Niagara

1945 · New York Central S-Class · Work 14 of 1,871

Niagara, 1945, New York Central S-Class

A New York Central Niagara locomotive on the Hudson river line, clean unadorned boiler and high running board, river cliffs on one side and water on the other.

What it was used for
New York Central expresses between New York and Chicago; twenty-five built, delivered between October 1945 and April 1946.
What was new
Built inside a loading gauge that allowed no steam dome. The boiler had to do without the usual superstructure — a machine whose shape follows from a restriction. Ten years later the entire class had been scrapped: about $248,000 to build one in 1945, about $15,000 as scrap in 1956. Not one survives.