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

Class 6 (Locobase 12671)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Vol 25, p.248. See also Joseph P. Schwieterman, When the Railroad Leaves Town: American Communities in the Age of Rail Line Abandonment : Eastern United States (Kirksville, MO:Truman State University Press, 2001), pp. Works number was 22019 in April 1903.

Some short lines never get longer. In 1860, this railroad was incorporated with the goal on connecting Tuskegee, Ala with Chehaw, 5.7 miles distant on 5-foot (1,524 mm) gauge rail and a stop on the Western Railway of Alabama.

Rebuilt as a narrow-gauge line after its destruction during the Civil War, the TRR was owned by a partnership of three: E. T. Varner, L. V. Alexander and Campbell & Wright. It was converted to the standard gauge in 1898.

The company was reorganized in 1902, at which time, according to the Mississippi Rails website ([]), the main purpose of the TR "..was to facilitate entrance into the grounds of the Tuskeegee Normal & Industrial Institute."

Schweiterman notes that in the 1920s, coal shipments to the Institute were supplemented by logs from the East Alabama Lumber Company's sawmill.