Canadian Locomotive Company Builder's Plate

A generous customer did a socially-distanced mailbox-pickup of his copy of my latest book yesterday and brought by a CLC plate that had been "just gathering dust". I assured him I would give whatever artifact emerged from the bowels of CLC years ago, a good home. Well, the plate just about fit in my mailbox, being slightly larger than my book! It definitely has patina, acquired over the ensuing 71 years!

In their seminal volume Constructed in Kingston, Don McQueen and Bill Thomson describe this phase of CLC's builder's plates, noting that smaller cast plates were used for the Indian 4-6-2's of 1949-50, and that they were placed on the pilot end of the running board. Noting that with the arrival of Fairbanks Morse in 1950, the era of the cast plate was over, though the diamond shape was retained by the new owners. All CLC-FM power would have an aluminum plate stamped in black with natural finish lettering.

The builder's plate feels like aluminum, is unused, stamped 1949 and numbered for the 2500-series CLC serial number. This means it would have been destined for an Indian Government Railways export 2-8-2 steam locomotive, part of order C-611, one of only a very few such plates of this type. The hole at top was likely drilled for brag-wall display by one of its post-CLC owners, as the two holes at its sides remind undrilled for application to the locomotive's running boards.

Local railfan and builder's plate collector Malcolm Peakman kindly informed me that the small numbers 54-103 on the obverse is a pattern number. The specific 2500-series builder's number would be added on the foundry floor to complete the 25xx number. Malcolm also noted that Baldwin switchers and Indian 4-6-2's completed at the plant in that year would have had a small variety of plate. 

I suggested to Malcolm that if an amnesty or bounty was offered on any such CLC artifacts reposing in basements and garages, an interesting haul of items might be the result! I thanked the customer and indeed assured him it would find a good home here!