Southern Pacific GS-6 class
class of 10+6 American 4-8-4 locomotives
The Southern Pacific Class GS-6 is a class of semi-streamlined 4-8-4 "Northern" type steam locomotive operated by the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) from 1943 to 1958 and the Western Pacific Railroad (WP) from 1943 to 1953. A total of sixteen were built by the Lima Locomotive Works, numbered 4460 through 4469 by SP and 481 through 486 by WP. GS stands for "Golden State" or "General Service"
History
When the Southern Pacific Railroad placed an order for fourteen new "Daylight" locomotives from Lima in 1943, World War II was raging and the War Production Board restricted what types of locomotives could be manufactured. SP's order was turned down, with the government deciding that streamlined passenger engines were not necessary to move wartime traffic. Southern Pacific re-designed the engines for general service and the order was finally approved.
The smaller and power-starved Western Pacific Railroad was also looking for locomotives at the time and had first requested diesels, then a different style of steam locomotive. The War Production Board instead diverted six GS-6s (reportedly to have been numbered SP 4470-4475) to the WP. SP patented items were not included and the WP requested Franklin boosters be installed, making them slightly different from the SP engines upon delivery. The WP referred to them as GS-64-77s.
The GS-6 looked similar to the GS-2, with a silver smokebox with a cone-shaped single headlight casing and 73-inch (1.854 m) drivers. Like all GS engines, they had teardrop classification lights and an air horn to supplement their whistle. They retained the skyline casing on the top of the boiler but did not have the side skirting of previous GS locomotives.
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This entry incorporates text from “Southern Pacific GS-6 class” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.