Carson & Colorado / Cheraw & Chester 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA

Class Belleville (Locobase 14251)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 10, p. 117. Works numbers were 6089-6090 in March 1882 and 6687, 6689 in May 1883.

This second quartet of wood-burning Eight-wheelers were identical to the 1880 locomotives shown in Locobase 14250 except for having 3" taller drivers. The second 1882 engine was Hawthorne #6. The two 1883 engines were named Benton (7) and Darwin (8).

After almost 25 years, the C&C was reorganized in May 1905 as the Nevada-California. 6 was scrapped very soon afterward in July 1907. The 5 and 8 were sold in July 1909 to the Southern Pacific, which ran them both for years with a new boiler (Locobase 8755), although Locobase can only say that 5 was scrapped in January 1932. 7-8 lasted the longest on the N-C, being rebuilt in 1923 and scrapped in January 1932.

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Class Candaleria (Locobase 14250)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Vol 10, p. 117. See also the Carson & Colorado website at [], last accessed 28 June 2012, the Dayton, Nevada history of the line archived at []., and the Rails West account at [] . Works numbers were 5285 in September 1880, 5428 and 5430 in December, and 5782 in June 1881.

Named for the grand idea of connecting the Carson River with the Colorado River 600 miles distant. the C&C fell short and never quite realized the potential its backers had envisioned. When Fanny G. Hazlett and Gertrude Hazlett Randall drafted their 1921 (Historical Sketch and Reminiscences of Dayton, Nevada.ö, they described the C&C as the railroad that "began nowhere, went nowhere, ran 300 miles through the desert to get there, and was built a hundred years too soon.ö The various histories available to Locobase on the web suggest that this was an accurate summation, even granting that the actual built distance was 293 miles (471 km) and that the road did enjoy some profitable years. Locobase suggests referring to the sites in the first paragraph for the full story of this railroad.

These wood-burning Eight-wheelers amounted to freight power on the narrow-gauge C&C and according to the Dayton account, the C & C's then-president, former state-legislature lobbyist Henry Yerington, preferred Baldwins for his motive power because, as he put it, (For dead hard work and ease of maintenance, I would rather pay $12,000 for a Baldwin than $9,000 for a locomotive from another maker.ö

The second engine was named Colorado and given #3, Bodie (#2) had the higher works number of the two December locomotive, and Churchill was #4. Four more, shown in Locobase 14251, were identical except for taller drivers.

When the C&C was reorganized in May 1905 as the Nevada-California, these locomotives' careers diverged substantially. 1 was sold for $2,500 in April 1907 to the Eureka & Palisade as their #9. 3 was scrapped in July 1907 and 2 in September 1908. 4 remained on its original rails through the sale to the Southern Pacific. In June 1929, the Nevada County Narrow Gauge bought the 4 for $60,000 and put it to work as their #7. The 7 was retired in 1934.

NB: The boiler pressure is an estimate based on contemporary Baldwin 4-4-0s. The firebox heating surface is an estimate based on the following logic: The 1898 narrow-gauge woodburner that went to Mexico's Vera Cruz a Alvarez (Locobase 12277) had many identical dimensions. Among these were the grate length and width to the 1/8 inch. The 1898 specs also state a value for the firebox heating surface. When the firebox depth in front and back are compared, the measurements in the Candaleria were exactly 4 3/4" less at each point. Based on these differences, Locobase calculated a value that came to 90% of the 1898 engine.

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Class Richburg (Locobase 11756)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 9, p. 135. Works number was 4715 in July 1879.

Established in 1873, the 28.6-mile C & C, which had reached, but not crossed the Catawba River in North Carolina, was leased by the Charlotte, Columbia & Augusta in 1882 and ultimately transferred to the Richmond & Danville in 1886. Ten years later, Colonel Leroy Springs, whose mills were the primary reason for the C & C's existence, bought up the bankrupt line and renamed it the Lancaster & Chester. Under that herald, the railroad was known as the Springmaid Line, after the linen goods produced in the mills.

[Locobase Note: Springmaid would later become famous in the late 1940s-early 1950s for its run of risque magazine advertisements for Springmaid products written by company scion Elliott White Springs that reached its double-entrendre zenith with an illustration of a stalwart American Indian warrior asleep in a hammock made of sheets over the caption: "A buck well spent on a Springmaid Sheet."]

in 1896 to the Red Springs & Bowmore Railroad, where it operated until 1918, when it was bought by rebuilder/reseller Southern Iron & Equipment. SI & E found a customer in the Central Nicaragua railway, which bought the engine in 1919.