“Of all the neglected wallflowers of modern steam locomotion the switcher was the most forlorn.” David P Morgan, 1955.
When Class S-1a no.244 emerged from the Norfolk & Western’s Roanoke shops in December 1953 it was destined to be the very last reciprocating steam locomotive delivered to any Class 1 railroad in the United States. The S-1 and S-1a could trace their ancestry back to the First World War and in their short lives (on average eight years) revolutionised switching services on the N&W.
Well before the USA’s declaration of war on 6th April 2017 the eastern railroads were suffering problems of acute congestion. Vast and largely unforeseen orders by Great Britain, France and the other allied powers for munitions, raw materials, foodstuffs and manufactured goods caused lengthy delays to the turnround of freight cars at the modestly equipped Atlantic ports, with inevitable knock-on effects inland. The new requirement to ship a large American army and its equipment to France would only exacerbate the problem.
The United States Railroad Administration
The response of the US Government was to nationalise the entire railroad system for the duration of the war and on 28th December 1917 the United States Railroad Administration (USRA) was created to put the Federal Government’s remedial intentions into practice. The full ramifications of this programme need not delay us - entire books have been written on the subject - and here I shall focus solely upon the locomotive aspects.
It was decided to design and build a range of twelve standard steam locomotive classes of modern yet conservative design that would be suitable for operation on almost all railroads, and build them in large numbers. That was the task of the USRA Locomotive Committee. This body comprised the locomotive superintendants of eleven
