A few photos taken yesterday (Sat 27 Feb 16) at the Churnet Valley Railway in the UK of #6046, recently returned to operational condition.
Apologies for the lack of sunshine though, as it was generally an overcast and cool day!

Thank you for the pictures. She appears beautifully maintained!

For some reason, the USATC S160 design always reminds me of the Pennsylvania RR H8, H9s and H10s 2-8-0s. Was there perhaps some PRR influence at work in the War Department?

-Philip Marshall

Congratulations on returning 6046 to operation!

I didn't see anything suggesting a PRR influence in meeting notes attended by representatives of the Army and three builders recorded during the design process. If there were they were probably informal. Everything I've seen suggests ALCO was the lead, with input from Baldwin and Lima, and with Major Marsh of the Army exercising fairly close oversight over design decisions. Some existing Baldwin drawings were adopted into the design by ALCO,(for example, the parts for an oil burner conversion), but I don't think any existing Lima drawings were adopted into the standard design. The design was influenced by an earlier USATC 2-8-2. In fact, the 2-8-2 was cancelled in mid-contract and some of the remaining stock of parts was repurposed for use in the 2-8-0. Some of the design instructions make reference to the 2-8-2.

It was restored in 2012, I believe, but blew a cylinder cover during October 2014 whilst on hire to another line, so had been out of service until the repairs were completed in the last couple of weeks. The loco was performing well yesterday and was certainly worth the almost 400 mile round-trip in a day from my home to see and ride behind it!

S160 #5197 is also based at the CVR and was in the workshops undergoing overhaul yesterday.

I happened to see her at Tysley's shops this summer on a private tour. The blow had completely torn studs out and I doubted the blocks would ever be able to be salvaged. Bob Meanly, the man who runs the shop, said that they were lucky this locomotive class had been built in large batches, as they had a brand new never before used cylinder block set lined up for the locomotive. Apparently extras were cast back in the day that are still floating around!?

edit: If I recall correctly, both sides might have been damaged, which was due to a water slug entering the dry pipe from high water leaving a station stop. If only one was damaged, both sets were open with the valve cages looking in exactly the same condition.

That is a bueatiful restoration job the jacket almost looks waxed and the brass cab numerals are real nice . The Brits are real masters of restoration

The numbers on the cab appeared to be (well polished) stainless steel and added a nice touch to the loco. The USA lettering on the tender is also the same material, though it is difficult to make that out on my pictures.

To my memory, they appeared to be polished and then clear coated pieces of stainless steel. She definitely is a more polished version of an S160! I am honestly surprised with the condition she was in, and the amount of work Tysley had to do at that time that she is now running again! Changing a cylinder block is by no means a small job, along with reassembling and lightly refurbishing the loco before she could run again!

At Tysley, she was sitting next to another S160 being rebuilt, but I cant recall the number or to which line it belonged

The other S160 is USATC 3278, BLW 70340 ex FS and SEK (Greece) and latterly running at the Mid Hants Railway as "Franklin D Roosevelt" but it had been sidelined for several years before going to Tyseley for restoration.
Ray.

I notice that, while both engines are Baldwins, the saddle on the USATC 3278 is nonetheless clearly marked "ALCO". Is this another example of the war-era store of spare parts mentioned above?

-Philip Marshall

At the risk of a bit of thread drift........

The Mid-Hants one was part of a group of 3 locos imported from Greece in summer 1984, 1 x USA 2-8-0 and 2 x British built WD 2-10-0's and they arrived at Ipswich Docks in August of that year for road transport on to their respective destinations - two to the Mid-Hants and one to the Lavender line in Sussex.

I missed 2 of them, but one of the WD 2-10-0's sat on the Quayside for a while before being moved on, so was able to photograph it. The picture below is indicative of the condition they were in at the time........



It appears to have a pseudo BR number of "90775" painted on it, so is the one now based at the North Norfolk Railway, about 65 miles north of its 1984 arrival point in the UK.

The Greeks themselves did restore one of these to operation, but am not sure of its current status. There are, I believe, still some derelict WW2 era locos still dumped in Greece.

In our collection of tech data we have a copy of the running supplies that were packed with each locomotives (including a shovel, broom, and initial supply of oil). Another list gives the spares supplied as XX quantity of a piece for XX locomotives. A cylinder block half was included in the spares list and could be used on either side. I also believe the spare side rods could be used on either side.

Our Baldwin USATC 3523 has journals from ALCO. Don't know if they were original or were spares. My guess is that there was some cross sourcing of parts between the three manufactures. 11 of the 12 Alaska Railroad S160 were Baldwins, but the ARR obtained a large quantity of spare parts from WWII surplus. Under many layers of paint one of our drivers had what looked like a painted on destination label for an east coast port, so it probably came to the ARR as a spare. Unfortunately, it appears that most of the remaining spares went to Spain in the mid-1950s with all of the remaining ARR steam locomotives but 557.

Dick -

Of course, ARR sister 2-8-0 #556 also still survives in Alaska, on display.

Les

It must be remembered that most of the surviving S160's are 'mongrels'. USATC 5820 on the KWVR is reported in "Over Here" as having an ALCO boiler (ex #4435), ALCO cylinders, left hand frame casting from Lima and the right hand one from Baldwin! I'm not sure that I can agree with a previous post in which it was stated that 6046's replacement cylinder was a "new spare". AFAIK the cylinder came from one of the ex PKP and MAV parts donor chassis - happy to be proved wrong though!
Ray.

Correct, I overlooked 556. In fact, in what the Municipality called an "organ transplant" we were able to obtain several parts from 556, including parts of the buffer from the tender to replace a coupler that ARR had fitted when our tender was in MOW service.

Without verifying it from the files, something like 16 steam locomotives went to one railroad in Spain. I believe this included nine S160s.

A bit of obscure history - several locomotives were supposed to go to Korea on a surplus Liberty(?) ship. The ship only had approval for a single voyage from a U.S. port and it sailed before the ARR locomotives were on board. With no other practical means of transportation, other arrangements were made for disposition of the locomotives.