Similar enough to the B&O P-3 class to work. B&O operated 30 class P-3 engines in passenger service. Built by Baldwin in 1913 and numbered 5100-5129. All dependencies are available from Ben Neal's website, Subpar Productions (www.steammachine.com/bdaneal). Built by American Locomotive Company in January 1910 for the Florida East Coast. This locomotive, numbered 80 on the FEC, was one of 89 nearly identical light Pacifics built for the road between 1907 and 1922. These Pacifics, while light, were sufficient for the flat FEC, and served on passenger trains for many decades. With increasing train weight due to heavyweight passenger cars during the 1920s and 1930s, the class was displaced by Mountain types, and the Pacifics were reassigned to secondary trains and branch lines.
However, there were far too many of the class in service, and forty-nine of them were sold off to various smaller roads across the Southeastern USA, primarily in the state of Georgia. The Savannah & Atlanta Railway bought a trio during 1935 and 1936, with the first, FEC 80, receiving the number 750. On the S&A, like most lines receiving the FEC Pacifics, the engines were used as dual purpose locomotives. The only photograph of the locomotive with a train on the S&A that this author could find shows 750 on the point of a freight or mixed train in Camak, Georgia. 750 remained on the roster until the S&A donated the locomotive to the Atlanta Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in 1962.
Soon after being donated, the Atlanta Chapter was using 750 on excursions in Georgia. Later in the 1960s, the Southern Railway began leasing 750 for use on excursions. 750, because of its size and the desired train lengths, was often run doubled headed with Southern Railway 630 (2-8-0) during the 1970s. Increasing train lengths in the Southern Steam Program eventually led to 750 being sidelined in favor of larger power. In the mid 1980s, the state of Georgia ran an excursion program called the New Georgia Railroad which featured 750 as the only steam engine until Atlanta & West Point 290 became operational in the early 1990s.
The decades of service eventually caught up with 750, and it last ran in August of 1989. Since that time, S&A 750 has been on display at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Georgia. Due to the wear from its excursion career, it would require much work and money to be restored to operation; while it is not impossible for it to happen, it is extremely unlikely that 750 will operate again.
Baltimore & Ohio P-3 class
Builder: Baldwin
Date of Construction: 1913
Driver Size: 76 inches
Cylinders: 24 by 28 inches
Weight: 248,600 pounds
Boiler Pressure: 210 PSI
Tractive Effort: 38,000 lbs.