{"id":4224,"date":"2025-05-04T09:22:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T14:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/?p=4224"},"modified":"2025-05-04T09:22:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T14:22:39","slug":"a-lowly-illinois-central-switcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/2025\/05\/04\/a-lowly-illinois-central-switcher\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lowly Illinois Central Switcher"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Once again, for this first posting in the month of May, I\u2019m featuring a photograph from the 1986 calendar published by the Louisiana State Railroad Museum, it being for their<\/em> month of May. I\u2019ve paraphrased the caption for the image below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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)”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “Pittsburg (1913) locomotive construction” referred to above is actually the Pittsburgh Locomotive and Car Works<\/em>, 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<\/em> (ALCO). In March 1919, ALCO closed the Pittsburgh facility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"IC<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2033 drivers, and her boiler fed 170 psi steam to a pair of 21\u2033 x 26\u2033 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, for this first posting in the month of May, I\u2019m featuring a photograph from the 1986 calendar published by the Louisiana State Railroad Museum, it being for their month of May. I\u2019ve paraphrased the caption for the image … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photos-i-like","category-railfanning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4224"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4230,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions\/4230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lacentralrr.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}