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| ID # 1,087 |
No. 5244, an 0 5-0 switcher, built in 1916 at the Pennsylvania Railroad's famous Juniata shop in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was the last of nearly 130 years of Pennsy steam engines to remain in service, in her old age she was leased to the Union Transportation Co., an 18.87-mile freight line serving the Fort Dix, New Jersey area. A framed enlargement of this photograph, showing her on a Union Transportation trestle, is hung outside the office of the PRR president in Philadelphia, together with her red-and-gold, keystone-shaped number plate, as a sentimental remembrance of the Steam Age. The Pennsylvania Railroad did more than any other system in the world to develop the steam locomotive. Even after the PRR itself had been completely dieselized, No. 5244 continued to pull trains; but the extreme difficulty of repairing steam locomotives in the Diesel Age made it necessary to scrap her in 1960.
PHOTO BY DAVID PLOWDEN, RAILROAD MAGAZINE
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