Long Island 2-8-0 "Consolidation" Locomotives in the USA

Class H-51a (Locobase 9484)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 25, p. 180. See alsoAngus Sinclair (ed), "Baldwin Simple Consolidation for the Long Island Railroad," Railway and Locomotive Engineering, August 1903, p. 371. Works numbers were 22275-22276 in June 1903.

The article refers to a common alternate nickname for the camelback - the "Mother Hubbard". These low-drivered Consolidations were scrapped March 1928 (155) and December 1930 (154).

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Class H51 (Locobase 2619)

Data from Catalogue Descriptive of Simple and Compound Locomotives built by Brooks Locomotive Works, Dunkirk, NY (Buffalo, NY: Matthew-Northrup Company, 1899). See also "Consolidation Locomotives for the Long Island Railroad", Railroad Gazette, Volume XXXI [31], No. 6 (24 February 1899), p.. 187. Works numbers were 3101-3103 in December 1898. (Builder info from B.Rumary, 25 Kingscombe, Gurney Slade, Radstock, BA3 4TH, ENGLAND and Jeremy Lambert as supplied by Allen Stanley in March 2004.)

If ever a locomotive design got hit in the face with an ugly stick, this Mother Hubbard Consoldation qualifies as a showpiece of unaesthetic iron (or steel) mongery. Using a wide firebox to burn anthracite coal meant exiling the fireman to the rear deck under his own overhang. The engineer rode in a cab that bestrode the barrel over the drivers and ahead of the steam dome.

Locobase has paused to consider what so irked him when he wrote the comment above. No camelback was graceful, so why did this particular effort seem so awkward? He supposes that the quite short boiler barrel ahead of the cab contributed as did the location of the dome over the firebox. It was only in November 2018 that a close look at the cutaway showed the throttle in its own dome within the cab structure. One result of this placement was a very short dry pipe, which arguably kept the steam hotter than usual.

RG, not unreasonably, focused on the technical details. The relatively small Wootten firebox was designed to burn either anthracite or bituminous coal. Given that the wide grate was intended to allow a thinner fire with a softer draft than was usually found in narrower-firebox layouts, Locobase wonders how the harder bituminous coal fared in such an environment. Perhaps the short extension front to the firebox and spark-arresting system, both conceived by J Snowden Bell, offered a good compromise.

The trio remained in Long Island service into the 1920s. They were scrapped in March, May, and September 1928 , respectively.