World's Columbian Exposition 1893 2-6-0 "Mogul" Locomotives in the USA

Class Little Mogul (Locobase 16474)

Data from "Details of Locomotives at the World's Columbian Exposition - Third Article", Railroad Gazette, Volume 25 (24 November 1893), pp. 848-849 and 851. See also "Thessalon Township" on the Huron Shores website at [], last accessed 2 February 2020. (Thanks to Chris Hohl for his 13 January 2020 email and well-drafted spreadsheet, the latter noting the absence of this locomotive from Locobase and providing detailed data and source information.) Works number was 1433 in December 1892.

"Little Mogul", indeed. Porter's six-coupled freight locomotive had one of smallest boilers of any North American 2-6-0. The large cab and dome postioned just ahead of it and over the firebox gave a dated look to the engine.

Locobase doesn't have much information about its career, but Gene Connelly's Porter list shows the Little Mogul going to the Estate of Thomas Nester of Sidnaw, Mich. They owned the Thessalon Lumber Company of Thessalon, Ontario, which gave Little Mogul the # 3 to operate on a 3-mile (4.8 km) spur to the Canadian Pacific.

Thessalon had bought Dyment Lumber's mills in 1906. (Dyment, which began lumbering in 1867 had had a turbulent four decades, rebuilding after 1888 forest fires that destroyed three of their mills.) Thessalon's mill put out 165,000 board feet per day. In 1915, the Bishop Brothers bought the mill from Thessalon; the sale may have included the #3.

Bishop Brothers sold it to J J McFadden of Blind River in 1925. Three years later, on 3 June 1928, the mill burned down. By then all of the white pine in the vicinity was gone.