Lake Superior & Ishpeming 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA

Class E (Locobase 16592)

Data from LS&I Locomotive Diagrams supplied in July 2022 by Allen Stanley from his extensive Rail Data Exchange collection. See also Aurele A Durocher, The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, No. 98 (APRIL, 1958), pp. 7-31, esp

1888 works number (see below).

Although the LS&I diagram shows this Eight-wheeler's original works number was 444, several roster compilations identifies this locomotive as works number 401, delivered to the Union Pacific bearing road 686, part of a ten-locomotive order that earned road numbers 680-689. (See Locobase 5088 for the entire 125 locomotives in the 600, later 900 class.) The UP sold the 686 to the LS&I in 1901.

More than 20 years later, LS&I subsidiary Marquette Eastern sought a new boiler from Baldwin Locomotive Works, which it supplied under Extra Order 6860. The new vessel held both arch tubes and thermic syphon, probably one of each as their total contribution to the firebox heating surface area came to a mere 26 sq ft (2.42 sq m). A small grate used a rosebud grate.

The makeover extended to the valve gear, which replaced Stephenson link motion with Walschaert outside contant-lead gear. The valves themselves didn't change from the original balanced slides. As Union Pacifics, their drivers stood at 62" (1,272 mm); Locobase supposes the 4" (103 mm) reduction to 58" occurred sometime before the upgrades.

Durocher commented that the result was a "handsome engine throughout, nice to look at and nice to watch perform ...very fast engines, and though small could pull a fair-sized number of wooden coaches" He remembered the number 3 "always speeding away somewhere" heading "an officials' 'hot shot' inspecting the railroad, a miner's extra returning from some Fourth of July picnic, or a wood workers' special during the depression of the 1930's." He also mentioned the 3's bell, which had "the most beautiful tone of any bell [possibly a Baldwin bell] that I heard on this railroad."

In 1942, the 3 was sold to the Detroit, Caro & Sandusky, which went out of business in 1953.