Burlington #4960: Still Running To The Grand Canyon!

Last revised: September 27, 2026

Chicago, Burlington & Quincy 4960 is a class O-1A Mikado, one of sixty Baldwin built in 1923 and numbered 4940–4999 because the 5100s were already full. Baldwin’s construction number is 56809, in the July 1923 serial block 56804–56818. The engine has 64-inch drivers, 27-by-30-inch cylinders, and a 200-pound boiler. The class rating is 58,090 pounds of tractive effort. It spent its Burlington years on freight, most of the last of them on the Beardstown Division, and its public years on fan trips. The last of those was the Denrock Zephyr on July 17, 1966.

It is still a working locomotive. The Grand Canyon Railway bought it on September 16, 1989, rebuilt it, and has used it between Williams, Arizona, and the South Rim since July 27, 1996. Since 2009 the fire has been waste vegetable oil. Of the Burlington steam locomotives that were not cut up, 4960 is the one that still pulls a train. The other excursion engine of those years, 4-8-4 5632, was scrapped.

Chicago Burlington and Quincy 2-8-2 4960 leading the Schlitz Circus Train out of Baraboo Wisconsin on the Chicago and North Western in June 1966

CB&Q 2-8-2 #4960 leaves Baraboo, Wisconsin, with the Schlitz Circus Train in June 1966, on Chicago & North Western rails. This was the second of those circus moves. The Burlington’s own steam program had three weeks left. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Specifications · The O-1A, and the other Mikes · Beardstown · December 28, 1958 · Casper, and the last trip · Wisconsin, then Bristol · Williams · 4963 and 4978

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Class O-1A. Number 4960, one of 4940–4999
Builder	Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia. Construction number 56809. July 1923 serial block; the engine is a 1923 locomotive
Wheel arrangement	2-8-2. Leading wheels 33 in. Drivers 64 in. Trailing wheels 42½ in. Driver wheelbase 16 ft 9 in. Engine wheelbase 33 ft 9½ in
Cylinders and valves	Two outside cylinders, 27 × 30 in. Fourteen-inch piston valves, outside admission. Walschaerts gear
Boiler	200 psi. Worthington or Elesco feedwater heater on this batch; 4960’s was a Worthington. Radially stayed firebox, combustion chamber, arch tubes or thermic syphons
Heating surface	Firebox 325 sq ft. Evaporative 3,409 sq ft. Superheater 769 sq ft. Combined 4,178 sq ft. Grate about 58.8 sq ft
Tractive effort	58,090 lb as published for the class. The usual 0.85 formula gives 58,092
Weight, as built	About 310,780 lb for the engine, about 233,850 lb on the drivers, tender about 195,300 lb. Engine and Burlington tender together on the order of 506,000–512,000 lb
Tender, as built	10,000 gallons of water, about 19 tons of coal
Tender now	A Soo Line 4-8-2 tank. 18,000 gallons of water. Fuel is waste vegetable oil, about 3,600–3,800 gallons
Revenue steam	Freight, Chicago Division, then the Beardstown Division out of Herrin Junction. Last commercial work in 1958. Burlington commercial steam ended in January 1959
Excursions	First trip December 28, 1958, Chicago–Galesburg. Last CB&Q trip July 17, 1966
Where it is	Grand Canyon Railway, Williams, Arizona. In service there since July 27, 1996. Still the operating Mikado

Class dimensions follow Bernard Corbin and William Kerka, Steam Locomotives of the Burlington Route (1960), as digested by Steve Llanso on steamlocomotive.com (Locobase 10), and the builder’s serial list in the DeGolyer Library’s Baldwin specifications, Volume 67. Information compiled September 27, 2026.

What Baldwin delivered

The 1923 O-1As were the last new Mikados the Burlington bought, and they were a step up from the O-1s of 1910–11. Those first sixty, 5000–5059, had the same 64-inch drivers and the same 27-by-30-inch cylinders, but the boiler was pressed to 170 pounds and the tractive effort was 49,378 pounds. They carried Emerson superheaters, which the Burlington kept on that class to the end. In 1917 the railroad asked for a radially stayed firebox, a short combustion chamber, and more superheater flues. That engine was the O-1A. The first eighty-eight, 5060–5147, came in 1917–22 at 180 pounds. The 1923 sixty were built at 200 pounds from the start.

