Re: Rodger...

Also, based on what Casey has found and other remarks I have heard, I don't think the engines were considered slippery on the SVRy after they had some tweaking and the crews got used to them. The Guatemalen's may not have caught on to all of SVRy's tricks to solve the initial problems they had with 250 on it's first trials. Photos of the engines loaded on flat cars ready to ship to Guat. show them completely torn down. Boilers are off the frames, and everything else is a pile of parts, so they had some fun putting the puzzle back together. I talked to a section hand that worked at S.Baker helping to ready the mallets for shipment. He said they cut so many parts with a torch to break the locomotives down for shipment, he didn't know how the Guatemalen's ever got them back together. Beyond all that as has been mentioned before, SVRy added used rail to the running boards to add some weight to compensate for the side tanks and scapmetal up on the pilot deck to add more weight to the front engine. Undoubtedly the rail and scrap weren't shipped with the piles of parts, so the Guatemalen's may not have tried adding additional weight to the engines.