Bikaner State 4-6-2 Locomotives in India

Class 58 (Locobase 4427)

Data from [], last accessed 21 July 2007. See also DeGolyer, Volume 82, pp. 370+. See also F T Slayton, "Baldwin Locomotives of Modern Types in Service in India", Baldwin Magazine, Volume 4, No. 1 (July 1925), p. 56. Works numbers were 58357-58360 in April 1925.

Headquartered in the "Camel City of Rajasthan" -- a region in the Punjab in Northwest India -- this railway purchased this quartet of express Pacifics the year after the Jodhpur Bikaner combine split into the Jodhpur State Railway and the Bikaner State Railway.

The design used the boiler and firebox of the 2-8-2s that arrived in 1924 (Locobase 14379). Power dimensions changed with the extension of the stroke by two inches (50.8 mm) and taller drivers for higher speeds. Eight-inch (203 mm) piston valves admitted steam. Arch tubes contributed 15 sq ft (1.4 sq m) to direct heating surface.

They were trim engines with high-pitched boiler, a clean shell, outside bearings on the trailing truck and tender trucks. The line over which they operated had maximum grades of 7% and relatively tight minimum curve radii of 350 feet (106.7 metres) or 16 1/2 degrees.

Baldwin's Slayton reported that the Pacific layout addressed the lighter demands of the canal surfacing while hauling mixed-traffic trains afterward.