Swedish & Norwegian 0-8-0 Locomotives in Sweden

Class 5 (Locobase 21096)

Data from "Eight-Coupled Goods Locomotive, Swedish & Norwegian Railway", Engineer, Volume 62 (19 November 1886), pp. 402, 406. See also "A Railroad in the Arctic Circle", Railroad Gazette, Volume 19 (11 November 1887), p. 733.

According to The Engineer, this pair of eight-coupleds had "just been completed" by the Manchester builder for use on the Norwegian lines. Their order came after a process in which the S&N's engineers Messrs Wilkinson and Jarvis consulted with Sharp, Stewart and settled on some modifications to a standard SS 0-8-0. The result appears on page 408 of the same issue and shows a classic all-adhesion eight-coupled goods locomotive capable of hauling up to 2,000 tons on the level. The article added that the same builder would deliver eight more for use on the Swedish lines.

Problem for Locobase is that a Sharp, Stewart production list forwarded to him by Allen Stanley in August 2022 from his extensive Rail Data Exchange collection.show no such set of deliveries.

But there it is on p. 408: Engine #5's profle showing the first two axles turning under their overhanging springs.

RG's report on the railway confirmed the English origins of the eight-coupleds being purchased and noted that it was "1,200 miles [1,932 km] farther north than any railroad in Canada." Then RG made the dubious claim that "The winter has not, however, been found too severe by the English employes [sic] and their wives, and the snowfall is less than in some more southern latitudes, while the darkness of the long winter nights is partly compensated by the light of the Aurora." (And the living quarters had all the mod cons? Locobase wonders.)

The reaons to head so far north lay in the "enormous deposits of iron ore in the Gellivara mountains," said RG, because the Bilbao-area reserves in Spain were about tapped out. As "many steel works in the United States and Europe" had come to depend on those sources for non-phosphoric ore "suitable in steel rail making". Hydraulic machinery "capable of delivering on board ships 10,000 tons in 24 hours" took shape on the wharf in Lulea.