Standard Fruit & Steamship 2-6-2 Locomotives in Nicaragua

Class 8 (Locobase 15363)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Vol 78, pp. 136+. See also Richard P Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 354-355 Works numbers were 59377, 59394-59395 in August 1926.

Plantation Prairies that used a design also found on logging roads, these were mid-sized locomotives for that service. And indeed these engines were bought for SF&S's Bragmans Bluff Lumber Company as the latter's 8-10. Tucker notes that the BBLC was organized in 1923 when the Varraro brothers bought an existing 80,000 acre pine concession on the Miskito Coast.

The three 2-6-2s would make up part of a stud that served 100 miles (161 km) of private railroads that supported both timber and banana harvesting. The line had 2% grades and 30 degree curves (radii of 191 feet/58.2 metres).

Later they operated on Nicaragua's FC del Pacifico as 12, 11, and 14, respectively.