Columbus & Greenville Railway

Whitcomb Switchers

Dieselization of the railroad was completed in 1948 with the arrival of two Whitcomb switchers in April. This left steam operation as an emergency procedure, although the final steam runs would not occur until sometime in 1951.

Louis R. Saillard — Delta Route: A History of the Columbus & Greenville Railway, 1981

Two years after the first Baldwin road switchers arrived on the property, to supplement its switching power out on the line, the Columbus & Greenville purchased second-hand two small switchers built by the Whitcomb Locomotive Works. Originally the George D. Whitcomb Company of Rochelle, Illinois, by the time the C&G's two examples were built in 1944, Whitcomb had become a division of the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Both units were constructed for the United States Army as a part of Whitcomb's program to supply military power for use during World War II in Europe and the Middle East. After the war, many of these models were sold to domestic carriers; the Delta Route's pair came to Columbus in April of 1948.

Slightly offbeat in the world of Deep South motive power, the two units nevertheless represented a typical post-war domestic Whitcomb model on the secondhand market, each classed at 65 tons. Offbeat in Southland, but not alone: New Orleans-based shortline Louisiana Southern also rostered examples. At the end of their Delta Route service, sometime around 1972, Nos. 41 and 42 were scrapped in Greenville by Friedman's Iron & Metal. Their role as online switchers was taken over with the arrival of secondhand EMD SW1 models.

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Whitcomb roster notes / JCH

During World War II the Whitcomb Locomotive Company built road switchers for military service in Europe and the Middle East. The United Kingdom ordered the first fifty two in 1941, from Baldwin Locomotive Works, who allocated the order to their Whitcomb Locomotive Company. They were center-cab Bo-Bo locomotives built as Whitcomb type 65-DE-14, and were followed by variants 65-DE-14A and 65-DE-14B in 1942 and 1943.

They served in the North African Campaign and on military trains in Palestine and Lebanon, and then in the Italian campaign. The order was received by Whitcomb for the new design in December 1941, and the first locomotives were delivered to Africa by June 1942, less than half the normal development time for a new design. By late 1944 the company was producing one 65 ton locomotive a day.

From this design Whitcomb developed the 65-DE-19A for the US Army Transportation Corps. They were built in 1943 and 1944 and served in many theaters of operations including Great Britain, France, Italy and Belgium. Whitcomb 65 ton locomotives powered the first Allied trains into liberated Rome (July 4, 1944), Paris, the first supply and hospital trains into Belgium, the first train into Germany (April 9, 1945) as well as the first American powered military trains used during WW II (North Africa, early June 1942).

After the war many were sold to civilian railways and industrial railways in the U.S., while others were sold to Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and the Netherlands.

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