Item #7512
14"x17" original painting, mixed media, matted and framed. Signed lower right. 1989. The Chesapeake and Ohio's last steam locomotive was ordered in 1948 from the Baldwin Locomotive Works. As it turned out the Number 1309 and nine other engines were the last steam engines constructed for domestic use by Baldwin. It is intriguing to consider that the Number 1309 and its brothers were near exact duplicates of a series of C&O Mallets that were designed in 1910. These were slow, lumbering 2-6 + 6-2 engines, that true to the name Mallet, used their steam twice as compound engines and were articulated (the lead engine was hinged and could swing around tight curves).
The Baldwin Locomotive Works constructed over 75,000 locomotives in its lifetime that spanned from 1831 to 1956! Yet in its final throws of 1948 the last order was hardly exotic! The 1300 class of steam engines were assigned where others couldn't go ... the mine fields of West Virginia and Kentucky. The Number 1309 was the last of 175 engines of the 2-6 + 6-2 wheel arrangement on the C&O.
It is September 1949 as Baldwin's last built U.S. steam engine, also the C&O's last reciprocating steam engine, stands outside the Eddystone scale house at the Baldwin Locomotive Works. The shop crew poses with pride, yet they probably suspect that there won't be any more like the 1309. By the way, the Numbers 1308 and 1309 have been preserved.
