Escanaba & Lake Superior 2-8-0 "Consolidation" Locomotives in the USA

Class 6 (Locobase 14117)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 43, p.202. Baldwin works number was 38845 in November 1912.

This Consolidation had the same number of axles as the Ten-wheelers 11 and 12 shown in Locobase 12836. The Baldwin specs say that the "minor details" were to be the same as on engine 12 and parts should be interchangeable "where appropriate with either engine. Despite the family resemblance, the 6 was its own class of locomotive in having a bigger boiler and firebox, smaller drivers, almost 13 short tons more adhesion weight, and more cylinder volume.

It served this Copper Country railroad for more than 30 years before being retired and scrapped in March 1947.

Class 8 (Locobase 12722)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 27, p. 139. William Duchaine, "History of Escanaba & Lake Superior Railroad," originally published 27 December 1950 in the Escanaba Daily Press, archived at [], last accessed 1 February 2012, and [], which describes the ghost town that Pakesly became. Works numbers were 24783 in October 1904, 24841 in November, and 31624 in August 1907.

The E&LS was chartered on 17 November 1898 to provide a railroad alternative to the log-rafting that had characterized the movements of the I Stephenson Lumber Company. Its first section covered 7 miles from Wells out to LaFave's Hill. Over the years, according to Duchaine, "Branch lines were built by the E&LS, to get out the remote timber stands, the Ralph, Turner, Mashek, Northland, Ford River and Hendricks branches, with total trackage of more than 100 miles." Eventually the 63-mile-long spine of the E&LS connected Wells on Lake Michigan with Channing.

The most prolific year over the decades was 1912, when the cut totalled 116 million feet (21,970 statute miles/35,371 km) of timber.

Reasonably powerful Consolidations for a Michigan short line. 9 had a short career before being sold in April 1922 to the Key Valley Railway on the north shore of Ontario's Georgian Bay as their 6. The KVR linked the big lumber mill at Lost Channel over 12 miles (19.3 km) of standard gauge westbound to Pakesly, which was about 60 miles (96 km) south of Sudbury on the Canadian Pacific's north-south Bolton-Sudbury line. When the area around Lost Channel had been logged out, the mill's owner Schroeder, Mills & Timber Co. sold the Lost Channel mill to James Playfair & Co. of Midland. Playfair suffered a big blow when a 1928 fire burned down the mill and the roundhouse. Two of the locomotives were destroyed, one of which was the 6.

10 was sold in August 1922 to Von Platen Fox Lumber Company. 8 remained with the E & LS for another 7 years before being sold in August 19029 to the Soo Cadillac Lumber company.