Boston & Albany tank engines

In the late '40s and early '50s the B&A operated a fleet of unique suburban tank engines from South Station in Boston. I know they ran through Brookline and Newton on the Riverside Branch because I occasionally rode behind them. Did they also run at one time to Newton Upper Falls too? Where else did they run on the system? In loop service between Boston and Riverside on the main line? Other branches?

Hi
The B&A Tank engines did run to Milford, Mass , but mainly they did stay within the Boston Loop , usually no futher than Riverside . Which is now Boston's Green Line .Pat.

The 402 made a rare appearance in Palmer on November 11, 1938 to take an excursion up the 50 miles of the Ware River Branch. The trip originated at South Station. This was about 6 weeks after the rehab of the branch after the infamous September hurricane. It added the Ware River combine 773 at Palmer to become a 3-car train up to Winchendon.

In vol 2 of the Images of America sepia colored paperback for Holliston, there is a photo of a 4-6-4T emerging from the Highland St tunnel on the Milford Branch.

Hi
The Boston & Albany tank engines were 4-6-6T's # 400 to # 405 , NOT 4-6-4T tank engines . The Canadian National and the Central RR of New Jersey had those .

The older 300 series engines were 2-6-6Ts.

B&A steam was before my time, but I think it's safe to say that while Boston-Riverside was their main assignment, the tank engines operated on all B&A commuter routes out of South Station at some point in their lives. For example, the 1982 Quadrant Press book Berkshire Days on the B&A by Warren L. Smith (edited by myself, as it happens) has a photo of a 4-6-6T at Saxonville in 1948. The Newton Lower Falls branch, which until 1930 had been electrified and covered by a trolley-like shuttle from Riverside, would have also been a candidate for tankers between 1930 and dieselization roughly twenty years late since they eliminated the need to turn the engine at each end of the short trip.

Where did similar (perhaps identical) New York Central tank engines operate? In the late 1940's I saw tank engines operating on the Harlem Division and as their design permitted they operated bi-directionally. Boston & Albany engines also operated on the Harlem Division. I was a fledgling railfan at the time and my father (not a railfan) and I were surprised to see Boston & Albany locomotives passing through Pleasantville NY on the New York Central since at the time neither of us knew that it was a NYC property.

Bill O'Connell
MP 37
CSX Peninsula Subdivision

As B&A steam disappeared before my time, my only connection was seeing 300 and 400 series locomotives at the Pioneer Valley Live Steamers in Southwick, MA back in the early 1960s, one of each. They were on the "high" line which IIRC they were either 3/4 or 1 inch scale. My hat is off to the craftsmen that custom built those locomotives so we of the postwar generation could get at least a little taste of the action.
I wonder what ever happened to those locomotives.

Highly doubtful that B&A "tank" engines operated on the Harlem Division in the 40s-50s. There were a number of B&A Hudsons fitted with short tenders, in order that they'd fit the N. White Plains turntable. At a glance, those short B&A-lettered tenders behind a large 4-6-4 may have given the appearance of the larger class of B&A "tank" engine.

Hi CVRA7
The casting for the model of B&A tankers can still be had , from Friends Models , in 3/4" scale . I am a member of Waushakum Live Steamers . One of our members is currently working on a B&A
# 300 . The engine is almost complete except for the plumbing , for the injector , steampump, and axlepump on the locomotive , hopefully the locomotive will be on the Hi-line at the track in the near future . Pat WLS .

H.F. Malone,

It may not have been a B&A tank engine that I saw on the Harlem but it was definitely a tank engine. It pulled into Pleasantville trailing a southbound commuter train and was operating in reverse which immediately caught my attention as well as that of my father. We looked at each other with a "what the h... is that look" having never seen a tank engine before. It was not a Hudson with small tender because even at the tender age of twelve or so I knew what a tender was and this engine had no tender. Back then, and continuing today in the diesel era, I never merely glance at locomotive, but always take a long appreciative look.

Bill O'Connell

You were there, I wasn't quite thought of yet....!!!!