Page #25 - Ron Nixon's Northern Pacific Locomotives

Class B (650-671) 4-4-0 Standard. Total built 22. Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1887.


The 4-4-0 American Standard is the locomotive that built America. No other single piece of machinery has done more for the country. Designed and first built by William Mason in the 1850s, the Standard outmoded all previous designs of motive power and remained basically the standard until steam was replaced. Even the last dual-service Northerns were nothing more than two Standards placed back to back. built every western railroad. It was two Standards that touched pilots completing the first transcontinental, Union Pacific, more than a century ago. The "General" of Civil War fame was a Standard. Famous 999 of the New York Central which set a speed record of 112 miles per hour in 1893 was a Standard.

NP had more than 400 of them. Here No. 666 stands in the Union Depot yards at St. Paul in July, 1934, ready to take a train to Stillwater.

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