Re: Class 56 vs Class 60 cosmetic differences

D&RG class 56 corresponds to Baldwin's class 10-24-E with 15x18 cylinders. Class 60 are Baldwin's class 10-24 1/2 -E** with 15x20 cylinders (Grant's engines being pretty much equivalent), and class 70 are the 10-26-E with 16x20 cylinders. All of these were standard models.

There's very little to allow a person to tell a 15x18 from a 15x20 in period photographs. The only consistent difference is a couple inches of boiler dimensions and a couple inches of stroke, none of which is apparent in photography. They shared the same normal customer options (stacks, brakes, crossheads, cabs, etc). When you see differences between them, it's due to different options specified by the customer or applied later, or different practices by Baldwin over the years, nothing inherent to the engines specifically. In so many words they could look pretty much the same as each other.

The Grant class 60's have Grant's unique dome shape so those can be told apart so long as they kept their original domes.

Individual engines can be told apart based on their options, although this process is not absolute and can be prone to error if not careful. Engine numbers are best obviously. One I find useful in *early* photographs is tender size: All of the D&RG's class 56 engines were delivered with standard 1400 or 1500 gallon tenders, while the vast majority (all but a few) of its class 60 engines came with much larger 2500 gallon tenders. If the engine has the big tender, odds are it's a class 60. Smaller tender typically means a class 56, minus the "Alamosa" and a couple others (one of which became Silverton 100, I think). Note that this applies solely to the D&RG since tender size was a customer option and the most common tenders sent for either class for other buyers was 1500 or 1600 gallon. Of the D&RG's handful of consolidations delivered with wagon top boilers, only one (the "Alamosa") was a class 60--the others were class 56 engines. However, the "Alamosa" seems to have been photographed far more often than the others.

Later on as engines went through overhauls and rebuilds you see new cabs, paintjobs, domes, stacks, etc applied, tenders, even boilers swapped around, and so forth, so as they aged a difficult job telling them apart becomes even harder.


**Sorry for the poorly-rendered fraction 1/2. My present keyboard completely refuses to do the ALT codes for the proper fractions. Some modern sources use decimals instead, rendering the class 60 as 10-24.5-E, but Baldwin did it as a fraction.