Denver, South Park & Pacific 2-8-6 Locomotives in the USA

Class E J 1 (Locobase 3269)

Data from 17 November 2018 email from Chris Hohl and Ross Crain, "Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad DSP&P Mason Bogie 2-8-6T Locomotives" at Crain's Denver, South Park & Pacific Railroad Pages ( []), last accessed 7 December 2018, as well as his "DSP&P LOCOMOTIVE SPECIFICATIONS -- 1885 Extracts from James Ehernberger's "Union Pacific Equipment List - 1885" at [], last accessed 21 November 2020. Works numbers were 623-624 in June 1880, 628 in August, and 632 in October.

Similar in design to the Mexican Central's Mason-Fairlie, the Alpine, together with the Rico, Roaring Fork, and Denver served this narrow-gauge line for years. Locobase followed Chris Hohl's trail to Ross Crain's rich DSP&P website, where he found two apparently contemporary sources that disagreed on grate area. The two-page Mason ads include boiler diameter and grate area specs among other data; the 1885 table of locomotives show different figures for both boiler diameter and grate area. Mason's ad claimed 22 sq ft (2.04 sq m) for the grate area and a 45" (1,143 mm) boiler diameter. The 1885 gave firebox length and width, which implies a maximum grate area of 15.4 sq ft. For similar reasons, Locobase adopted Hohl's preference for the 1885 data because it was an operator's measurements within a listing that include precise measurements in several other areas.

Later the four were split up to run on the Burlington (CB&Q) or the Union Pacific. In June 1889, they were all sold to the Denver, Leadville & Gunnison and renumbered. But they didn't last long. 242-243 were scrapped by 1891 and 240-241 were off the roster by 1894.