I know export orders continued into at least 1955 with the company optimistic of robust orders for several more years.
What ended up being last?
OK, maybe it's just me at the end of a rough day toward the end of a rough week, but my mind's a blank. I know Baldwin, Alco, Lima, Porter, but who's CLC?
Canadian Locomotive Company
They were located in Kingston, Ontario. They built many of Canada's steam locomotives, built export locomotives for many years (Including steam well past after Canadian railroads had stopped ordering steam), and were the Canadian licensee for Fairbanks Morse.
The only surviving Train Master and C-Liners are CLC built, for instance. Earlier, they were the Canadian builder of Baldwin and Whitcomb products. I think they also designed their own diesel switcher design at one time and constructed and supported Davenport and Porter designed industrial switchers for the Canadian market. Closed at the end of the 1960's.
The reason for this was a story in a 1955 issue of Trains showing some nice looking streamlined 4-6-2 steam locomotives being built at Kingston for India (On the same production lines building diesels with several C-Liners in view in the pictures) with the story stating that they expected healthy demand for new steam for the export market to last for years.
Look for the book titled "Constructed in Kingston". It has a lot of info about CLC up to the end. They may have been building steam for export into the early 1960s.
The CLC site is now being developed into condos, if that hasn't happened already.
Since Baldwin was building steam locomotives for export (mostly to India) as late as 1954-1955, I would think that CLC was doing the same thing to about the same dates.
For what it's worth dept. Here is a link about the CLC and includes photographs of some of its Locomotives, Steam and Diesel ( linked near bottom of article:
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CLC/history.htm
and this linked site as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Locomotive_Company#Representing_American_manufacturers
According to "Constructed in Kingston", an order for 120 (yes 120) 4-6-2 Pacific type locomtoives for the Indian Railways. Class WP # 7516-7635 with 5' 6"gauge
They were ordered in March 1954 and shipped starting in March 1955 through September 1956.
Interestingly, the boilers came from MLW for assembly in Kingston.
Thanks
Looks like their optimism was misplaced as they were constructing this order since it indeed ended up being their last for new steam.
i took a slide of two of these last CLC pacifics for india sitting on flatcars in the montreal yards,first week of june 1956. i was told they were waiting for a ship. i must have spent too much time in the freight yards; she married someone else! -arturo PS i did marry her 9 years later; our son's a BNSF hogger and we have great-grandchildren.
March 14 1949 was the date of the last delivery of standard gauge steam to a Canadian railway. CP's Selkirk 5935 left the MLW shops that day.
So steam production was already finished at CLC by that point, with only the export orders for steam.
By the summer of 1960 all steam was gone in Canada. But 5935 survived.
CPR 5935 is preserved at Exporail (Canadian Railway Museum), St. Constant, QC. having been disposed of by the CPR in March 1963.
Isambard
Grizzly Northern history, Tales from the Grizzly and news on line at isambard5935.blogspot.com
To Isambard (are you the great Mr. Brunel in disguise?) : What a beautiful machine! You should shoot that photo over the the "Locomotive Esthetics) thread. I mean, that locomotive positively GLOWS and shows pure class! Just what you'd expect from the CPR.
That fellow leaning on 5935 claims to be Isambard, but compare with this photo of the real Isambard Kingdom Brunel. :)
And a real "hands-on" guy he must have been! Look at his trouser legs and shoes.
I have the book Constructed in Kingston and as the one poster responded, the last steam was shipped in September 1956.
Here is a list of steam orders from 1948 until the end of steam production in 1956.
30 4-6-2 for the CPR, April to August 1948
60 2-8-2 for India, October 1948 to February 1949
80 4-6-2 for India, May 1949 to February 1950. These were the last steam built using CLC made boilers and castings. From then on MLW supplied the boilers and freight car builder CC&F the castings.
10 2-8-2 for India, April 1950. Metre gauge,
6 4-8-2 for Brazil. November and December 1950. These had MLW builders plates!
120 4-6-2 India, March 1955 to September 1956.
An advertisement from 1960 shows that CLC was still willing to build steam, although after 1956 no more were ever made.
They were actually willing and able to build nearly anything at various times in their history and made mining equipment, scrap yard car crushers and even golf carts and fibreglass boats.
Interestingly to, they built locomotives under license from all these builders: FM, Baldwin (production planned but they became a distributor only), Westinghouse, Heisler, Whitcomb, Porter, and Davenport.
The plant was tiny, and yet they produced an amazing stream of products.
betamax March 14 1949 was the date of the last delivery of standard gauge steam to a Canadian railway. CP's Selkirk 5935 left the MLW shops that day. So steam production was already finished at CLC by that point, with only the export orders for steam. By the summer of 1960 all steam was gone in Canada. But 5935 survived.
The Syndey and Louisburg Railway in nova Scotia operated steam locomotives until 1966. The last steam locomotive in regular service on CP pulled into Windsor station in Montreal for the last time in November 1960.
Regarding the last mainline steam locomotives ever built in Canada for Canadian railway use, Omer Lavallée's authoritative book on CPR steam locomotives ("Canadian Pacific Steam Locomotives", Railfare, 1985) mentions, on pg.202, that after completing, in March 1949, the last CPR 2-10-4 ordered the previous year, Montreal Locomotive Works completed an order of six narrow-gauge 2-8-2s later that same year for the Newfoundland Railway and Mr.Lavallée considered the latter as being the last new steam locomotives to be built for use in Canada.
However a point for the last standard gauge steam locomotives "built" for Canadian service could be made for a batch of 65 Class N2 2-8-0 Consolidations MLW built for CPR in the early 1900's which it rebuilt, under a CPR contract, into Class P1n Mikados, the last of these being outshopped in Dec. 1949 (ref: same book pgs. 202 & 331). This is the very point made by D.M.Bain and D.R.Philips on pg. 5 of their 1990 BRMNA book titled "Canadian Pacific in the West" Vol.1. Going from 2-8-0s to 2-8-2s with new high-pressure boilers and lengthened frames looks indeed to be major work to me!
Collectors' Item 1 by Omar Lavallee states The T-1-c numbers 5930 - 35 were built by Montreal Locomotive Works - - MLW in 1949. This type of locomotive was referred to by Americans as "Texas" types. 5935 was withdrawn from service in March, 1959, most of 5935's working life was spent on the prairies on the Brooks subdivision between Calgary and Medicine Hat and even made a trip to Moose Jaw where it had to be turned on the wye as it was too big for the turntable, what a site as a child!
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