0-6-0 "Switcher" Steam Locomotives in the USA

Class 1 (Locobase 15040)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 29, p. 168. (Thanks to Chris Hohl for his October 2020 email supplying the wheelbases and for finding coal capacity in the cab's description.) Works number was 29021 in September 1906.

Saddle-tank switcher for the big Chicago-area power and light company. Baldwin's specs include the rarely seen requirement that no tube could be within 4" (102 mm) of the belly of the boiler. The 1's large grate burned low-grade coal; its drop-grate design featured "long interlocking fingers", probably to ensure every shovelful burned as completely as possible. Believing that the auto coupler would bind on some of the utility's tight curves, CE's shops fastened a 12" (305 mm) bumper block to the back of the engine's back bumper and attached the auto coupler to that.

Class 2 (Locobase 15041)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 35, p. 294. (Thanks to Chris Hohl for his October 2020 email correcting Commonwealth "Electric" to "Edison". and for finding coal capacity in the cab's description.) Works number was 34747 in June 1910.

More powerful and 21 short tons heavier than the #1 of 1906 (Locobase 15040), this saddle-tank was not much longer. The boiler was fatter, but the tubes had the same length as the earlier engine.

Class 4 (Locobase 15042)

Data from DeGolyer, Vol 35, p. 294, Vol 73, pp. 27+. Works numbers were 40112 in July 1913, 55626 in September 1922, and 56723 in July 1923.

The next Baldwin to come to ComEd after the saddle tank of 1910 was this much bigger, but not much longer engine. Water storage now demanded a separate tender and the boiler, while quite a bit larger in diameter, still contained short boiler tubes.

It was an arrangement that worked, one supposes, because the 5 emerged from the same specifications nine years later followed by the 6 ten months after that.