Another New Locomotive for the S&C

 

The new locomotive San Andreas sits on the Duck Creek Trestle shortly after arrival.

The past couple of months have been somewhat hectic around the house with little time to work on railroad projects. I have, however, (finally) completed a new locomotive. It is a brass import of unknown manufacture and represents the early class of moguls purchased by the Virginia & Truckee Railroad. Manufactured by Baldwin between 1870 and 1873, the V&T received six identical engines each named for a county or city in the Comstock area. This engine specifically is a model of the first of the run of moguls, the Virginia. 

     I maintained the look of the prototype including the paint colors but lettered it for the Stockton & Copperopolis as its Number 20, the San Andreas. San Andreas is a small town in the Mother Lode country of California and its citizens would naturally take the S&C for their travels. I installed a Tsunami2-Steam 2 decoder and it makes the engine perform very nicely. What it will be doing I have not yet decided but it will undoubtedly be pulling freight of some sort.

     There may be some who question the shiny newness of my locos. In fact, in my period, when specific engineers were assigned to specific locos, they took a great deal of care of them. This not only applied to passenger engines but freight as well. The following clip from a period newspaper shows what I am talking about.

May 22, 1873 - Gold Hill News

A Handsome Locomotive. - The locomotive Esmeralda, attached to a heavy freight train en route for Virginia, to-day halted for a breathing spell at the railroad depot, Gold Hill. With her brasses well burnished and her head lights decorated with wild flowers, she looked as handsome as could be. We don't wonder that Engineer Johnny Elkins is proud of her.

The Esmeralda was one of the sister engines to my engine and was assigned to pull freight trains. My engines, however, don't have the wild flowers. Maybe there's room for more detail?