It didn't pull crack passenger trains...it wasn't exceptionally powerful, innovative or otherwise significant...but because Northwestern Steel & Wire of Sterling, IL kept using them as switchers until the early 1980s, twelve of these 0-8-0s survive in preservation (well really only 11, since poor 8305 is probably doomed to rust down to dust by this point) while many classes of mighty 4-8-4s or streamlined Hudsons, Pacifics, and Atlantics are lost to history. |