Santa Maria Valley 2-8-2 "Mikado" Locomotives in the USA

Class 5/21 (Locobase 16638)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 76, pp. 413-415. See also ""Baldwin 21" on the Astoria Railroad Preservation Association website at [], last accessed 8 June 2023; and "History" on the Santa Maria Valley Railroad website at [], also last accessed 8 June 2023. (Many thanks to Joe Skorch for his 1 June 2023 email asking about the 21's fuel and tender. Locobase discovered he had not created an entry for the engine.) Works number was 58368 in April 1925.

SMVRR began in 1911 as a oil road bringing oil and asphalt from Roadamite to Guadalupe and later included switching operations at a Union Sugar plant. The latter's closing in the 1920s led to financial troubles.

ARPA's history describes the central role played by its owner Captain G Allen Hancock, who contributed financially to the SMV's 1925 emergence from bankruptcy and materially improved the 35-mile (58 km) line that "pulled loads of sugar beets, vegetables and petroleum products." This oil-burning Mikado, bought new as one of the Captain's first investments, was well-suited to the SMV's branch-line service, which ran on 70 lb/yard (35-kg/metre) rail (except for 4 miles of 50 lb/yard-25 kg/metre track) .

Baldwin's spec referred to its "Photo 8172" as the design "general" design basis, "except to omit auxiliary dome, and to have Laird type crosshead, cross-compound air pump, and tender for oil." It ws unadorned with arch tubes or a superheaters, but sported 10" (254 mm) piston valves. The 5 (later 21) used a Van Boden -Ingles burner manufactured by San Francisco's E Sullivan company to burn oil with gravity of "12 and 14 to 18 degrees." . Its "long and low" tender profile provided "clear vision when running back yards.

The SMV's close relationship with the Southern Pacific is apparent in the number of appliances and other parts to be "similar" to an Espee correlate.

Captain Hancock was known to have had "a passion for putting himself at the throttle," and over the next 37 years, reports ARPA's history, "[t]he 81-ton locomotive became a favorite on the railroad for both its domineering presence on the track and its famous engineer. "

Retired in 1962 after a last run with Captain Hancock at the throttle and Walt Disney in the cab, 21 lay idle until 1966 when a Washington State preservation group bought the engine, had it dismantled, and trucked it to Snoqualmie. Restoration plans failed to bear fruit and the 21's parts lay unassembled until ARPA bought them in 1991 for $27,000.

Restoration by ARPA volunteers has taken more than 30 years as the association sought to bring it back to its 1925 configuration. By 2022, much of the locomotive had been salvaged or fitted with new parts, but work remained to do..