Sumpter Valley Ry. #19 Through the Lens Of Otto Perry

Rotating through the scanned accessions in our SVRR Archive, this scan from a print was next up and I thought it looked familiar. I compared it to those in a group taken by Otto Perry in 1938 and sure enough it was taken on July 28th at Austin, Or. on the Sumpter Valley Ry. This is of course SVRy #19 that survives today in operation. You can see obvious differences in the appearance of the engine in this shot with how it looks today, but in fact, back in 1938 it had already gone through some upgrades since leaving the factory in 1920. The addition of the Rushton smoke stack is an obvious change along with the addition of a second air pump. Today, #19 more closely resembles how it looked in operation on the White Pass & Yukon as their #81. Gone is the Rushton stack and the air pumps were upgraded to a single cross compound type. The tender no longer carries several cords of wood for fuel, but sports an oil fuel tank.