Prosperity Special - 1922

[SSW9389]

What can anyone tell me about the Prosperity Special? I know the gist of the story was that Baldwin made a 20 locomotive delivery to the Southern Pacific. What was so special about the Special?

[SSW9389]

I received this reply from Gene thingy yesterday on the Espee Yahoo Group. The Titus County website is an excellent source of local Cotton Belt history.


It was a solid string of twenty 2-10-2 locomotives, being delivered from
Baldwin in Eddystone, PA to the Southern Pacific. As I understand it,
1922 was a time of economic recession in the United States. Despite the
economic downturn, Southern Pacific ordered a large quantity of fifty
2-10-2s from Baldwin Locomotive Works as part of a general
rehabilitation of its freight engine fleet. Soon, Baldwin boss Samuel
Vauclain had a lot of SP 2-10-2 accumulating on Baldwin's tracks, ready
for delivery. He arranged to send them out all at once, instead of
spliced into freight trains a few at a time. He had a keen sense of
what the publicity of such a transcontinental move could have on the
morale of the nation, and enlisted news media, and politicians as high
up as one of Pennsylvania's US Senators, to promote the event. The
Prosperity Special, as Vauclain dubbed the train, departed on 22MAY1922
from Eddystone, bound for St. Louis on the Pennsylvania Railroad. It
was exchanged to the St. Louis Southwestern (Cotton Belt, then
independent of Southern Pacific), which took it to Corsicana; the train
was handled onward by Southern Pacific. It is reported as having
reached Los Angeles in June 1922 (reported dates vary).

An independent Titus County, Texas historical website has a page about
the Prosperity Special which includes a two-part article from the March
and April 1975 newsletters of the Arkansas Railroad Club:

<http://www.titushistory.com/transport_railroads_prosperity_01.html>

As prestigious an organization as the DeGolyer Library at Southern
Methodist University has selected a photo of the Prosperity Special to
head their website:

<http://smu.edu/cul/degolyer/>

-GP