Indian State Railways in Kingston!

At the Real Rails 2025 conference held in Burlington on October 17-18 of this year, fellow rail enthusiast and book contributor Brian Schuff brought this black & white print all the way from Winnipeg for me. The photo shows Canadian Locomotive Company (CLC) #1913 - an unnumbered LeRoi 30-ton six-cylinder gas switcher that was rebuilt in 1960 as a diesel-hydraulic with a Cummings prime mover and served as the plant switcher.

The view is taken looking southeast along Ontario Street, with the 1941 machine shop and 1914 erecting shop as background. Referring to Don McQueen and Bill Thomson's excellent Constructed in Kingston book, I was able to research and even reasonably date the undated photo.

The loads pictured behind the plucky switcher comprise the parts of the third locomotive of CLC Order C-598, serial numbers 2045-2119 - 75 Mikado export steam locomotives for Indian State Railways built between October, 1943 and May, 1944. Shipped to India in knocked-down format, the crates were marked similarly to facilitate their assembly in India at Bombay and Karachi (now Pakistan). The first 21 Mikados ran trials beginning May, 1944 north of Karachi.

The production schedule comprised 2.5 locomotives per week over a 30-week construction period:

• 4 completed in October, 1943
• 10 in November, 1943
• 11 in December, 1943
• 13 in January, 1944
• 7 in February
• 14 in March
• 9 in April and
• 7 in May.

Eventually, 265 Indian Mikados were built at CLC over seven years. Specifically, the locomotive represented is C-3 which was shipped on October 27, 1943. The flat car pictured, CN 661115 has a reweigh date visible of 6-43. The crates are stencilled with the CLC logo, C-3 and C-598 markings. Three flatcars carry crates, a Pennsylvania Railroad flatcar carries the single-dome boiler, and a New York Central gondola carries drivers and wheel sets.

The photo looks quite at home amongst other Kingston paraphernalia :

Another uncropped view: