Central Oriente / Central Orozco 2-6-0 Locomotives in Cuba

Class 4 (Locobase 14838)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 64, p. 85. See also "El Jigue's" 2 July 2006 entry in the Narrations of War blog at [] . Works number was 54010 in November 1920.

Central Oriente was a new mill built in Oriente Province about 40 miles (64.4 km) west of Guantanamo. The Oriente's fourth locomotive was this relatively large standard Baldwin oil-burning plantation Mogul

An interesting view of this facility comes in El Jigue's account of a 28 December 1958 meeting of a rebel group that would contribute to the 1959 Revolucion.

"Here at Central Oriente the buildings were old, massive, brick, stone and concrete structures, out of scale with the countryside. The huge steel cane grinding machinery, no longer fed cane, was unmoving and rusting.

It was as the great house on the empty barren plain in the movie "Giant" except the scale was larger. Instead of house chimney's, the round stacks of the sugar mill boilers towered hundred of feet high.

The blades of grass dwarfed by the foundations of the house in (Giant,ö were here eight-foot stems of cane. Instead of the sparse shrubs of arid West Texas, the blessing of Cuba's rains and fertile soil had spread the grown seed of endless lush plants.

Some buildings were intact, others in semi-ruin. Great, ancient, iron machinery stood in great rooms resting in darkness. The buildings silent like ancient ruins behind breeze strung clouds of fog seem to alien to reality."

Class 5 (Locobase 14839)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Vol 64, p. 87. See also "News Letter from Our Havana Office", Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer, Vol 54, No 4 (28 July 1917), p. 56. Works number was 54052 in November 1920.

Central Orozco was located in the western end of Cuba at Bahfa Honda in Pinar del Rfo Province. In 1917, three mills -- Orozco and Bramales in Pinar del Rio and America in Orient (at the other end of the island)-- were dismantled. Its machinery was dismantled and sent to Bahia Honda to build a new mill capable of processing 140,000 bags and "a model of its class." 5 was a typical multi-fuel (coal and wood) plantation Mogul from Eddystone.

After the 1959 Revolucion and expropriation, the CO was renamed for Pablo de la Torriente Brau and the 5 was renumbered 1103.