Laurel & Tullahoma Western 2-4-0 "Porter" Locomotives in the USA

Class 61 (Locobase 12731)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Vol 27, p. 164. See the essay "SouthBear's History of Laurel, Mississippi - Chapter 3:Industrialization and the Founding of the City of Laurel, archived on [] . Works number was 24904 in December 1904.

Use of a Six-wheeler arrangement in North America usually indicated a logging setting and Eastman Gardiner's timber holdings in southeastern Mississippi certainly had use for a short-coupled wood-burner on its L & TW line. Silas Gardiner, his son George Gardiner, and George's cousin Charles Eastman were northern lumbermen from Clinton Iowa who chanced to hear of the virgin pine in Jones County while riding on a train and soon negotiated the sale of 16,000 acres for $4/acre. Laurel, Mississippi, already named but not built, soon grew in response and became known as a Southern city built with Yankee money.

Their railroad covered the 35 miles from Laurel to Raleigh, Miss.