AT FIRST GLANCE, a PRR J1 2-10-4 looked all Pennsy, with
its high-mounted headlight, keystone number plate, cab-signal
box packed onto the pilot beam, and little design touches on the
cab. But underneath was something else: basically a copy of the
C&O T-1 of 1930, the first design of the Van Sweringen roads’
Advisory Mechanical Committee. Which explains the lack of
the familiar PRR Belpaire boiler. It wasn’t that the WPB decided
PRR should copy the T-1, but given the long lead time to devel-
op its own modern freight engine, the PRR motive power de-
partment decided to use C&O’s design. Pennsy eventually built
125, the largest fleet of Texas types on any railroad. With their
69-inch drivers and 95,000 pounds of tractive force, they were
extremely versatile. And much of that credit, wrote author Wil-
liam L. Withuhn, goes back to the T-1: “Given the keen rivalries
among railroad motive power departments, not to mention the
PRR’s leading role in American locomotive engineering, its choice
of the C&O T-1 was a tribute to the AMC’s design decisions.”Borrowed, but still
unmistakably
Pennsy
Five-year-old PRR 6170, one of 18 J1 engines built
in 1944, walks an eastbound freight up Allegheny
Mountain between Cresson and Gallitzin, Pa., in
- PRR’s J1 fleet constituted nearly one-third of
all North American 2-10-4s. Fred McLeod
Pennsylvania J1 2-10-4