William Harry recorded this scene of a Texas & Pacific freight train in March of 1951. The train, headed by T&P 2-8-2 #808 followed by water car X25402, was running extra (as evidenced by the white flags), and was heading east in the New Orleans area. According to the comment on this photograph, the T&P had eleven Mikados on their roster, all built by Baldwin in 1919. They were USRA oil burning, light Mikados. An interesting story about the somewhat unusual acquisition of these locomotives may be found at SteamLocomotive.com. There are some details on this locomotive that likely were added by the T&P, the most obvious are the capped stack and the tender’s dog-house.

Some details from the aforementioned website: these locomotives were designated as Class H-2 and were assigned road numbers 800 through 810. They had 63″ diameter drivers, 26″ x 30″ cylinders, a 200 psi boiler pressure and they exerted 54,724 pounds of tractive effort and each weighed 290,000 pounds. They were rebuilt in 1936, with an increase of 2,000 pounds and they were equipped with roller bearings. My notes: I’m speculating that the feed-water heater and twin pilot-mounted air pumps were added during the rebuild.