Well I've been poking around the East Tennessee Technology Park (K-25) here in Oak Ridge during work hours again and I just keep finding interesting stuff.

Security Note: Only pictures were taken and only footprints were left.

I've posted a number of items on engines that the Southern Appalachian Railroad Museum has acquired. This time around I found another odd engine. The finding is a Baldwin 60 ton switcher designated as an RS4TC with a build date of 1954. Unit number 4026 was part of a series purchased by the US Army. Units 4001 - 4044 were designed for foreign use and had special axles that allowed the wheels to be easily moved to fit a variety of guages. At 39 ft 2.5 in, the foreign use units are slighly longer than the domestic counterparts (#'s 1247 - 1276). Additionally, the foreign units were equipped with an engine heater that allowed for operations in extremely low temperatures (-40 F).

Unit 4026 was known to be working at the Umatilla Army Chemical Depot in Oregon around 1994. Later through a dealer in Ohio this engine was purchased/transferred to the major contractor Fluor-Daniel-Fernald at the uranium enrichment plant at Fernald, Ohio. Its there that it picked up the reporting marks OFHX and the nickname of "Little Leah". I believe it arrived in the Oak Ridge area in April of this year.

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Bruce (McToots) McElhoe
KAMRI President
and Web Site Moderator