Terre Haute & Indianapolis 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA

Class VD-3 (Locobase 7359)

Data from AB&SOU 6 -1919 Locomotive Diagrams supplied in May 2005 by Allen Stanley from his extensive Rail Data Exchange. Works numbers were 730-731 in April 1884, 732-733 in May, and 734 in June.

For the longest time, Locobase had no good way to work back to this class's origin from the Aberdeen & Southern's diagram book. But Allen Stanley's trove of newly compiled information included several versions of A&S's roster that taken together show these locomotives as Midwesterners. By 1905, they were taken into the Vandalia Lines

733 was scrapped in November 1902. The next to move was the 732, which was sold by locomotive reseller J T Gardner to the Salt Lake & Los Angeles as their #3. The 3 would later go to the Chicago, Kalamazoo & Saginaw as their 5.

JT Gardner bought the other three from the Vandalia in 1909. Their ultimate destinies cannot be so easily determined because of disagreements among sources.

The MoPac roster published on [], last accessed on 24 July 2006, shows that this locomotive was retired in 1919. But a Texas & Pacific diagram book shows instead that this locomotive was converted to a 2-6-0 by Baldwin in 1926; see 8500.

The Abilene & Southern Railway Company was a 96-mile short line that connected Ballinger, Texas to Hamlin farther north. Laid between 1909 and 1911, the railway first ran south from Abilene to Ballinger, then north to Hamlin.

According to Bob Johnson of the "Frontier Trails" website [] (accessed 1 Jan 2006), "...The concept of the line was to connect small west central Texas fertile agriculture towns to the main line between Fort Worth and Denver at Abilene." The site lists as the principal stops (with mileposts):

* Mile Post 0.0 Ballinger

* Mile Post 16 Winters

* Mile Post 27 Bradshaw

* Mile Post 34 Ovalo

* Mile Post 37 Tuscola

* Mile Post 55 Abilene

* Mile Post 79 Anson

* Mile Post 87 Radium

* Mile Post 96 Hamlin

The T & P took over the road in 1926. The line to Hamlin was abandoned in 1937 and the Winters-Ballinger section closed in 1972. The Missouri Pacific took over the rest in 1978. (See also the Handbook of Texas site at [] (also accessed on 1 Jan 2006) and the Abilene Reporter News article from 26 Jan 2006, preserved online at [],1874,ABIL_7956_4420984,00.html and accessed 24 July 2006.