Arizona and Pacific Railroad
G16 Engine #582
History of the Arizona and Pacific Railroad Engine G16 #582
Our G16, No. 582, first operated in Indianapolis at the short-lived Little America Amusement Park. It was originally shipped on October 29, 1951, but for issues not related to the equipment it was not placed in operation until 1953. She was originally what the Miniature Train Company called a “Limited” train which meant she had powered A and B units, three coaches and an observation car. The route was over one half mile long and included two crossing signals and a tunnel.
The last year the park operated was 1964. Little is known of the train or its whereabouts until it was acquired by a park train broker outside of Chicago in the early 1990s. From there it went to northern California before we acquired her in September of 1999 and moved her to Arizona for restoration. Julie G. Dojahn wrote an excellent article on Little America Amusement Park in Indianapolis.
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When we acquired No. 582 she was in rough shape. All of the parts that could be stripped and removed had been including all plumbing and electrical components as well as the trucks and all drive train components. The seller included a few boxes of mismatched parts and an old Wisconsin VF4 engine. We spent several years tracking and finding parts and slowly marked them off the “needed” list. It was a long tedious process finding them and then rebuilding power trucks, transmission, fluid clutch, vacuum pump, hand valves and list the goes on.
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Finally on April 13th, 2014 G16, A unit, No.582 was removed from the rack at the A&P RR shop and lowered onto the rails. It wasn't long before we had her started and she made her first trip around the A & P layout. Some minor carburetor adjustments were really all we modified during the day. Although we had spent quite a bit of time debugging the No. 582 while she was on the rack, we were pleasantly surprised at how great she ran and the few problems that we encountered once we had her on the rails. There were no vacuum leaks, the gauges and all electrical components worked as designed and the parking brake worked even better than hoped.
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None of the coaches are original to the No. 582. Two of the coaches are from train No. 504 and No. 506 each of which ran at Riverview Park in Chicago. Our third coach is left-hand load and without a serial number plate.
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We continue to work on a “B” unit we acquired on the California coast in November of 2008 to pair up with the A unit to match the way she ran in Indianapolis. B unit No.506 originally ran at Riverview Park as part of the "Scout" consist.
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If you can fill in any of the blanks in the history of No. 582 between 1965 and 1995, we welcome your input. We would also love to have any photographs of her or No. 506 that might exist…