Steamtown Special History Study

CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY NO. 1293

Owner(s):

Canadian Pacific Railway 1293

Whyte System Type: 4-6-2 "Pacific"
Class: G-5-d

Builder: Canadian Locomotive Company
Date Built: June 1948
Builder's Number: 2450

Cylinders (diameter x stroke in inches): 20 x 28
Boiler Pressure (in lbs. per square inch): 250
Diameter or Drive Wheels (in inches): 70
Tractive Effort (in lbs.): 34,000

Tender Capacity:
    Coal (in tons): 14
    Oil (in gallons): Not applicable
    Water (in gallons): 8,000 (Imperial gallons)

Weight on Drivers (in lbs.): 151,000

Remarks: This locomotive can be made operable with some work. Sold January 1964 to Steamtown.

Canadian Pacific Railway 4-6-2 Locomotive Number 1293

History: "No railroad has contributed more toward the perfection of the steam locomotive in North America than the Canadian Pacific," wrote locomotive historian F. H. Howard as the opening sentence of his article in Trains & Travel Magazine on Canadian Pacific's last series of 4-6-2 locomotives, built on the evening before diesel dominance transformed North American railroads. He went on to say, "Its progressive attitude has been especially apparent in boiler matters: the first superheater, the first nickel-steel barrel, and the world's largest collection of welded boilers all breathed steam into CPR cylinders."

Henry Vaughan, in charge of Canadian Pacific Railway motive power, initiated construction of the railway's first two series of 4-6-2 or "Pacific"-type locomotives in 1905 to meet the demands of rapidly expanding passenger train service. Class G-l locomotives with 75-inch drive wheels would pull passenger traffic over main lines in relatively flat terrain such as the prairies of central Canada. The G-2 class with smaller 69-inch drivers would be assigned to trains in hilly country. These engines began rolling out of the erecting shops in 1906, and during the next seven years before World War I, Canadian Pacific placed more than 200 of them in service. Then after the war ended in 1918, the company went on to build, for the most part, larger and heavier power.

In March 1911, G-l No. 1011 appeared with a completely enclosed "all-weather" or "vestibule" cab, a feature destined to become common on Canadian locomotives that greatly increased the comfort and safety of the engine crew.

It was during the long tenure of Henry Blame Bowman as chief mechanical officer of the Canadian Pacific (1928 to 1949) that the company again envisioned a need for smaller classes of locomotives. Bower had presided over the development of such behemoths as 2-10-4s and modern 4-6-4s, but in 1935 his office designed the first of two classes of streamlined 4-4-4 locomotives intended to haul the new high-speed, "lightweight" passenger trains. Then in 1943, Bower's office designed a new class of 4-6-2 locomotives. The Canadian Pacific in 1944 still operated 495 Vaughan Class D-10 4-6-0s and 150 Vaughan Class G-l and G-2 4-6-2s, but all were more than 30 years old and beginning to wear out. The question of replacing this rapidly aging fleet of small locomotives for postwar assignments to principally secondary and branch lines concerned Bower. Locomotives Nos. 1200 and 1201 of the new class, which rolled out of Canadian Pacific's Angus Shops in April and June, 1944, was a modernized version of the Vaughan Class G-2 4-6-2 of 1906.

The railway sent No. 1200 out west and assigned No. 1201 to the Montreal-Perth passenger run. No. 1201, incidentally, proved to be the last steam locomotive to be built in the Canadian Pacific Railway's own shops, though the railroad would order a hundred more of these Pacifics from the Montreal Locomotive Works and the Canadian Locomotive Company.

Trains Magazine reported on the new class of light Pacifics in its July 1944 issue, featuring a builder's photo of No. 1200 and a description of their features:

The design of these Pacifics, Class G-5, is based on the earlier Class G-2, but the engine has been modernized and lightened. The portion of the cab extending forward over the fire box has been eliminated and the cab upper structure has been made of aluminum. The boiler steam dome was omitted, following the recent trend. Engine trucks are fitted with roller bearings. Morel-metal staybolts are used experimentally where it was customary to use flexible staybolts in the past, and one locomotive is fitted with a complete installation of Morel-metal staybolts on one side and standard steel staybolts on the other side.

The weight distribution of the new G-5's is such that they can be used on most of the CP's branch lines. It is proposed that this design will eventually replace 495 of the D-10 class Ten-Wheelers, and 150 of the G-1 and G-2 class Pacifics, engines which were built in the early years of the century and which were originally used on mainline trains row hauled by heavy Pacifics.

The Canadian Pacific eventually purchased three subclasses of G-5 Pacifics, the first two locomotives forming Class G-5-a, built in 1944. Montreal Locomotive Works produced the first G-5-b in August 1945, 13 more in September, 13 more in October, and one in November 1945. It rolled out one each in January 1946 and April 1946. Fifteen of these 30 locomotives went into service or western lines, 15 to eastern Canada. Then in 1946, the company produced four of a new subclass of G-5-c, 11 more in June and five more in July.

Production then switched to the Canadian Locomotive Company, which produced two G-5-c locomotives in September 1946, nine in November 1946, and three in December 1946. That company turned out two more in January 1947 and another four in April 1947. After a hiatus of a year, the Canadian Locomotive Company produced sever of the new subclass of G-5-d in April 1948, then went on to produce eight more in May, seven more in June (of which No. 1293 was the last of the month's production), four more in July, and four more in August 1948, No. 1301 being the last steam locomotive built for the Canadian Pacific Railway.

