Built in 1906 by Alco’s Cooke Works in Patterson, NJ, this Mogul type (2-6-0) locomotive started life as Isthmian Canal Commission #278, one of one hundred built at the Cooke Works for the ICC at a cost of $11,307 each. The ICC was set up in 1904 to oversee the construction of the Panama Canal in the early years of American involvement, and these 2-6-0s were the workhorses of the diggings. After the Canal was completed in 1914, the ICC was dissolved and #278 appears to have been acquired by the
Equitable Equipment Company, a scrap dealer based in New Orleans, LA.
The canal construction railway had been built to a 5' gauge, so #278 must have been regauged before being sold to the
Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad in 1921, where it was renumbered #10.
#10 weighs 124,500 lbs, 112,500 lbs on its 54” drivers. With
19” x 24” cylinders, it operated at a boiler pressure of 180 psi, delivering 24,545 lbs tractive effort. The tender weighs 97,000 lbs light and has an 8 ton coal and 4,000 gallon watercapacity.
The Dardanelle & Russellville Railway was chartered in 1883. After reorganisation in 1900, operations continued as the Dardanelle & Russellville Railroad.
When originally constructed, the railroad carried cotton and other agricultural products. The predominant traffic shifted to coal by 1900,
thanks to extensive semi-anthracite coal production along the railroad. Coal production along the D&R ended in the mid-1950s when the last underground mines of McAlester Fuel Company were closed.
The D&R was also a leader in the trend for railroads to branch into other transportation modes, owning a highway subsidiary from 1919-1960. The highway subsidiary, Dardanelle Transfer Company, operated both bus and truck service over an expanded territory much larger than was served by the railroad itself.
#10 was retired in 1956, sold to the Shreveport Civitan Club the following year and donated to the City of Shreveport, LA, in 1958. It is on display in Ford Park along with, right, a rather decrepit fire engine.
