Crowell & Spencer Lumber Company 4-6-0 "Ten-Wheeler" Locomotives in the USA

Class 400 (Locobase 14297)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 62, pp. 319+ (400) and 323+ (300). (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.) Works numbers were 51175 in January 1919 and 53104 in April 1920.

The 400 was an enlargement of the 103 (Locobase 14299), which had operated on Crowell & Spencer's Red River & Gulf since the beginning of the year. The Baldwin specifications included the traditional Radley & Hunter spark-arresting stack. Everett Leuck reports that the 400 was delivered with a Rushton Improved cabbage stack. Both statements are probably correct as the 400 was ordered on 24 October 1917, about a year before the Rushton stack design entered production. It's likely that because the 400 didn't enter production until January 1919, Baldwin substituted the newer design for the now-outdated R&H.

Their superheated boilers generated hotter steam than slide valves could handle comfortably, so both engines were fitted with 9 1/2" (241 mm) piston valves. Both had "extra heavy" frames and springs for the rough service they were destined to perform for several decades.

Leuck notes a key operational fact about all 4-6-0s, including the 400: " It was never intended as a woods engine (none of the 4-6-0's were ever used in the woods). It was designed to haul a 20 car log train from the logging camp at Hutton (see #200) to the mill at Long Leaf which was a 40 mile (64.4 km) road haul over the Red River and Gulf RR proper."

The 400 was soon converted to coal burning. 300 was delivered as a coal burner with a straight stack and two 9.5" air pumps instead of the 400's one, says Leuck. Both engines were converted to oil burning in 1923.

The two Ten-wheelers followed the timber. 400 would been on the books of C&SL's Crowell Lumber Industries when it was retired in 1955; it was reported derelict at Long Leaf, La in 1992. Leuck says that the 300 "retired at the end of WW-2 when the Hutton camp closed. It was sold for scrap in 1955."