Cwrw Croyw

By cwrwcroyw

Steamy No 29

This old steam engine sits outside Gulf Canada Square in Calgary. I walked past it as I visited the dentist today (ouch)

To quote the website:

The Standard- or American-type 4-4-0 locomotive chosen to proudly represent the Canadian Pacific Railway in front of its new head office wasn't picked by happenstance. Truly representative of its era, 90 per cent of the locomotives used to open up the West in the 1880s were built to the same tried-and-true 4-4-0 wheel arrangement as this 1887 locomotive.
And locomotive 29 is one of the earliest CPR company-built locomotives still in existence today. Nearly one-third of the CPR's steam era fleet were built in the Company's own shops. Of the over 3,200 steam locomotives the Company owned and operated between 1881 and 1960, 1,056 were built by the CPR.
Locomotive 29 also has the unique distinction of being the last CPR-operated steam locomotive to close out the railway's steam era, Nov. 6, 1960 -- one day shy of the Company's 75th anniversary of the driving of the last spike.
Costing little more than $7,000 to build in 1887 at CPR's "New Shops" on DeLorimier Street, Montreal, the locomotive originally carried No. 390 and was renumbered 217 in 1908. In 1913, one of the first locomotives to be fitted with superheaters, it was extensively modified to its current configuration and numbered 29.
Enough said.

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