Steamscape: The view from Big Horn Peak. Looking down from the northern slope of Big Horn Peak, on the Colorado/New Mexico Border, we watch as Eureka & Palisade #4 and Carson & Tahoe Lumber & Fluming Co. #1 take a short mixed train eastbound, around the sweeping curve at MP 299.7 on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad at a special event in August of 2021. Although this operation is not at all historical for this line or this place, it does re-create a scene not seen in the US in perhaps a century or more, that being two ornate, 1870s wood-burning locomotives, double-heading on a link and pin drawbar connection.
By the year 1900, most US railroads had replaced these small locomotives with larger, more powerful Consolidations and 10-Wheelers, and were fueling them with higher BTU-content fuels, such as coal and oil. What remained of this class of locomotive (including these two engines) were typically operating second or third-hand on smaller, local railroads and in most cases, they had been modified significantly and certainly didn't look like these two. If anything like this did occur in the early part of the 20th century, I think the most likely location would have been Nevada's Virginia & Truckee, which is one of the few railroads that chose to hold on to 4-4-0 and 2-6-0s from the late 1800s, that were considered ancient relics by that time. But even the V&T had removed the link-and-pin drawbars from these locomotives by 1905 and replaced them with knuckle couplers. They had also begun conversion of most of the wood-burners to oil firing. So although the V&T did still double-head some of its original locomotives well into the 20th Century, it probably didn't look like this much past about 1905. The event seen here truly was one for the ages, and sadly, due to the significant cost, one not likely to be repeated soon.
