As I’m sure was the case for many Southern Pacific modelers, the recent announcement by Broadway Limited Imports (BLI) of new HO scale locomotive models of the Boston & Maine Berkshires was of interest. These engines ran for almost 20 years on the B&M, their original purchaser, but in the summer of 1945, both SP and Santa Fe each bought ten of these locomotives from the B&M.
Why did the two roads make these purchases? The War Department had warned both railroads that with the concluding of the war in Europe, there would be heavy traffic across the U.S., transferring men, supplies and equipment from the European Theater to the Pacific, in preparation for what was expected to be a major campaign invading the home islands of Japan. Thus both railroads went out to acquire additional locomotives. That the atomic bomb would end World War II was, of course, not yet known.
The BLI announcement includes locomotives decorated for both SP and Santa Fe, two engine numbers for each railroad. Below I show the BLI artwork for the SP models. They included the smaller “Southern Pacific Lines” lettering on one engine because when the engines arrived on SP rails in August 1945, that was the official paint scheme. SP changed to the larger lettering and eliminated “Lines” in June 1946.
Both tenders shown by BLI are the original B&M coal tenders, and indeed the SP locomotives were initially operated with those tenders, exclusively on the Rio Grande Division, SP’s only coal-fired division at that time. But in subsequent years, all ten engines were converted to oil fuel and migrated to California in the spring and summer of 1950. So my first thought was, could I use one of these distinctive locomotives on my layout?
Below I will describe some of the research I did to answer that question. In doing so, I don’t intend to praise or criticize the models themselves, and my goal is only to show the kind(s) of research that is possible with the sources we have. I certainly don’t wish to suggest what anyone else’s purchasing decision should be.
First, it’s worth remembering that these B&M Berkshires were part of the “Superpower” revolution at Lima Locomotive, brainchild of designer Will Woodard, and were capable of impressive horsepower in freight service. Built in 1928, perhaps the main criticism of them would be their retention of Lima’s articulated trailing truck design, something that found favor with few buyers of Lima power.
Second, let’s look at one of these Berkshires soon after SP arrival. (Allan Youell photo at El Paso, 1947, courtesy Guy Dunscomb). Here the very distinctive Coffin feedwater heater on the boiler front stands out (standard SP practice was to paint the entire boiler front aluminum, which is obvious here). The locomotive also still has its B&M trailing truck booster, alligator crosshead, and Baker valve gear. SP had applied train indicators, which BLI has included on the SP models, and blowdown spreaders, which I don’t see in the BLI artwork.
All ten engines remained pretty much like this on the Rio Grande Division from their arrival in August 1945 until the fall of 1949, when they began to be converted to oil fuel and of course given oil tenders. Exact dates and locations of these changes can be found in the Steam Locomotive Compendium (Timothy Diebert and Joe Strapac, Shade Tree Books, 1987).
So the first conclusion about using one of the BLI models is that until the fall of 1949, they ran only on the Rio Grande Division on account of being coal fired. It wasn’t merely unlikely that they would be seen elsewhere on the SP in that period, it was effectively impossible.
So how did these engines look when they had oil tenders? Below I show SP 3500, in a G.M. Best photo at Los Angeles in late 1949. The engine had its oil conversion at El Paso in September, and here it is in California, looking freshly painted. SP preferred multiple-bearing crossheads and Walschaerts valve gear, and any engine not already so equipped was modified. Those two big cylindrical things on the pilot beam are shields over the air pumps. And notice the dry pipe along the top of the boiler, from the superheater in the smokebox to the turret. Booster has been removed.
The tender tank, the upper part of the tender body, is from a retired 4000-series articulated, but it was placed on the original B&M tender frame, and the B&M trucks retained. The reason was to preserve the original arrangement of the drawbar between the engine’s articulated trailing truck, and the tender. For more on this, see Southern Pacific Steam Pictorial, Volume II (Guy L. Dunscomb, Donald K. Dunscomb, and Robert A. Pecotich, Dunscomb Publishing, 1999).
At this point, a second conclusion about the BLI models is that if you want to operate them on a California layout, they need to have oil tenders. It would be an interesting and not impossibly difficult project to built a semi-cylindrical or “whaleback” tender body and put it on the frame and trucks of the BLI models. But this would be getting far beyond an out-of-the-box model, and replacing crossheads and valve gear for the low-numbered engines offered by BLI, even more so.
Apparently records aren’t clear about which engines lost their boosters and when, but at least three did (boosters were out of favor at SP by this time, and many SP locomotives that had been built with boosters lost them in late steam days). Eventually all the engines also lost the prominent Coffin feedwater heaters, which very dramatically changed their appearance (Santa Fe also replaced those heaters.) Below is shown SP 3504, photographed by Guy Dunscomb at Modesto, California in April 1950.
Where did these engines operate after they came to California in 1950? I happen to have an SP Locomotives Assigned pamphlet for March 31, 1950. At that time, all ten of the Berkshires remained in service, but only two were still on Rio Grande Division, SP 3506 and 3509. All the others had been assigned to the San Joaquin Division.
So a third point to be made is that the Berkshires were assigned to Jan Joaquin Division, and we know they remained there until they began to be scrapped. The strict meaning of this is that you would only want one of these engines if you model San Joaquin Division, but in fact engines did sometimes run through on other divisions, or have break-in runs after shopping on other than their home division, so one could stretch the geographic restriction to some extent. Since I model Coast Division, some rationale like that would have to be applied.
Lastly, as batch after batch of EMD F units continued to arrive on SP in 1950 and beyond, more and more steam freight power became surplus, especially “oddballs” like the Berkshires. All the Berkshires were vacated from the roster between the late fall of 1950 and mid-summer 1951 (individual dates are in Diebert & Strapac).
Thus my fourth and final point is that these distinctive locomotives were gone from the SP by August 1951. I model 1953, so it would require more than a small time warp for me to operate a BLI Berkshire. I’m still kind of tempted, but I would certainly have to face up to removing the Coffin feedwater heater and buying or building a tender, not trivial projects.
But as I already remarked, I am not trying to tell anyone else what to think about these models. Particularly those with the “collector” itch (something I suffer from myself) may find these hard to resist.
Tony Thompson
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