Rutland 4-8-2 "Mountain" Locomotives in the USA

Class L-1 (Locobase 222)

Data from tables in 1947 Locomotive Cyclopedia. See also Jim Shaughnessey, The Rutland Road (2d Edition) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), pp. 163 inter alia. And thanks to Chris Hohl for his 12 November 2012 supplying Alco's builder's card Order No. S-1985, June 1946. and for a later correction on the valve gear; and for his 12 March 2020 email that flagged a missed engine-and-tender wheelbase.) Works numbers were 74376-74379 in 1946.

Replacement power for the worn-out Rutland stud based on the very successful 4-8-2s operated by the New York Central, although the Rutland engines were smaller. The main postwar passenger power, the class was painted green and, almost inevitably, named the Green Hornets.

Jim Shaughnessey drew a word portrait of Rutland vice-president Gardner A Caverly's reaction to a chance encounter with one of these engines in 1955. He saw the locomotive "struggling upgrade with northbound tonnage. The ground trembled, the setting sun was darkened with rising black smoke, and the white hot fire gleamed through the ashpan doors. He listened to the thunderous exhause and the wail of her whistle echoing and re-echoing through the pine-clad hills."

Stirring stuff, and it affected Caverly: "Never before had he been so deeply moved by the power and glory of steam. It was a subject fit for an artist, but Michelangelo himself could not have recorded the emotion that overwhelmed him"

But here's the punch line: "He was nearly brought to tears as the engineer waved for it was only the week before that he had signed the engine's death warrant." (p. 163).

All four locomotives were retired in March 1955.