1920 Baldwin Steam Locomotive

1920 Baldwin Steam Locomotive. . This 1920 locomotive was originally built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works for the Jonesboro, Lake City and Eastern Railroad in Arkansas. The locomotive originally carried the number 40, but was changed to #76 in 1925, when it was leased to the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad. In 1947 it was sold to the Mississippian Railway, owned and operated by two brothers, Jim and Frank Carlisle, who owned two identical locomotives that they kept in tip-top condition. , In 1967 a man by the name of Sloan Cornell purchased locomotive #76 for service on his Penn View Mountain scenic railroad in Pennsylvania. Here it was put to the test by climbing a steep 4% grade, while negotiating “switch backs,” to reach a scenic overlook. In 1976, Mr. Cornell closed his Penn View Mountain railway, and moved his entire operation to the Gettysburg area, where he operated the Gettysburg Scenic Railway. While running on the Gettysburg line, Engine #76 reportedly began a steady decline, due in part to corrosion caused by the hard water it ingested over a span of about 20 years. It is said that #76 was “out of square, patched up, and one very tired 1920 Baldwin” when she was taken out of service on the Gettysburg line. After sitting idle for several years, the locomotive was sold to the Steam Railroading Institute at Owosso, Michigan in 2005. Here it began a restoration process that was ultimately abandoned in favor of another locomotive. , In December, 2017 the Oakland B&O Museum received a generous donation from the Daniel E. Offutt III Charitable Trust, for the purpose of acquiring a steam locomotive for display in front of the 1884 Oakland Train Station. After an extensive search, the Oakland B&O Museum found and purchased Engine #76 from the Steam Railroading Institute. It was moved from Michigan to Oakland in July, 2018, and restored for display purposes by Diversified Rail Services, Inc. While this engine was never actually used on the B&O Railroad line, once it was moved to Oakland, a town rich in B&O history, a decision was made to adopt it as a B&O engine. In researching the history of B&O steam engines, it was determined that Engine #76 most closely resembles the B&O class E-39 steam engines in certain respects, including wheel configuration, driver diameter, cylinder bore/stroke, gross tonnage, and operating boiler pressure. Also the B&O engines of that era were assigned numbers in the “400” series. So the number 476 was chosen for the adopted engine, employing the number 4 from its original identity, and the number 76 which it carried for most of its working life. The Oakland B&O Museum is pleased to have had the opportunity to preserve this piece of railroad history for future generations.