ARTICULATEDS
The super-sized steam locomotives of the 20th century. The locomotives, that, depending on their design, wrested tonnage out of and across mountains or sprinted across flatter territory. Most of us think of them as drag freight engines on coal trains in the Appalachians, and for the longest time, they were. Just about every Appalachian coal hauler had a 2-8-8-2 or bigger. But then ingenious engineering types figured out that the big guys could move, too, if they were only made for it. Thus, we got Seaboard Air Line’s famous 2500-series 2-6-6-4s, Norfolk & Western’s Class A 2-6-6-4s, and Union Pacific’s Challengers. Some were powerful enough and fast enough to handle named passenger trains. They were enormous, and from an aesthetics standpoint treated like big, ugly brutes. Well, they were big. And often they were brutish. I mean, when was the last time you saw a photo of a streamlined articulated?
And this leads us to today and what will be one of the top two restored mainline locomotives of 2022, Western Maryland Scenic Railroad’s former Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 No. 1309, or as I like to call the engine, the Beast of the East. When I say top, I mean landmark, of major significance. (The other steam locomotive restoration of the year, I’d opine, is Reading T-1 No. 2102 but more on that another time.) That’s easy with No. 1309. After all, this was Baldwin’s last steam locomotive built for the U.S. This was Baldwin, the company in that cradle of American liberty, Philadelphia. The company that built locomotives for 140 years, and in 1949 the company closing the curtain on manufacturing steam power after thousands of locomotives. Yes, that Baldwin, one of the big three builders, wrapping up its efforts and dispatching this last locomotive into the world.
But that’s not all. No. 1309 is the world’s largest operating Mallet. It uses its steam twice, unlike Union Pacific Big Boy
No. 4014, a simple articulated. Out West are Baldwin tank Mallets built for logging, in use on tourist railroads Black Hills Central in South Dakota and Niles Canyon in California. Black Hills features former Rayonier twins Nos. 108 and 110, and Niles features Clover Valley No. 4 and Mallet forerunner and tender engine, the famous 2-4-4-2 No. 7, Skookum. But they’re only a fraction of the size, length, and pulling power of No. 1309.
At this point we should stop and reflect that it is a miracle that No. 1309 is with us, much less pulling trains across a mainline railroad. We’re fortunate that the locomotive made the leap from Class I railroad to preserved and operational. No. 1309 and her nine sisters didn’t run all that long. It was dead and drained in the heart of West Virginia coal gathering country by 1956.
And from the wear that the restoration crew found, we know it lived a hard life with little maintenance or repairs. The C&O that bought the engine because it couldn’t get enough diesels to move its tonnage was the same C&O that knew it would be a short timer. We have a few photos that show it in service, mostly doubleheading, on coal drags. But by all accounts, it was lots of miles taken out and few put back in. The engines in the mid-to-late1950s would have made fine scrap to be put toward the next batch of SD18s. Nos. 1300-1307 met that fate. No. 1308 found a place of honor on display at the hallowed shop town of Huntington, W.Va., and No. 1309 ultimately found a home at the B&O Railroad Museum.
By several measures, No. 1309 is a beast. As a simple articulated locomotive (it can do that if called upon manually), the engine exerts 58,300 pounds of tractive effort. But let it be itself, an articulated Mallet, and its pulling power zooms right up to 77,500 pounds. That’s pretty good, given that engine and tender come in at 321 tons. Big Boy, at 600 tons, produces a massive 135,000 pounds of tractive effort. So, No. 1309 may be small, but it is indeed mighty. And, yes — let’s get this out of the way now
— it is a brute to the eyes. The small smokebox door. The twin cross-compound air pumps mounted on the smokebox front. The high-pressure cylinders, the low-pressure cylinders, the piping. All 98 feet, 81/4 inches of it reflects the C&O look and want for weight distribution and tight clearances. But it is the genuine article. And it retains the look and feel it was made with.
No. 1309’s rebirth is befitting of a Perils of Pauline tale. The engine was found to be in much poorer condition than originally believed. The sheer enormity of the engine was a task. It is basically the equivalent of restoring two engines under one massive boiler. The $700,000 project quickly mushroomed to almost five times that figure. Unique parts went missing and were later found to be stolen. Replacements were hard to come by and not cheap. Funding was an issue. Trains readers, through these pages and online, responded to our appeal to keep the project moving to the tune of almost $300,000. The John Emery Trust came forward with $50,000 at a critical point. The restoration crew — I cannot say enough about them — stuck with this project. They recognized the worth and potential of this beast. They made the impossible possible. And by the end of 2020, the engine moved again under its own power for the first time in 64 years. A few test runs for New Year’s and then it was back to the shop.
The year 2021 was a rebuilding year for Western Maryland Scenic. The railroad did not run in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its track needed work, and it was struggling for money. The year of 2021 was the turning point. Trains started running. The track got repairs. Money came in. No. 1309 took a backseat to getting the railroad back in operation, but it slowly began to get the thousands of final adjustments it needed to be roadworthy. By December 2021, it was fit to pull Polar Express trains. And now, it’s ready for its stage.
In 2022, Western Maryland Scenic will run No. 1309 from May through October on regularly scheduled trains. It will be an articulated for all seasons. It will be a major steam locomotive that’s able to show what it can do on a mainline railroad and not creeping down a weed-choked branch with the throttle barely open. It will be on the kind of railroad that you and I would choose for it: Leaving from a classic steamera station, plunging into a scenic gorge where it parallels another line (Western Maryland’s old nemesis, CSX’s former B&O), crossing bridges, and sweeping around world-famous Helmstetter’s Curve, before plunging into Brush Tunnel and then twisting and climbing its way to Frostburg, Md. No branch line would do for this beast. This is a match of a locomotive and a main line. No. 1309, your time has come.