Fosburgh Lumber 2-6-2 "Prairie" Locomotives in the USA

Class 12 (Locobase 14285)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 52, p. 303.. Works number was 41646 in August 1914.

This North Carolina lumber company was established in 1902 by Edgar C Fosburgh, who was at the time a principal in the Norfolk-based Cummer Company. Cummer decided to cut loose its North Carolina holdings and Fosburgh was able to buy them. The company substantial holdings of pine and a manufacturing plant in Berkeley, Va (on the opposite bank of the Elizabeth River from Norfolk) that employed a double band saw mill as well as planing mills and dry kilns.

Fosburgh successfully applied for "limited common-carrier" status in 1917 from the North Carolina Corporation Commission. The NCCC summarized the Fosburgh petition and agreed that the lumber company's Hollister-Vaughan logging road did NOT have " locomotives nor rolling stock adequate and sufficient for transporting sawed logs, and that the same cannot be acquired by the said Fosburgh Lumber Company without an expenditure and outlay of such a sum as would entail an unnecessary hardship upon the said Fosburgh Lumber Company, and that the said Fosburgh Lumber Company in its petition, has asked permission as provided to transport all commodities other than its own, except sawed logs."

Locobase admits to confusion as to why the Commission "authorized [Fosburgh] to transport over and upon its said logging road all kinds of commodities other than its own, except sawed logs, and to charge therefor reasonable rates, which rates are named in the said petition of the Fosburgh Lumber Company and shown by schedule furnished and attached to said application, and such rates are hereby approved."

The Commission was probably considering the 12 among other FLC engines in its opinion, as it was passed along to Hollister in that year. It was a typical logging Prairie. The specs made particular mention of the need for the springs to be "extra heavy" with "plenty" of play in the spring hangers and equalizers, and case hardened bushings and pins.

In 1920, FLC sold its assets to two officials of the Montgomery Lumber Company and shuttered its Norfolk office. In 1925, HLC sold the 12 to locomotive rebuilder/reseller Birmingham Rail & Locomotive, which found a buyer in Allison, Alabama's Ingham Hutchison Lumber in 1927 as their 6. IHL sold the 6 to another locomotive rabuilder/reseller, Southern Iron & Equipment, in 1933. SI&E apparently did not find another buyer because the next item in the record is the engine's scrapping date of 30 June 1947.