Red River & Gulf 4-6-0 "Ten-Wheeler" Locomotives in the USA

Class 102 (Locobase 14300)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 53, p. 336+. (Thanks to Everett Lueck, railroad operations director of the Southern Forest Heritage Museum in Long Leaf, LA, whose 15 February 2015 email to Wes Barris and Locobase corrected the original comments. Thanks also to Chris Hohl for his 4 August 2015 email noting the tender's fuel capacity.) Works number was 42206 in July 1915.

This wood-burning freight Ten-wheeler expressed 19th-century railroading in all its simplicity, even though it was built in 1915 and cost $11,200 Federal Reserve dollars. It had the classic Radley & Hunter spark-arresting stack, tender holding 3 1/2 cords of wood, saturated boiler and slide valves, and "extra heavy" frames and springing to put up with the rough road laid with 45 and 60 lb/yard (22.5 kg and 30 kg/metre) rail. According to Leuck, during its time on the RR&G, the 102 was converted to oil-burning in June 1924.

Leuck states that the 102 was never relettered for the RR&G's owner, Crowell & Spencer Lumber Company. Nor was it renumbered 4 by the RR&G.

Some time later the 4 went to locomotive rebuilder/reseller Birmingham Rail & Locomotive, which found a buyer in August 1929 in the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific of Roscoe, Texas.

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Class 103 (Locobase 14299)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 62, p. 88+. (Thanks to Everett Lueck, railroad operations director of the Southern Forest Heritage Museum in Long Leaf, LA, whose 15 February 2015 email to Wes Barris and Locobase corrected the original comments. Thanks also to Chris Hohl for his 4 August 2015 email noting the tender's fuel capacity and correcting the tender's loaded weight.) Works number was 50943 in December 1918.

By the time the RR&G returned to Baldwin for a wood-burning Ten-wheeler to supplement the 102 bought in 1915 (Locobase 14300), World War One had ended in an armistice and requirements had changed enough to warrant paying extra for a superheater beyond the wartime inflation for a total cost jump of 172% to $30,500.

Most dimensions were slightly enlarged as well, it sported the recently adopted Rushton Improved cabbage stack, and it now used 9 1/2" (141 mm) piston valves for distribution, but the essential freight Ten-wheeler remained intact. And the tender held the traditional 3 1/2 cords of wood.

Everett Leuck notes that the 103 underwent one of the RR&G's earliest conversions to oil-burning in June 1923. He adds that Frost Lumber Company leased the 103 sometime after 1928 for a year, but returned it damaged.

Apparently it was repaired and re-entered RR&G service, but changing conditions led to the 103's retirement in January 1931, storage at Long Leaf, and sale in November 1937 to the Arkansas & Louisiana Missouri Railway of Monroe, La. The A&LM operated the 103 though World War II before storing it in April 1950. Sold to Pan-American Engineering of Dallas, Tex in November of the same year, the 103 ended its days working for the Mexican Government's Department of Communications.

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Class 105 (Locobase 14302)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 71, p. 147+. (Thanks to Everett Elueck, railroad operations director of the Southern Forest Heritage Museum in Long Leaf, LA, whose 15 February 2015 email to Wes Barris and Locobase corrected the original comments.) Works number was 55912 in December 1922.

A couple of years after it introduced superheated boilers to its motive power roster, the RR&G bought this saturated-boiler, slide-valve Ten-wheeler. Locobase notes that it was the first oil burner on the RR&G and wonders if the fuel change prompted the boiler design reversion in hopes of saving maintenance. Or it may simply reflect a hunt for a bargain - this engine cost $25,430, more than $5,000 less than the 103 of a few years earlier.

Everett Leuck comments on this retrograde engine: "It was both an advance and a retreat. 105 was built in 1922 and had Laird crosseheads instead of alligator, a cross compound air pump and was the first Crowell oil burning engine (all advances). It also was a saturated engine with Baldwin balanced slide valves. That was a step backward. Since it used the same boiler as the previous two 4-6-0s, the lack of superheat defies explanation to this date."

Its operational history bears out its lack of suitability, says Leuck: "105 was was used sparingly in general and apparently very little on the longer Kurthwood run, being restricted to the 12 mile [19.3 km] run to Lecompte and the 12 mile run to Meridian for its career. With the Kurthwood line's abandonment in 1945, it was sold for scrap."

In any case, the 106 that would follow in a few months (Locobase 14301) was superheated.

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Class 106 (Locobase 14301)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 71, p. 149+. (Thanks to Everett Elueck, railroad operations director of the Southern Forest Heritage Museum in Long Leaf, LA, whose 15 February 2015 email to Wes Barris and Locobase corrected the original comments.) Works number was 57203 in September 1923.

Priced at $28,500, the 106 was a duplicate of Crowell & Spencer Lumber's 400 and 300 (described in Locobase 14299), the RR&G's owner, but delivered as an oil burner with a firebox lined in fire brick and containing no grate at all. At the same time, the specfications included the requirement (apparently never exercised) for the locomotive to be "easily converted to burn coal at a later date." As with most Baldwin logging engines, the specs also insisted that the frames, equalizing beams, springs, and spring hangers be "extra heavy" for "hard" and "rough" service.

The 106 operated all of its career on Crowell & Spencer business. Everett Leuck says of its place in the RR&G annals: "In the end, it became the last RR&G engine in service,

pulling the last train on the RR&G on March 31, 1953. It was stored serviceable for a number of years at Long Leaf, finally being put in the car shop [of the Southern Forest Heritage Museum & Research Center] where it still sits today."