Charleston & Western Carolina 4-6-0 "Ten-Wheeler" Locomotives in the USA

Class 209 (Locobase 12254)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 21, p. 129. Works numbers were 15715-15719 in February 1898.

The C&WC was a product of the South Carolina legislature's insistence in 1894 that the financially precarious Central of Georgia give up its South Carolina railroads. The SC legislature argued that Georgia received most of the benefit of the traffic despite its short 14-mile slice of the railroads established when the railroad crossed the Savannah River briefly on its run up to Western South Carolina. According to the estimable Georgia Railroad History site ([]), "These were the Port Royal & Augusta Railway, which ran from the South Carolina coast to Augusta, and the Port Royal & Western Carolina Railway, which linked Augusta with Greenville and several other towns in the South Carolina piedmont." The total was 319 miles (514 km).

Almost as soon as the ink was dry on the new railway's papers, the Atlantic Coast Line gained financial control. This was about the same time that the 5 Ten-wheelers shown in this entry and the Eight-wheeler in Locobase 12255 were delivered. But the ACL didn't immediately purge the C&WC of its separate identity. In fact that merger didn't occur for five decades.

All of the engines gave 30+ years of service. 213 was scrapped first in June 1930. The others all went in 1934, the locomotives being scrapped in July, May, June, and April in respective numerical order.