I actually posted the 71" in a post over on Classic Trains a couple of months ago, but yes, I got it in a fact-check on steamlocomotive.com and yes, I remembered it from many years ago as 69". I am not much of a GN fan so don't know if there might have been cheating up to a slightly larger pre-wear tire diameter as was done on some of the PRR J-1s (to 70") which is similarly confusing to document.
Don't get me wrong though, it's a great site. Just when it's trying to cover as broad a topic as North American steam locomotives, unfortunately errors are guaranteed to appear here and there.
Some of it is well off the mark though, so it's best to not take it as a definitive source but rather as a jumping off point to deeper research. Here's one such offender that has long annoyed me.
https://www.steamlocomotive.com/survivors/recent-losses.php
Union Pacific alone entered 1960 with 86 steam locomotives still officially on their roster, 50+ of which were scrapped in the end.
Toss in stuff like the NKP, N&W, Illinois Central, C&O, and so on and I imagine many hundreds of steamers have met the torch in the US since the 1950's ended. I imagine we're looking at 500+. Toss in Canada and Mexico and we're probably looking at thousands.
Leo_Ames The article "The World's Greatest Mikado" from the January 1969 issue of Trains, states 69 inches for the O-7 and O-8 classes. Did you get 71 inches from Steamlocomotive.com? There's a lot of inaccurate details at that resource, as to be expected for a site that attempts to cover as much as it does. I don't know which is accurate, but the article I just read in Trains appears to be written by a source that's very familiar with the subject matter, so I'm inclined to believe they were 69".
The article "The World's Greatest Mikado" from the January 1969 issue of Trains, states 69 inches for the O-7 and O-8 classes.
Did you get 71 inches from Steamlocomotive.com? There's a lot of inaccurate details at that resource, as to be expected for a site that attempts to cover as much as it does.
I don't know which is accurate, but the article I just read in Trains appears to be written by a source that's very familiar with the subject matter, so I'm inclined to believe they were 69".
69" sounds way more right to me. Thanks much. And yeah, that's where I got it. I guess I won't rely on that website so much in the future...
69" will do. # 3380 was an O-7 rebuilt to O-8 specifications. (Drury 2015, p. 181).
I've only been able to find stats for this class on one website. I know the O-8s did some dual purpose hauling, but did they really have 71" driving wheels? That sounds too big.
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