![]() ![]() 401 (located at the Monticello Railway Museum in Illinois) survive. Of the 25 Southern H-4’s built in 1907, only No. 385 is a classic example of early – 20th Century American locomotive design and craftsmanship. The locomotive has a two-wheel “leading truck” and eight, 57-inch coupled driving wheels that enabled engines of her type to pull early-1900’s trains with ease on both level track and mountain grades. 385 is a Class H-4, 2-8-0 Consolidation-type locomotive, weighing 120 tons in full working order. Conceived for SR fast-freight service, No. ![]() The new engines were renowned for their large size, power and speed. 378 – 402) joined the ranks of SR’s growing fleet of 2-8-0’s already in service. She and 24 other members of her unique class (Nos. 385 was originally built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia, PA in 1907 for the Southern Railway (SR). The MCC was New Jersey’s first “Standard Gauge” historic preservation railroad and was founded by the late Earle Richard Henriquez-Gil, Sr., of Parsippany, NJ. It was this very locomotive, affectionately known as “Old Number 385”, which had thrilled untold hundreds of thousands of people as the “star attraction” of the Morris County Central Railroad from 1965 until she made her very last run under steam in 1978. If machines like steam locomotives possess a soul and have “thoughts”(and some reflective people say they surely do), this particular locomotive must have sadly wondered why she was nearly forgotten and allowed to decay to a point where there was little hope of a return to any semblance of her former glory. At the turn of the 21st Century, a nearly century-old former Southern Railway Steam Locomotive was languishing away her days, hidden from public view in a remote, industrial back corner of a huge facility in Harrison, NJ owned by J. ![]()
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