The PRR, famously, rented a number of big ATSF 2-10-4 in the summer of 1956, to help move ore from the Cleveland docks. What was going on?
Nowadays, when the locomotive fleets of all the big North American railroads are dominated by the same small number of models from GE and EMD, there are no problems in renting another railroad's units if you need to(*), but things were different with steam. I can think of at least two reasons why it might have been ... complicated ... for PRR to use Santa Fe's big engines. (i) Santa Fe's engines had larger driving wheels than PRR's (74" vs 69"), and so a slightly longer rigid wheelbase: somebody surely worried at least a bit about how they would cope with PRR's switches and yard trackage. (ii) Santa Fe's locomotives were oil burners and (though I think PRR may have converted a few locomotives to oil firing during a prolonged post WW II coal strike) PRR would have had to make special arrangements to fill their tenders. (Oil fired steam locomotives don't burn diesel fuel but a heavier "bunker" oil, so they couldn't just be sent to the diesel facility to refuel.)
So it couldn't have been a casual matter: there must have been a strong reason for renting Santa Fe's engines.
But PRR itself was not much more than a year away from full dieselization! They must have had yards full of their own idle steam locomotives. So why rent? Had they already scrapped (or at least deferred repairs on) enough of their own J1 2-10-4 that they didn't have any spare when the ore business boomed?
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(*) PRR, of course, was a pioneer here: noticing that the busy season on their lines wasn't at the same time as the Maine potato harvest, PRR for several years leased a bunch of Bangor & Aroostook geeps for part of the year.
Nowadays, when the locomotive fleets of all the big North American railroads are dominated by the same small number of models from GE and EMD, there are no problems in renting another railroad's units if you need to(*), but things were different with steam. I can think of at least two reasons why it might have been ... complicated ... for PRR to use Santa Fe's big engines. (i) Santa Fe's engines had larger driving wheels than PRR's (74" vs 69"), and so a slightly longer rigid wheelbase: somebody surely worried at least a bit about how they would cope with PRR's switches and yard trackage. (ii) Santa Fe's locomotives were oil burners and (though I think PRR may have converted a few locomotives to oil firing during a prolonged post WW II coal strike) PRR would have had to make special arrangements to fill their tenders. (Oil fired steam locomotives don't burn diesel fuel but a heavier "bunker" oil, so they couldn't just be sent to the diesel facility to refuel.)
So it couldn't have been a casual matter: there must have been a strong reason for renting Santa Fe's engines.
But PRR itself was not much more than a year away from full dieselization! They must have had yards full of their own idle steam locomotives. So why rent? Had they already scrapped (or at least deferred repairs on) enough of their own J1 2-10-4 that they didn't have any spare when the ore business boomed?
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(*) PRR, of course, was a pioneer here: noticing that the busy season on their lines wasn't at the same time as the Maine potato harvest, PRR for several years leased a bunch of Bangor & Aroostook geeps for part of the year.
