Hedlund Box & Lumber Company 2-6-2 "Prairie" Locomotives in the USA

Class 1 (Locobase 15219)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 71, pp. 260+. See also the Clark Kinsey photograph and text at the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division photographic archive entry at []. Works number was 57014 in September 1923.

The 7 was a typical small saddle-tank logging Prairie with the less common feature of superheating. Its large cylinder volume put a high demand on steam-making using either coal or wood and the hotter steam required 9 1/2" (241 mm) piston valves. Grades could reach 7% and curves tightened to 40 degrees. The 1 was required in the specs to take four cars each weighing 16 tons up that 7% grade at 10 mph (16 kmh).

A "Hereafter" note dated 23 November 1923 advises:"Raise question regarding design of rear engine truck and clearances from equal[izing] beam. Also raise question regarding application of brakes to the rear engine truck."

Hedlund Box , an active timber harvester and mill, had only recently taken delivery of the 1 when it secured an agreement with the Department of the Interior to log the Colville Indian Reservation in 1924. The total bid for rights to extract 240 million feet of Western White Pine and 113 million feet of fir came to $749,000 and covered 121,000 acres. "Twenty years from now", said an optimistic report "Hedlund Concern Gets Timber Cut" in the Spokane Chronicle of 26 January 1924, " the Hedlund Box and Lumber Company will still be cutting timber."

HB&LC soon sold the 1 to Lyon Hill & Company, which soon sold out to the Port Angeles Western. Before 1926, the PAW sold the 1 to the Lorenz Lumber Company of Klamath Falls, Ore, which soon sold out to Crater Lake Lumber. Unusually, the engine kept its original road number throughout this flurry of ownership changes.