Steamscape: Tanglefoot Curve. A Denver & Rio Grande Western freight runs around the Tanglefoot Curve and it runs the last mile of its trek to Cumbres Pass. The road engine this days is DRGW 463, a K-27 Class Mikado built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1903. The helper on the point is a C-18 Class Consolidation type, also built by Baldwin just 8 years earlier. The differences between the two are obvious from just looking at them. The little Consolidation is an inside-frame engine with just 18,000 lbs. of tractive effort. It is very typical of the engines that built this line and ran on it for the first 20 years of its existence. The larger Mikado was the forerunner of several classes of beefy outside-frame engines, with significantly more pulling power. The outside frame enabled the builders to fit these locomotives with larger boilers, which made them much more well-adapted to the task of mountain railroading. The K-27 has nearly 10,000 lbs more pulling power than the little Consolidation.
Interestingly, double-headers are often cooked up for photo run-bys at tourist railroads. Often, they feature very different engines that were from different railroads and different periods, and never could have run together historically. Here's a case of two very different classes of engines, built by the same manufacturer just a few years apart, and which definitely did run together in the early 20th Century.