All G-5 4-6-2s featured 70-inch diameter drive wheels, cylinders 20 inches in diameter, with a 28-inch stroke, 250-pounds-per-square-inch boiler pressure, and tractive effort of 34,000 pounds, and were identical in most other dimensions, variance between the G-5-a and G-5-b through -d subclasses consisting only of difference in some weights and appliances. All had Elesco Type A superheaters and HT-1 type mechanical or automatic stokers. The G-5-b type differed from G-5-a locomotives in Elesco exhaust steam injectors under the fireman's side of the cab. The G-5-c subclass featured a coaming around the top of the water compartment or the tender and differently located injector piping than predecessors had. The Class G-5-d engines of 1948 featured a revised Elesco feedwater heater in the smokebox, with a water pump on the left side of the boiler.

The operational history of locomotive No. 1293 awaits further research in Canadian archives.

The Canadian National Railway photographed 4-6-2 No. 1200, first of the new series of light "Pacific" type locomotives built during the and after World War II. This original model of the G-5 class rolled out of the Canadian Pacific's own Angus Shops in 1944.
Canadian National Railways

F. Nelson Blount purchased the locomotive for excursion service on the Green Mountain Railroad out of the Riverside Yards north of Bellows Falls, Vermont. He purchased Locomotive No. 1293 in the name of the Green Mountain Railroad in January 1964. The Steamtown Foundation purchased No. 1293 from the Green Mountain Railroad in 1973.

Rebuilt in 1976, No. 1293 was the first Steamtown locomotive to be given an overhaul since F. Nelson Blount's death in 1967, nearly a decade earlier. After being broker in on the excursion train in June 1976, No. 1293 powered the state-funded Vermont Bicentennial Train over 13,000 miles that year, featuring a green and black color scheme for that use.

In 1979, the Steamtown Foundation leased No. 1293 to a Hollywood company for the filming in Canada of a motion picture starring Jamie Lee Curtis entitled Terror Train. The film company renumbered the locomotive "1881" and painted it black with silver stripes, along with the five Steamtown cars used with the engine in filming near Montreal. As implied by the title, the film was a typical horror film involving a number of gruesome murders during a college fraternity excursion party aboard the train.

In 1980, the Steamtown Foundation restored No. 1293 and relettered it Canadian Pacific, painting it in the black, gold, and Tuscan red CPR passenger color scheme that had been inspired by a 1933 visit to Canada and the Chicago World's Fair of a British train in maroon and gold livery, the Royal Scot, whose colors the Canadian Pacific had begun copying between 1933 and 1936. The restoration of the locomotive to a historic color and lettering scheme proved immensely popular among railroad enthusiasts, who descended on Steamtown in droves for the annual "Railfan Weekend" photography spree. But there was no documentation to prove that No. 1293 ever had that particular color scheme historically.

On February 4, 1982, the locomotive was in the Steamtown storage and shop building when it collapsed at 7:45 a.m. under an unusually heavy load of several feet of fresh wet snow, damaging the upper parts of the locomotive, including such features as headlights, handrails, cab roof, and the like.

In Canada, the second of this series of G-5 locomotives, Pacific No. 1201, is preserved by the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, Ontario, and is used on occasion for excursion service. It is the only one of the G-5 type in Canada.

Condition: No. 1293 is basically an operable locomotive, given some routine repairs.

Recommendation: This type of locomotive did operate into New England occasionally, perhaps as far south as Boston in international service. While perhaps too light to handle long excursion trains on the stiff climb to Pocono Summit, this locomotive might be usable for smaller special trains or for occasional use on other lines in the Scranton vicinity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Awaiting Departure." Railfan and Railroad, Vol. 5, No. 4 (May 1984): 28-29. Bailey, Frederick G. "Steam and Snow." Rail Classics, Vol. 10, No. 3 (May 1981): 16-21.

Guide to the Steamtown Collection. Bellows Falls, Vt.: Steamtown Foundation, n.d. (ca. 1973), Item Nos. 19, 31, 32, and roster entries.

Howard, F.H. "Famous Steam Locomotives: 23; Destined to Die Young," Trains & Travel, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Feb. 1954): 51-53.

Kean, Randolph. The Railfan's Guide to Museum & Park Displays. Forty Fort: Harold E. Cox, Publisher, 1973: 174.

Lavallée, Omer. Canadian Pacific Steam Locomotives. Toronto: Railfare Enterprises Ltd., 1985: 184-222, 304, 400, 401, 421, 437, 441.

Locomotive Cyclopedia of American Practice, 1947. New York: Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp., 1947: Section 2, 163, Section 3, 169.

"Photo Gallery," Rail Classics, Vol. 7, No. 4 (July 1978): 28, 29.

"Photo Line," Railfan, Vol. l, No. 10 (Spring 1977): 34-35.

"Postwar Locomotives," Trains, Vol. 4, No. 9 (July 1944): 40.

"Railnews: Disaster at Steamtown, Railfan and Railroad, Vol. 4, No. 4 (May 1982): 22.

"Railnews: Railfans' Railroad," Railfan and Railroad, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Mar. 1980): 2.

"Steam News Photos," Trains, Vol. 26, No. 6 (Apr. 1966): 14; Vol. 26, No. 11 (Sept. 1966): 13.

"Steam Photo Gallery," Rail Classics Steam Special No. 2: 58-59.

Steamtown News, 1970.

"Steamtown Update," Railpace Newsmagazine, Vol. 3, No. 11 (Nov. 1984): 3, 18.

"Steamtown USA: 'A Championship Season,'" Railpace Newsmagazine, Vol. 3, No. 12 (Dec. 1984): 18-21.

"What's Happening," Rail Classics, Vol. 7, No. 5 (May 1978): 50-51; Vol. 9, No. 3 (May 1980): 54.

"Winter Weekend Preview," Railfan, Vol. l, No. 5 (Winter 1975): 32-33.