The Original S.R. & R.L. #24

#24 was built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philidelphia USA as works number 51803 and was completed in May 1919. She was built for the 2 foot gauge Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes Railroad in Maine, USA and was the last loco built for that railroad and indeed for any two foot gauge line in the USA. She had 33" drivers, 12" x 16" cylinders and weighed 54,000 lbs. The tender weighed another 37,000 lbs and held 2,000 gallons of water and 3 tons of coal. She cost $15,808.

At work on the S.R. & R. L.

Interestingly, Baldwin made a mistake during her construction and built the tender to wide, misreading 84" as 8' 4". She was delivered to the railroad in this condition and, though it was noticed during her unloading, she went into service with a tender 16" too wide. It was found necessarry to keep the tender pretty full of water, for if the level dropped too low, it's sloshing about had a bad effect on the loco's ride. This continued for several weeks untill July 10th 1919. On this particular day, she was operating a train of pulpwood cars over a trestle bridge whith too little water in the tender when the sloshing of the water caused the tender to de-rail which in turn caused the trestle to collapse. #24 and all her train were de-railed with many of the pulpwood cars being totally wrecked and, although the train crew of five suffered various injuries, thankfully no one was killed. Immediatley after this, the tender was cut down to correct size in the SR&RL work shops and she then performed as well as any of the railroads other loco's.

#24 on shed.

#24 worked the SR&RL untill its closure on the 30th June 1935. In the fall of that year, she was bought by a rail fan - Mr Robert Sawyer - for a reported $250. Mr Sawyer stored it at Mose Ward shed at Phillips, part of the SR&RL for several years. Sadly he never did anything with it and eventually sold it for scrap.