Given that Richard Napper published a very nice article today in The Meteor, volume 1, number 4, dealing with the Frisco "Santa Fe type" 2-10-2's, numbered SLSF 1-60 - known widely as the "spot" engines, I felt it might be useful to also post the SLSF diagrams of these interesting steam locomotives. These diagrams were given to me years ago by Don Wirth, who has agreed to have them posted to frisco.org. Thanks, Don. These "spot" engines reflect the railroad philosophy of the early 1900's - have locomotives for freight service that have the power and tractive effort to pull everything in the yard down the road to the next destination. Speed was not a concern - raw tonnage was. Given that task, the "spots" were successful - they could pull. But, they had problems - they were horribly slow (35 MPH), they wore out the fireman trying to keep the steam up, they had small tenders with coal and water capacities that required frequent stops, and - worst of all, they were track destroyers. Their long wheelbase continually wanted to spread out the rails on curves (even with a blind center driver), and at speed, they beat up the rails horribly from all their resulting dynamic pounding. But, in the long run, they were somewhat successful - they did their assigned job while they were mainline locomotives, and, at the end of their service lives, several were the basis for the very successful rebuilds in the SLSF Springfield shops into the terrific SLSF 4300 and SLSF 4400 class 4-8-2 Mountain types. In addition, two of the "spots" - SLSF 19 and SLSF 40, were put in service in the early days of the Fort Leonard Wood branch hauling U.S. Army traffic from Newburg through Bundy Junction down to the fort. That must have been quite a sight seeing these big fellows on the curvy, up and down and around, Ft Wood branch line! Attached are three diagrams for the Frisco 2-10-2 locomotives: o SLSF 1-60 from 1920, showing these locomotives in essentially their as-built setup o SLSF 1-60 from 1930, showing these locomotives after some modifications, but not including the addition of booster engines, which most were eventually fitted with o SLSF 19 & SLSF 40, the Ft Wood engines, which reflect the final version of these 2-10-2's, including the addition of a Franklin booster engine on the trailing truck. Enjoy these as you read Richard's interesting article in The Meteor, v1, #4, issued today. Ken
