Jeffersonville, Madison & Indianapolis 0-10-0 Locomotives in the USA

Class Reuben Wells (Locobase 4377)

Data from "Railway Incline at Madison, US", Engineering, Volume 7, No 5 (29 January 1869), pp. 71-72; and "The Locomotive 'Reuben Wells'", Engineering, Volume 7, No 6 (12 February 1869), pp. 106-107, illustration on p. 108..

Kinert and Comstock both say it began service as an 0-8-0T and had an axle added later. (White doesn't comment.) Yet Engineering's 1869 illustration clearly shows the 0-10-0T layout. The locomotive displayed in 1949 at the Chicago Railroad Fair was obviously an 0-10-0T with two long cylindrical water tanks flanking the boiler and coal bunker.

The San Diego Railroad Museum website ([]) says that Reuben Wells executed this eponymous engine in July 1868 as an 0-10-0T. Engineering's minutely detailed set of reports in the two issues summarized its impression that "the engine has been found to be well adapated for its work, and has fully realized the expectations of its designer."

The Reuben Wells had displayed no slipping in rain or shine. The three axles in front of the firebox were equalized as were the two behind it. The two drivers on the last axle were equalized through a transverse spring.

"After having been in service for a number of years," the SDRM's FAQ continues,"it was rebuilt with four instead of five pair of drivers and was shortened by the cutting off of a section at the rear which had been used for coal and water. Sufficient water capacity was provided by placing a tank over the boiler."

The JM&I later was absorbed by the Pennsylvania System.