Silver Falls Timber Company 2-6-2 "Prairie" Locomotives in the USA

Class 103 (Locobase 15236)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Vol 71, pp. 384+ and Vol 80, pp. 134+. Works numbers were 55482 in June 1922 and 59137 in April 1926.

These oil-burning Prairie saddle tanks followed the first two Baldwin Mikados into service on the SFTC's 60 lb/yard (30 kg/metre) rail. They were smaller and followed a superheated design that had been sold to several other northwest logging companies. Their relatively generously scaled 9 1/2 in (241 mm) piston valves supplied steam to the cylinders.

After the SFTC closed in 1938, the 103 and 104 were sold to the brutally named Alaska Junk Company. Sometime in the 1940s, the Peninsula Terminal Railroad bought the engines and operated them for two more decades. When the PTR was done with them in the mid-1960s, it sold both to the Black Hills Central tourist road in May 1965 and July 1967, respectively. 103 was later stored as non-operational while the 104 remains in service.