Dayton-Goose Creek 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA

Class 104 (Locobase 9692)

Data from "...Eight-Wheel Type Locomotive for the Dayton-Goose Creek Railroad", Railway and Locomotive Engineering, Vol XXXV, No. 2 (February 1922), pp. 42-43. See also DeGolyer, Vol 65, pp. 84+. For the railway, see Barbara H. Fisher, "DAYTON-GOOSE CREEK RAILWAY," Handbook of Texas Online ([]), accessed February 17, 2013. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.l.

This was a Texas oil-patch railway begun in 1917 that covered about 25 miles (40.2 km) of mostly flat land on 60 lb/yard (30 kg/metre) rail. It connected Dayton, which lay on the Texas & New Orleans Railroad (subsidiary of the Southern Pacific), to Humble Oil's Baytown refinery. The D-GC's earnings made it a profitable line. As 1926 figures suggest, passenger earnings ($5,000) were dwarfed, as might be expected, by the $157,000 of freight revenue.

Apparently needing a good local-service locomotive of moderate power, the D-GC Rwy and the builder settled on the 4-4-0 layout and produced one of the last such engines (works #55150) supplied by a US builder to a US railroad. The design duplicated an engine with the same road number that Baldwin had delivered to the Red River & Gulf in Louisiana in 1919 (see Locobase 14298). The two differed in the 104's having a Vanderbilt cylindrical tender and spoke-center engine truck wheels. The design's equalizing beams were to be "extra heavy."

The D&GC 104 was oil-fired, had 8" (203 mm) piston valves, and was superheated to a useful degree. Along the boiler were arrayed three domes, the one forward for sand, the one in the middle for steam, the one just behind that for more sand.

The D-GC was sold to the Southern Pacific in 1926, which leased the line to the T & NO for eight years, then merged all of the SP properties into the T & NO. The D-GC's 104 was renumbered 192 on the SP, then 223 on the T & NO.