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Discussion relating to the PRR, up to 1968. Visit the PRR Technical & Historical Society for more information.
 #1641766  by arthur d.
 
I was just presented a nice, mounted color photo of locomotive 4233. Judging from the auto's in the background, looks like early, or mid '50s. I'm not having much luck with rosters. Would anyone here know the build date and disposition of this particular engine?
 #1641815  by toddsyr
 
Don't know what happened to it but according to:

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPi ... ?id=236460

it was built in June of 1923.
 #1641865  by AllenPHazen
 
Build date is easy: 475 of the PRR's 598 2-10-0 engines were built in a single order by Baldwin in 1923 (I think all in 1923, but a few may have been in 22 or 24), and yours is one of these. (They were numbered in a single consecutive block.). So Toddsyr is right about the birthday. (The one I1s which has been preserved -- it's at a railway museum near Buffalo -- is thus one of your engine's "sisters": the 4483.)
Date of retirement... I don't know of a source for the retirement dates of individual PRR locomotives. But all 598 I1s were still on the roster in 1947 (the majority by then converted to I1sa -- revised valve gear -- but over a hundred still in original form), and some were among the last PRR steam locomotives in use (PRR ended steam operations in 1957). So early 1950s would have been late in the locomotive's career, but I can't help you narrow down the retirement beyond that. Sorry.
--
(In the 1970s, when I was a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, the 4483 was "mounted" on a display track outside the Wabco -- Westinghouse Air Brake: still in the locomotive business! -- headquarters in a suburb of Pittsburgh, within sight of the ex-PRR main line. I visited it a couple of times, and so it's one of my favourite locomotives.)
 #1641866  by AllenPHazen
 
(Toddsyr's first link is a LOTmore helpful Han I was able to be! Captions say 4223 was built in 1923, converted to I1sa in 1941 -- I suspect it may have spent much of the depression in storage, and that PRR had a crash program to upgrade its locomotives when WW II hit -- and retired in December 1957. And one of the photos, showing it in steam, is dated to May 1957. So "your" I1 was one of the last PRR star locomotives in service, in the last year of steam.)
 #1642190  by arthur d.
 
APH and Toddsyr: thank you both for the information. I was not having any luck finding a roster for a build date, and not knowing what the road number range was, I wasn't sure if it was a Baldwin product or one of Pennsy's own. I suspected that it had been upgraded to I1sa but wasn't going to assume. Studying the photo's in Toddsyrs link, and comparing them to mine, I am certain that the photo I have is the un-shown second photo taken at Sodus Point in 1956.
Again, thank you both.
 #1642203  by toddsyr
 
You're welcome. Be sure to bookmark that webpage. Ya never know what information you may find there.