Mount Gretna 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA

Class 15 (Locobase 10141)

Data from "Narrow Gauge Locomotive, C & L Ry USA," The Locomotive Magazine, Vol V (March 1900), p.46. See also DeGolyer, Vol 15, p. 240.

Although the article has a photograph that clearly shows the Cornwall & Lebanon name on the tender and the 15 on tender and cab, Connelly's Baldwin records do not list a Cornwall & Lebanon - at first. Digging into Google, Locobase finds that a portion of the description in the LM article is incorrect - this locomotive was produced not in 1898, but in 1890 (works number 10946). There, however, Connelly's entry credits the engine with 10" x 16" cylinders. Two others - 11-12 (works numbers 10056 and 10100) had 10" x 14" cylinders; they were produced in July 1889 with 11's construction taking only 8 days.

In any case, the LM write-up describes an railroad profile with a maximum grade of 4.5% and 120-ft radius curves on which the doughty 15 could take 25 ton loads. When Locobase puzzled over such a small load, he discovered a Catskill Archive article -- [], last accessed 14 April 2009 -- which noted that the MG - a 4-mile road between Reading and Harrisburg, PA -- was the only 2-ft gauge railroad in the US to use 4-4-0s. Its tracks wound away from a station on the Cornwall & Lebanon, along the shore of Lake Conewago and scaled the 1,120-ft peak of Governor Dick hill.

After it closed as a tourist line, the MG operated a short haul to the Rifle Range for the National Guard until 1916 when an accident involving an overcrowded car injured several guardsmen.

NB: The direct heating surface (including the firebox heating surface) is an estimate calculated by subtracting the calculated tube heating surface from the reported total evaporative heating surface.