — typically 0-4-0s, pretty much a pre-1900 machine — to huge switchers such as Indiana Harbor Belt’s three U-4a class 0-80s of 1927, three-cylinder behemoths that weighed 364,000 pounds and could muster up to 74,400 pounds of tractive force, plus another 12,000 pounds with the booster cut in.
But that wasn’t the biggest. In fact, the largest North American steam switcher didn’t even share a standard wheel arrangement, such was the requirements of its owner. The biggest was the Union Railroad’s unique 0-10-2, dubbed the “Union” type, weighing in at 644,510 pounds and delivering 90,000 pounds of tractive force, with another 17,150 pounds available from its booster. All that theoretically added up to 3,600 hp.
The Union Railroad is relatively unknown outside the Pittsburgh region. It’s one of several lines formerly owned by U.S. Steel and heavily oriented toward industrial and ore-delivery operations, operating on about 200 miles of yard track and 65 miles of main line serving industrial customers within a 10-mile radius in Allegheny County. Today the company is owned by Transtar Inc.; U.S. Steel divested itself of the Union in 1988.
The nine Union 0-10-2s — all built between 1936 and 1939 and numbered in the 300 class — truly were monsters. Like all U.S. Steel steam locomotives, they were constructed in Pennsylvania at Baldwin’s Eddystone plant in suburban Philadelphia. The machine met a very specific need: obviate pushers used at two locations where grades reached 2.5%. A five-coupled engine was determined to be the answer, augmented by that extended two-wheel trailing truck supporting a large firebox.
The 0-10-2 was surprisingly compact, despite its claim as biggest steam switcher. Its huge boiler, measuring just 70 feet in length, was abbreviated on account of turntable length and other restrictions, and accomplished in part by dispensing with the engine truck and making the tender a rather short but tall affair. Its ungainly appearance was mollified to some extent by boiler jacketing extending to the end of the smokebox.
The 0-10-2s put in nearly a solid decade of faithful service before the Union was obligated to join the movement toward dieselization in Pittsburgh, borne of the smokechoked city’s push for cleaner air.
Still way too useful to scrap, the nine Unions in 1949 were transferred to another U.S. Steel road, the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range at Proctor, Minn., where they went to work on the for another decade, renumbered as 600-class engines.
Although most of the Union engines were scrapped after DM&IR service, the 304/604 was saved and stored for several years in the Bessemer & Lake Erie roundhouse in Greenville, Pa. It reposed next to B&LE 2-10-4 No. 643, now in the collection of the Age of Steam Roundhouse in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
The 0-10-2 finally found a permanent home when it was donated to the city of Greenville in 1985. Today it rests comfortably in the Greenville Railroad Park & Museum, where it is displayed with an ore jenny and a caboose, along with other paraphernalia on the grounds. There — back in U.S. Steel country where it belongs — it retains its crown as the biggest steam switcher.
Two historic New York Central electric locomotives are finally safe after a 4½-hour ballet to lift and shift them 200 feet on a Hudson River island on which they were stranded, dodging a torrent of heavy truck traffic.
The Danbury (Conn.) Railway Museum announced Dec. 29, 2022, that Phase 1 of the rescue plan is complete. The units are now staged for disassembly and trucking 120 miles to the museum site. Completion of a suitable permanent exit road from Beacon Island near Albany is expected to delay that move — Phase 2 of the project, estimated to cost $125,000 — for at least three months.
The operation, carried out by veteran railroad contractor Hulcher Services Inc. of New Oxford, Pa., took place the evening of Dec. 19, according to Stan Madyda, museum project manager.
“It’s been a long road this past two years in what we’ve been doing, trying to get these out, the obstacles that kept popping up,” he said. Added museum President Jose Alves: “This is really a pivotal moment, and the point of no return.”
The electrics, plus two diesel units and four passenger cars, stood in the way of plans to build a $350 million plant to manufacture offshore wind-turbine towers [see “Museum works to save two rare New York Central electric locomotives,” Trains News Wire, March 18, 2022]. All were stranded on a land mass, no longer a separate island, because rail access had been cut by a bridge washout. Ground conditions were too swampy to permit trucking.
The diesels — an NYC Alco RS3 and an NYC General Electric U25B — and passenger cars could not be economically saved, and were scrapped in late November and early December. Without a rescue plan, the electrics would have met the same fate.
The units are NYC Class S-1 (2-D-2 configuration) No. 100, built in 1904, and Class T-3a (B-B+B-B configuration) No. 278, built in 1926. Built by a consortium of American Locomotive Co. of Schenectady, N.Y., and General Electric Co., they are among the last of their kind.
No. 100, built as No. 6000, is especially historic, with the museum calling it “the world’s first mainline electric locomotive.” It was the prototype of a 47-unit fleet that made possible NYC’s 600-volt DC third-rail electrification, including the opening of the 1913 Grand Central Terminal complex. That project was prompted by passage of laws that mandated electrification after smoky conditions from steam locomotives caused a Jan. 8, 1902, collision in NYC’s Park Avenue Tunnel.
The other electric, No. 278, is the sole survivor of a 36-unit fleet in a second generation of locomotives used on NYC commuter and freight lines around New York City.
After the diesels and passenger cars were scrapped and rails immediately removed, the coupled electrics sat on an isolated stretch of track with perhaps 6 feet remaining at either end. The electrics were still standing on the footprint of a planned building. —