Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/224

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198
Frank B. Gill

employing from one hundred to one hundred and fifty hands, for this, the first locomotive built upon the Pacific Coast, first too, to be used north of the California-Oregon state line. The builders operated a brass and iron foundry, built steam engines and boilers and made and sold mill and mining machinery. The little locomotive which was shortly followed by two others of similar construction, but somewhat larger, turned out by the same manufacturer on an order from the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, was built upon unconventional lines. All three of the engines appear to have been designed by C. W . Stevens, of San Francisco, of whom the writer has not been able to learn much; it would be interesting to know what led him to depart from the lines generally followed by American locomotive builders for some fifteen or twenty years previously—the accepted model still in 1924. Charles W. Stevens designed a steam locomotive for use on street railways which was tried out in San Francisco in 1877,<ref>San Francisco Alta, September 20, 1877.</ref ut otherwise is perhaps unknown to fame.

Those mechanically inclined will be interested in the following data regarding the old locomotive which fortunately has been preserved. These data furnished by the Mechanical Department of the Union Pacific System which is taking care of the pioneer relic for the State of Oregon, its present owner, refer to the engine in its present state, which the writer believes to be substantially altered from its original design. The "Pony" as it has always been called, must have been designed to burn wood, and must therefore have had a large provision of space for that fuel. The fire box has evidently been altered to burn coal, and the tender reduced in size at the same time. That the tender of the diminutive locomotive is smaller than it must have been originally is evident also from the account given hereinafter in the words of the man who ran the engine on the Oregon Portage Railroad, as it would be impossible to place seven men in the tender