Tecopa 2-6-2 "Prairie" Locomotives in the USA

Class 1 (Locobase 13602)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 34, p. 274. See also David F Myrick, Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California: Volume II: The Southern Roads (Reno, Nev: University of Nevada Press, 1991 as a reprint of original published by Howell-North Books of Berkeley, Calif in 1963), p. 595-597; and J A McCulloch "Revisiting the Tecopa Railroad-Walking along the roadbed of the Tecopa Railroad", delivered 8 April 2002 at the first Nevada & Eastern California Shortline Symposium and found at [], last accessed 3 February 2015; and "Digital Desert ...Tecopa (20th Century)" at [], also last accessed 3 February 2015. (Thanks to Chris Hohl for his March 2015 emails on the two Locobase entries for the #1, his persuasive math that led to an adjustment of the engine weight, and for suggesting that one cylinder was one too few for this locomotive.) Works number was 34089 in November 1909.

Operated by the Tecopa Consolidated Mining company in a region of Nevada, the mines of the were located in the Amargosa Valley near the bottom of the southerly river course before it bends back to the west and north. McCulloch explains that the railroad was built to link Tecopa Station (named for Chief Tecopa) on the Tonopah & Tidewater to a wye that allowed turning either from the mine head at the Gunsight (named after the object carved out of the first silver taken out of this area decades earlier) or, farther up the track, the Noonday and later Columbia Mines.

The saddle-tank design in this entry was adopted because the last two miles of road that arrived at the mines acended a ruling grade of 6.6%. Myrick points out that the steep pitches limited tonnage hauling both uphill and down, the latter because of the need to avoid a runaway. These were, he notes, "...though infrequent,...not uncommon, and several men were killed at one time or another."

The mines worked steadily for sixteen years from 1912 to 1928 and yielded $3 million in silver and lead.,In that year the mines and the railroad both closed. The property was bought in 1932 by Dr Godshall, rails taken up and sold for scrap in 1938.

The 1 was taken over by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, which scrapped it at Barstow in 1946.