Train no. KI-2

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Train no. KI-2

Steam Locomotive

Taken on the same morning and in almost the same spot as the previous picture, this one shows an extra east pulling through town behind a dirt-caked L-2, the 2936. The plume in the background indicates, as before, excessive steam pressure on the yard engine, and the 2936 seems to have caught the spirit to some extent - water pump and stoker exhausts, feedwater heater, turbogenerator, and boiler blowdown are all vaporizing. In steam days, the Lafayette yard engine worked two tricks and spent a good part of its time doubling as helper engine. Freights needing assistance on the grades out of the Wabash Valley were usually helped for 3.7 miles east to Altamont and up to 4.5 miles west to Balls. Standard practice was for the yard engine, which was headed east, to doublehead the eastbounds and shove behind the caboose on the westbounds. This meant, of course, that the westbound shove was made backing up. i: There was no place to turn at Lafayette, and the H-5s on the local freights were run through from Indianapolis to Kankakee and vice versa. Crews, after spending the night at Lafayette, simply swapped engines; the eastbound crew usually took the yard engine, leaving the engine which had arrived from Kankakee the previous night for yard service. The freight above, incidentally, had only 38 cars and was able to make the eastbound grade without assistance.

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

2-1/4x3-1/4 neg

Fall, 1955

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4-8-2

487

L-2d

#2936

Alco-Schen

Lafayette, IN