Seboomook Lake & St John 2-6-2 "Prairie" Locomotives in the USA

Class 3 (Locobase 15235)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 71, pp. 366+. See also Robert E Pike, Tall Trees, Tough Men (New York, W W Norton, 1967, paperback 1984, reissued 1999) pp. 163-164. Works number was 56606 in May 1923.

A typical Baldwin logging Mikado, this engine used a saturated boiler, the practically universal 44" drivers, and slide valves. Great Northern Paper Company took eight years (1919-1927) to build this 18 mile (29 km) railroad from the headwaters of the St John River in Maine as a way to move pulpwood down river. Pike comments that there must have been "some question from the beginning about the feasibility of this whole project."

History bears out such skepticism: "Not one stick of pulpwood and not a single log was ever hauled over it, and by 1929, those opposed had won out and the rails were taken up." Trucks over gravel road were by then much more useful.

The 3 was quickly sold to Wisconsin Michigan Lumber which then sold it to Rib Lake Lumber northwest of Wausau, one of the biggest loggers in Wisconsin.