[Attachment(s) from Hol Wagner included below]
I just bought this photo on eBay because it depicts on obviously ex-Q G-9 switcher (its Q number, 1842, is visible on the number plate and headlight number board) now numbered 5 and in use at what is identified on the print as "U.S. Steel & Wire Co." The date of the photo is recorded as Aug. 22, 1948. Company records (and thus Corbin's first book) say the locomotive was retired in October 1948. In addition to that discrepancy, there's the question of where this photo was actually taken. There's no location identified on the print, and an exhaustive Google search turns up no U.S. Steel & Wire Co., only the expected U.S. Steel and Northwest Steel & Wire Co.
Does anybody recognize this scene as being Sterling, Ill., and the Northwest Steel & Wire plant? We know the Q sold many steam locomotives to NWS&W in the 1950s, including several G-5 USRA 0-6-0s that became Sterling plant switchers. And Sterling also used a number of former C&NW and GTW switchers at the plant in the 1950s. That looks a lot like a C&NW 0-6-0 behind the 1842/5. NWS&W began operations at Sterling in 1936 and the Q began selling locomotives for scrap (as opposed to cutting them up itself at Eola or elsewhere) in the years following WWII. So it seems quite probable that retired Q steam locomotives were being sold to NWS&W in the late Forties, and identifying the location of this photo would change the probability into a fact. Of course there's still the discrepancy between the date the Q says the 1842 was retired and the two-month earlier date on which it was photographed . . . Hol
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Posted by: Hol Wagner <holpennywagner@msn.com>
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