Atlanta & St Andrews Bay 4-6-0 "Ten-Wheeler" Locomotives in the USA

Class 105 (Locobase 13199)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 31, pp. 77+; Volume 32, p.310; and Volume 43, p. 175. (Many thanks to Chris Hohl for his 28 February 2015 email and Excel spreadsheet that found and reported the differences between the 105-107 and the 120.) Works numbers were 32248 in November 1907, 32450 in December, 33000 in October 1908.

The 82-mile-long A&StAB Railway -- aka the Bay Line or the Panama Canal Route -- ran from Dothan, Alabama to Panama City, Florida and was completed in 1908 by A B Steele. It was chiefly a lumber road and never did connect Panama City with Atlanta on its own lines.

The Bay Line went to Baldwin for a small Ten-wheeler and the builder offered a design that was then in production for some North Carolina short lines; unlike many loggers, these engines had straight stacks. It was satisfactory enough that the railroad bought a third engine of the same design a year later. This trio, and a fourth engine (120) with a similar boiler but larger cylinders, Walschaert gear, and other changes that came along in 1913 (Locobase 16014), were the only locomotives to be bought new by the A&StAB.

The 105 eventually settled down in Florida when it was bought by the Fullers Earth Company of Marianna, Fla and took on the number 27. The 106 was sold in 1935 to St Mary's Railroad of Georgia, which connected St Mary with Kingsland. 107 was scrapped, probably when the Bay Line dieselized in 1947 (the first in the US to do so completely).

Class 120 (Locobase 16014)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 43, p. 175. (Many thanks to Chris Hohl for his 28 February 2015 email and Excel spreadsheet that found and reported the differences between the 105-107 and the 120.) Works number was 39187 in January 1913..

The first three Ten-wheelers delivered by Baldwin in 1907-1908 to this design appear in Locobase 13199. When the Bay Line ordered a fourth engine in 1912, it came with several changes. Although the boiler and firebox were untouched, cylinder volume increased, the inside link motion had been replaced by outside radial valve gear. In place of the straight stack mounted on the earlier trio, the 120 sported the spark-arresting Radley & Hunter cabbage stack.

At the end of its service on the Bay Line, the 120 was sold to the Sandersville Railroad, a four-mile line in Georgia.