What I was told many years ago now, for large modern locomotives with mechanical lubricators:

Take out the crosshead keys with the pistons all the way forward in the cylinders. Then disconnect the union link or end of the combination lever and lash in place.

The engine can now be moved effectively with the valve gear set and gagged at mid, and cylinder cocks open, without any need to fog or 'substitute for' cylinder oil or require heat to vaporize same.

If the engine is being scrapped, the poor man's version is just to torch off the back ends of the piston rods -- when the engine first moves, the crossheads will push the pistons to 'clearance, within one revolution. However, for overkill you'll often see the rods fully cut off, or the visible portion cut at both ends. Presumably no one cared about the relatively slight valve motion remaining with the gear nominally centered.

Many roads made up 'bobweights' to go on driver pins so the engine could be operated dead-in-train either with mains off or with rods off the pair(s) in question. One example is in Staufer's Thorooughbreds. These can be made up for 'perfect' balance net of any degree of overbalance it the mains are off. Presumably this would involve removal of the eccentric crank (to get the rods off in the first place) and lashing or taking down the reach rods...

From the Canadian Pacific Railway timetable #195, April 24th 1955

73
RwC

The 610 has huge counterbalances and rods. She had been at Palestine for awhile when I started at TSRR, so I didn't witness firsthand the event in question. However, I heard this story several times during the two years I spent in Dogwood Country, and I am inclined to believe it because the guys who trained me never lied to me or steered me wrong about anything else.

And keep in mind that T&P 610 was given a full 'modern' rebalancing treatment -- that's where those Baldwin Disc mains came from. You can imagine the track-wrecking in her original form!

OT, as usual, but I can't believe she went around the wye in Palestine. Everybody who was off that day unplugged their phone !!!

We saw many "dead engines" heading toward the London, Ontario reclamation yard on the CNR in the late 1950s and very early 1960s. There were sometimes multiples in freights. Even with several locos in one train, I remember them being bracketed with boxcars. Some of those trains were even hauled by steam power!

It wouldn't have been the first time 600 went on the ground on a wye. Returning very late from Crossville to Chattanooga, TN, I was in the cab as the train was being dragged back into the Chattanooga Food Terminal. Passing CT Tower, the trailing truck climbed the rail and dropped to the ties. 600 lucked out in Palestine.

That would be SIX TEN, I believe. However, you're still right.

This thread has me wondering how 610 got from Tennessee to Ft Worth without screwing up any track ?? Just saying.

Back in the hey days of Steam. Didn't the manufacturers ship the newly built locomotives to the 'off line' purchasers cold? With the purchasers making the engines serviceable once the arrived on the purchasers property.

Correct, often as not with the main rods removed.

Southern Pacific received lots of cab forwards from Baldwin during WWII. I read in Those Amazing Cab Forwards that the shop crew at the SP's shop that received them got so proficient at setting them up for service that they could receive a new one dead in tow, and send it west on its first revenue train in less than eight hours.

Here is a photo of the last move ever from Alamosa, CO to Durango, CO (December 5 & 6, 1968) with DRGW No. 473 towing a handful of freight and passenger cars and DRGW No. 481 dead in tow. Note main rod stowed on the running board. The rods remained on the running boards until 1981 when myself and others prepared the locomotive for return to service on the new Durango & Silverton NGRR. Photo by Ernie Robart.

MD Ramsey

I've always wondered why the middle section of track between the now-C&TS and now-D&SNG wasn't preserved, but that is a topic for another thread.

Interesting that 481 was hauled dead to Durango, it had its main and eccentric rods dropped. When they delivered all the locomotives to the Cumbres & Toltec a couple of years later, they left all the rods on, and the dead engines "sucked wind" all the way from Alamosa to Antonito, and eventually all the way to Chama.

They seemed to survive the ordeal.

Easy to assume that Rio Grande cared more about #481 since they potentially were planning to have her available to run, whereas the engines going to C&TS weren't going to be Rio Grande's problem. Also, IIRC, wasn't the prevailing opinion amongst the rails that the C&TS was going to fall flat on its face anyway?