Once again, for this first posting in the month of May, I’m featuring a photograph from the 1986 calendar published by the Louisiana State Railroad Museum, it being for their month of May. I’ve paraphrased the caption for the image below.

“Hard working six coupled #236 of the Illinois Central Railroad is busy shunting boxcars in this May 1950 action shot. The little product of Pittsburg (1913) locomotive construction is blowing smoke and cinders of a coal burner, at the New Orleans riverfront. (Photo from the collection of Harold K. Vollrath)”

The “Pittsburg (1913) locomotive construction” referred to above is actually the Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works, a railroad equipment manufacturing company founded by Andrew Carnegie and T.N. Miller in 1865. By 1901 Pittsburgh had merged with seven other manufacturing companies to form the American Locomotive Company (ALCO). In March 1919, ALCO closed the Pittsburgh facility.

A lowly little switcher like this rarely gets noticed. But they have character also, and I like seeing images of the less glamorous side of railroading. I was able to unearth only a bit of information about this little 0-6-0. Built in 1913, she had 51″ drivers, and her boiler fed 170 psi steam to a pair of 21″ x 26″ cylinders. This produced 32,487 lbs of tractive effort. At some point she appears to have spent a little time in the road’s Paducah Shops as evidenced by the twin squared sand domes and a bit of modernization of her appliances.