| With its power up, this mighty, mighty locomotive is once again ready for the task of heading up long strings of coal cars in West Virginia. Originally built in January of 1918 as Seaboard Air Line 2-8-8-2 #506, the SAL found the loco too heavy for many of their tracks and to high maintenance on their limited budget so they sold it to the B&O in 1920 who renumbered BO 7306. In 1923, the loco was rebuilt by the B&O Shops from a compound to a simple-articulated loco, removbed the trailing truck and reclassed BO 2-8-8-0 #7306 as EL-6a. After nearly 32 years of dedicated service, the loco was sold for scrap in May of 1950. Simplified EL-6a specs - 63" drivers, 210 psi boiler pressure, four 25x32" cylinders, engine wt of 492,000 lb and impressive tractive effort of 108,000 lb. This is a photo by Harold Buckley Jr. |