Tuckerton 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA

Class 4 (Locobase 11649)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 15, p. 232. See also the SJRail wiki's entry on the Tuckerton at [], last accessed 17 December 2011. Works numbers were 10800 in April 1890 and 11526 in January 1891.

The TRR operated in southern New Jersey from 1871 to 1936. By the 1870s, its mainline ran from Tuckerton north and parallel to the shoreline before curving to the west to Toms River using trackage rights over the Toms River and Waretown (later part of the Jersey Central). A major source of revenue in the company's early decades was beach-going traffic that led to a three-train-a-day schedule between Whitings (near Lakehurst and site of a junction between the Jersey Central and the Pennsylvania) and Beach Haven on Long Beach Island in 1913.

Despite damage to the #4 in an 1895 fire, the railroad operated it and the 5 for over 40 years. As the demand for passenger service to the shore plummeted in the 1920s and 1930s, it wasn't long before the TRR applied to abandon the road. The last train ran on the railroad on 12 January 1936.

The 4 had already been sold, but the 5 went into mothballs until a new consortium bought the assets and opened up as the Southern New Jersey Railroad. After a couple of years of bare profitability, the SNJ closed in 1940. Even though the locomotive was in fact an inanimate machine, Locobase cannot ignore a shiver as he notes that the 5 pulled the scrapping train as the rails were taken up from Tuckerton to Barnegat. Once they arrived at Barnegat, the ferro-knackers turrned the torch on 5.

Class 6 (Locobase 13553)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines, 1888, as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 34, p. 136. See Locobase 11649 for a summary of the Tuckerton's history. Works numbers were 34161 in January 1910.

The Tuckerton never had a lot of motive power to choose from nor a lot of money with which to expand it. A fire in 1895 damaged two of its engines (3 and 4 - the latter is describe in Locobase 11649), but it wouldn't be until 1910 that the TRR would buy a new engine. This was a bigger locomotive and much more powerful owing to its higher boiler pressure and greater cylinder volume.

After the failure of the Southern New Jersey to revive train travel to the Jersey Shore after the TRR closed in 1936, the 6 was scrapped when the SNJ closed in 1940.