Ocklawaha Valley 2-6-0 "Mogul" Locomotives in the USA

Class 12 (Locobase 14961)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 65, pp. 235+. Works number was 53234 in May 1920.

This Ocala, Florida logging road began as the Ocala Northern and had a troubled few years of existence before it collapsed in 1923 (see Locobase 13715). During its brief period as the OV, the railroad returned to Eddystone for another locomotive and chose a logging Mogul of very similar size to the Ten-wheeler it already owned.

The 12 was a wood-burner with a short extension to the firebox and a Rushton Improved cabbage stack. Its tender held three cords of wood.

12 left the Philadelphia area lettered for the OV and bearing BLW property plates, but Baldwin was aware of the shaky financial state of the company. A note in the specs reads in part: [T]o provide for a possible change in financial arrangements, we are to provide [sic] another set of property plates reading: 'Rodman Lumber Company' which are to be drilled to match the BLWS property plates so that a substitution can be made if subsequently arranged and no further drilling will be necessary."

Well, the OV's dissolution came in 1923, but the 12 was only just beginning to serve Florida logging. It was sold to locomotive rebuilder/reseller Georgia Car & Locomotive. GC&L found a buyer in March 1923 in Burton Schwartz Cypress of Perry, which renumbered the engine 18. BSC reorganized as Lee Tidewater and the 18 served the company for 35 years before being sold to the JC Turner Lumber Company of Copeland.

JCTLC ended the 18's working career by selling it in 1962 to the Edaville Railroad in Massachusetts. When they sold it to dealer RL Johnson and George Silcott, the firm sold it to John Thompson, who stored it at his farm in Monee, Ill, hoping to operate it in conjunction with hisThompson Winery.