CUCI de Panama 2-6-0 Locomotives in France

Class 59 (Locobase 6223)

Data from [] (10 July 2004).

This sextet had a rich working life and at least one of the locomotives enjoyed a long afterlife. The batch were shipped over to Panama in 1889 as part of the French attempt to dig a canal under Ferdinand de Lesseps. But, as the CFBS site points out, "...le chantier est tres dur. La nature du terrain, mais surtout le climat vont rendre difficile le chantier, aussi la soicete fait faillite en 1891."

After that failure, the locomotives were sold to a Spanish company exploiting Puerto Rico. The US occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898 meant only new owners for the locomotives for years to come. In 1929, however, Henry Ford's Museum in Dearborn bought one of the Mogul tanks (original works number 2296), which became the only non-American-made machine in the collection.

48 years later the locomotive was sold as part of a purification of the museum's holding and put on display in Traverse City, MI. There it languished until 1994 when the Chemin de Fer Baie Somme association bought the last Cail and had it trucked to Baltimore, then shipped to Le Havre and finally trucked to Saint Valery-sur-Somme. Restoration didn't begin until 2001. Its first run -- after 74 years of inactivity, the site notes -- came on 17 April 2003.