Ernst Wiener Company 0-4-4 Locomotives in USA-Puerto_Rico

Class Palmira (Locobase 13029)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University, Volume 29, p.237. See also "The Ernst Wiener Co., New York City, Brick, Volume XXIII [23], No 2 (August 1905), p. 72; "Supply Trade Notes", Railway Age Gazette Mechanical Edition, Volume 87, No 12 (December 1913), p. 683; and "Scantlebury v Tallcott", Supreme Court,Appellate Term, First Department, 5 March 1914, New York Supplement, Volume 146, pp. 184-186. Works number was were 29540-29541 in November 1906.

Ernest Wiener sold many small tanks to sugar roads in islands like Cuba and Puerto Rico. The Baldwin spec for the Palmira and sister Emilia gives no information these sugar tanks' destination. Among the kit supplied with these engines were six headlight "chimneys" and twelve wicks.

Based at 58 Church St in New York City, EWC was one of the better known dealers. Wiener formed the company in 1905 after leaving Arthur Koppel of New York. (Koppel promoted the well-regarded product's of Babelsburg, Germany's Orenstein & Koppel Locomotive Company.)

For reasons whose irony will become apparent in the next few paragraphs, Wiener took care to publicize the brand-new factory in Youngstown, Ohio, built exclusively to produce "building specialties ...and the plant's up-to-date equipment places it in excellent condition to take care of all business." (See "New Shops of the Ernst Wiener Company", Railway Age (29 June 1906), p. 1274-1275.

The announcement added that Koppel's chief engineer Charles Koch had joined EWC "and the larger part of the Koppel staff are also identified with this new industry." By 1910 In addition to steam locomotives like the Palmira, EWC had begun selling gasoline-powered "dinkies" in addition to steam locomotives.

But in December 1913, Easton Car & Construction Company (Easton, Pa) announced that it had purchased all of Ernst Wiener's "stock rights, plants, office records, equipment and good will. The company's brand-new plant in Easton was "completely equipped with special machinery specially adopted [sic] to the manufacture of the Ernst Wiener products." They'd be sold "hereafter",however, "under the trade name of the Easton Car & Construction Company.

A 1914 Appeals Court judgement gave readers a more intimate view of EWC's liquidation. Chester W Tallcott, the company's treasurer, obtained a $2,500 loan from Oeking Company, one of EWC's suppliers. Tallcott told Francis H Scantlebury (the plaintiff) that EWC was in trouble and he wanted to cover some of its debts.

When Tallcott defaulted, Scantlebury sued. After a couple of rounds, New York's Superior Court ruled for Scantlebury after having "adopted the view most favorable to the respondent [Tallcott]." Justice Seabury noted the defendant's assertion that the loan was for the benefit of the EWC and thus he was not personally liable for the failure to pay. The court said that that claim was "by no means conceded.", and add that there was evidence "in support of the plaintiff's contentions that the money was advance personally to the defendant."