Chicago Short Line 4-6-0 "Ten-Wheeler" Locomotives in the USA

Class 1 (Locobase 5304)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 24, p. 180. See also "Compound Ten-wheel Passenger Locomotive", American Engineer and Railroad Journal, Volume 76, No 3 (March 1902), pp. 72-74; and H Wade Hibbard, "Balanced Compound Locomotive," Sibley Journal of Engineering, Volume 16, No 6 (March 1902), p. 237-242. Works number 20000 in January 1902.

Balanced Vauclain compound Ten-wheeler fitted with the relatively rare Vanderbilt boiler, which featured a cylindrical firebox. This locomotive introduced the Vauclain four-cylinder balanced compounding system, which benefited considerably from Baldwin's experience with the de Glehn compounding system used in France. The de Glehn system featured four cylinders whose HP cylinders drove one axle and the LP drove another.

Vauclain's form of the four-cylinder compound had the two HP cylinders lying between the frames in line with the two outside, LP cylinders, all driving the lead axle. Crank positioning attempted to minimize hammerblow in two ways: The same-size cylinders were set 90 deg from each other, and each LP cylinder crank was 180 deg off from its LP partner.

One 15" (381 mm) valve served both cylinders on a side as it did in the four.-cylinder Vauclain compound system so heavily promoted over the previous 15 years. In the balanced form, however, each cylinder had its own crosshead and crank. Thus, the advantages of compounding were preserved, but the wracking stresses imposed by improper adjustment of the Vauclain system could be avoided.

Another notable feature was the re-adoption of the crank axle inside. American builders had shied away from crank axles because they were prone to breakage. 20th Century metallurgy suggested that that issue had been solved. Another innovation was Plant System's superintendent of motive power Symon's boltless cast-steel tender truck.

Westing's reproduction of Paul Warner's history of Baldwin (1925; printed in Westing, 1966) only notes that production of this, the 20,000th Baldwin locomotive, was celebrated by a big dinner at the Union League.

On the web, [] (visited 4 January 2003) reproduces a Scientific American article from 7 June 1902, which shows the locomotive as Plant System 119. Connelly's Baldwin list identifies the Plant System component as the SF&W, which refused the engine.

Baldwin reworked the design. The builder increased the boiler's diameter from 62"(1,575 mm) to 80 3/4" (2,051 mm) to the Chicago Short Line as #1. The CSL in turn sold it in 1905 to the Ashland & Western as their #1, but the A&W only operated it for three years before selling it in 1908 to to Southern Iron & Equipment, a locomotive rebuilder/reseller based in Atlanta that renumbered it 686.

Although Locobase isn't sure, it is likely that SI&E removed the corrugated firebox in favor of a more conventional furnace. Four years later, the SI&E sold the 686 to the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic, which renumbered it 1. The AB&A renumbered the engine twice more (99, then 39) before scrapping it in 1920.