Class W. F. Pleas (Locobase 2637)

Data from 1899 Brooks Catalogue.

Builder info from B.Rumary, 25 Kingscombe, Gurney Slade, Radstock, BA3 4TH, ENGLAND and Jeremy Lambert as supplied by Allen Stanley in March 2004.

Works #2599 in November 1895.

This engine was similar to the C&NW's Mogul except that the latter had a radial-stayed firebox with the steam dome moved forward to ahead of the second driver.

According to Timothy Sasse, chronicler of the master list of Wisconsin Logging Railroads found at

http://members.tripod.com/~sassmaster (viewed 25 July 2004), the logging railroad ran in the upper peninsula of Michigan and was owned by WF Pleas, for whom the locomotive was named. Almost simultaneously with #2's delivery, the S & S merged with the Ashland Lumber Company to form the Ashland, Siskiwit & Iron River Logging Company. This railroad was nicknamed the Peanuts Johnson road after its first general manager.

Sasse notes the badly chequered career of the AS & IR:

"The AS&IR was notorious for all the bad accidents that occured on it. It was said by the employees that it ran 3 shifts; one shift ran the trains, one was going to the hospital, and one was coming home from the hospital. Things became so bitter that one of the managers of the railroad was murdered by a former employee who had been disabled in a wreck. It is known that they ran at least one log train off the end of the unloading trestle at Nash into Lake Superior, and supposedly one of their locomotives is still at the bottom of Siskowit Lake."

Sasse then points to a leading cause for the A S & IR's high accident rate:

"[T] he AS & IR had an oddball system of car couplings. Their log cars were extremely short with a pole sticking out each end. There was a link on the end of this pole. It was a ticklish process to link the cars together while they were moving. All cars had hand brakes and the locomotives only steam jam brakes."

For economic reasons, the line was shut down in 1903 and pulled up. Much of the residue wound up with the Washburn & Northwestern, which folded in June 1905 and passed along the dregs to the White River Railroad. The White River suffered several major fires, including one in 1912 that destroyed the enginehouse and 5 of its 8 locomotives. In that same year one of the two big sawmills (Cusson) burned down. The other major mill (Iron River) went up in flames two years later and the road closed.

Whether our little Mogul was a witness to any of this is anyone's guess.