Texas Transportation Museum was begun in 1964. It is a volunteer-led organisation that collects, preserves and displays historically significant transportation equipment and related items, including a working passenger railroad, several model train layouts and many road vehicles.
The museum was created to help preserve artifacts and information about San Antonio's transportation history. TTM operates as much of the collection as possible, including many railroad vehicles on its own heritage railroad, the 1/3 mile long Longhorn and Western Railroad, hauled by Baldwin RS-4-TC 1A #4035.
The museum was originally located at the Pearl Brewing Company in Downtown San Antonio and used the tracks of the Texas Transportation Company. In 1967 the museum was granted use of approximately forty acres of what was then known as the Northeast Preserve, now McAllister Park, just north of the San Antonio International Airport on Wetmore Road. The museum is open to the public on Friday 9.00-3.00 and Saturday and Sunday 10.00-5.00.
#6 is a Consolidation type (2-8-0) oil burning locomotive built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia, PA, in 1911 for the W. T. Carter & Brother Lumber Company. It transferred to the wholly Carter-owned Moscow, Camden & St. Augustine Railroad in 1929.
The Moscow, Camden & San Augustine Railroad Company was chartered in 1898 by William Thomas and Ernest A. Carter, who owned the W. T. Carter and Brother Lumber Company with a line to connect Moscow in Polk County with San Augustine fifty miles to the east.
The seven mile line from Moscow to Camden was built by the lumber company in 1899 with a connection to the Houston East & West Texas Railway in Moscow. Although chartered to run as far east as San Augustine, the line only extended a little east of Camden to intersect with a tram line that brought logs from Camp Ruby.
The company never owned much rolling stock, for much of its life, rostering only one or two locomotives and a combination baggage-coach with space for express parcels, passengers and a desk for the conductor.
#6 weighs 93,000 lbs, 83,000 lbs on its 44” drivers. It has a 19’ 4” engine wheelbase and 12’ 6” driver wheelbase, 44” drivers and 16” x 24” cylinders. The grate is 19.8 sq ft and the firebox 115 sq ft. Total heating surface is 1,158 sq ft and, operating at a boiler pressure of 170 psi, it delivered 20,177 lbs tractive effort.
The locomotive worked as a switcher burning wood until 1929 when it was returned to the Baldwin Locomotive Works and converted to an oil burner. It was out of service by 1956, having run 90,000 miles.
In 1968, the Carter family sold the sawmill, timber lands and railroad to what was then United States Plywood-Champions Paper Inc. The railroad line remains an active subsidiary of that company now known as Champion International Inc.
#6 was donated to the Texas Transportation Museum in 1970 but spent fourteen years in Georgetown, TX, where volunteers worked on its restoration. That work was never completed however, and it was moved to the museum in San Antonio in 1984.
#1 is an 0-4-0ST (Saddle Tank) locomotive built by Baldwin in 1925 for stock. That year, it was sold to the UGI Contracting Co., in New Braunfels, TX. Two years later, it was sold to the San Antonio Public Service Co., in New Braunfels, later the San Antonio Public Service Board & Lower Colorado River Authority. The engine was donated to the museum in 1964.
An oil burner, it weighs 47,000 lbs and has 30" drivers and 11" x 16" cylinders. Operating at a boiler pressure of 100 psi, it delivered 9,870 lbs tractive effort.
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Location of the Texas Transportation Museum
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