Puneet Varma (Editor)

USATC S118 Class

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Power type
  
Steam

UIC class
  
1′D1′ h2

Configuration
  
2-8-2

USATC S118 Class

Builder
  
American Locomotive Company (338), Baldwin Locomotive Works (253+33), Davenport Locomotive Works (67+6), H.K. Porter, Inc. (25+5), Vulcan Iron Works (58+8)

Build date
  
1942–1945 (for USATC), 1945–1948 (copies)

Total produced
  
741 for USATC, 52 copies

The United States Army Transportation Corps (USATC) S118 Class is a class of 2-8-2 steam locomotive. Built to either 3 ft (914 mm), 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 38 in) metre gauge or 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge, they were used in at least 24 different countries across the World.

Contents

741 were built in the period late 1942–1945 with a further 52 appearing between 1945 and 1948. They were built by Baldwin (253+33), Alco (338), Porter (25+5), Davenport (67+6) and Vulcan (58+8) in the United States. The first thirty were numbered 3000–3029, with subsequently locomotives numbered 130–249, and 257–889. Locomotives 640–660 and 789–810 were cancelled.

The S118 class were the most widespread of all the locomotives of the Second World War. The first twenty locomotives (3000–3019) were sent to Nigeria. Eleven, (190–200), were converted to 3 ft (914 mm) gauge by putting 3 in (76.2 mm) wide spacers (rings) between the wheels and the truck side frames on same length axles, and delivered to the White Pass and Yukon Route in Alaska. Twenty (216–235) were delivered to Queensland where they formed the Queensland Railways AC16 Class. Others were sent to North Africa, Gold Coast, Iraq, India, and Burma.

After the war, surplus locomotives were sold to Malaya, the Philippines, Siam, Cambodia, Cameroun, Tanganyika, and the United Fruit Company operations in Costa Rica and Honduras.

Copies

Baldwin built 33 copies for the Indian Railways, Porter built two for the Chemins de Fer des Grands Lacs in the Belgian Congo, Vulcan built a batch of eight for the Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways (SPAP) in Greece (class Δ). Davenport built six with a higher boiler pressure for the Chemin de Fer Franco-Ethiopien de Djibouti á Addis-Ababa.

Survivors

Several S118 locomotives still exist:

References

USATC S118 Class Wikipedia