The heating surface on the 1923 card is a firebox of 325 square feet, of which 33 are arch tubes and 59 are the combustion chamber, an evaporative surface of 3,409 square feet, and 769 square feet of superheater. Some engines in the batch were fitted with thermic syphons instead of the arch tubes. Direct heating surface of that order, on a grate of about 59 square feet, is what let a 64-inch Mikado walk away with a coal train and still be trusted above 60 miles an hour on the Burlington’s flatter divisions. The piston valves were 14 inches, outside admission. The valve gear was Walschaerts. A Worthington No. 3 or an Elesco feedwater heater went on with the boiler. The 4960’s heater was a Worthington.

Baldwin’s 1923 serials for 4940–4999 are not one unbroken run of numbers. They fall in blocks: 56572–56576 in May, 56704–56713 and 56804–56818 in July, then August, September, and October numbers through 57245–57248. Number 4960 is 56809. The next survivors in the same July block are 4963, construction 56812, and, later in the year’s order, 4978. Sixty engines, one railroad, one year, and three of them are still in one piece.

Where 4960 sits in the fleet

The Burlington’s own 2-8-2s, not counting the Colorado & Southern engines it later leased, come to 383.

Class	Numbers	Qty.	Built	What they were
O-1	5000–5059	60	1910–11, Baldwin	64 in, 27×30, 170 psi, 49,378 lb. Emerson superheater
O-1A	5060–5147	88	1917–22, Baldwin	Same cylinders and drivers. 180 psi, 52,283 lb. Later some raised to 200
O-1A	4940–4999	60	1923, Baldwin	4960’s batch. 200 psi, 58,090 lb. Numbered in the 4900s because the 5200s belonged to the O-2
O-2	5200–5299	100	1912–13, Baldwin	Larger boiler. 28×32, 64 in, 180 psi, about 60,000 lb
O-2A / O-2B	from the O-2s	43 + 12	CB&Q shops, mid-1920s	Rebuilds. New frames and cylinders, combustion chamber, more superheater. Not a second hundred engines
O-3	5300–5359	60	1915–19, Baldwin	First Burlington Mikes delivered with a combustion chamber. Later engines at 200 psi
O-4	5500–5514	15	1919, Baldwin	USRA heavy Mikados. 63 in drivers, 27×32, 190 psi

Five more 2-8-2s, Colorado & Southern 800–804, class E-4, were Baldwin engines of 1911 with 57-inch drivers. The Burlington leased them from 1933 to 1947. They are not part of the 383. The O-1s replaced the road’s 2-6-2 Prairies on the heavier freights. The O-1A of 1923 is the engine the Q kept buying after it already knew what a Mike could do on its own profile: a fast freight locomotive for a railroad that was mostly river grade and prairie, not a mountain helper.

Herrin Junction

In ordinary service 4960 was a Chicago Division freight engine. After the war the Burlington put $140 million into diesels, and the steam that was left got shoved onto the divisions that still burned coal. The last of those was Beardstown. There 4960 worked as a mine switcher at Herrin Junction, in southern Illinois, pulled coal extras between Herrin Junction, Beardstown, and Centralia, and handled locals down to Metropolis. Between Centralia and St. Louis it ran on Southern Railway trackage rights. By late 1958 it was one of the last O-1As still fired at Herrin Junction. Its last commercial trips were that year. The Burlington dropped commercial steam in January 1959.

CB&Q 2-8-2 #4960 has a fan trip passing the depot at Walnut, Illinois in August, 1965. Roger Puta photo.

The fan-trip engine

Railfan clubs had been chartering Burlington steam since 1955, with a long list of engines. Number 4960 came north from Herrin Junction in December 1958 for its own first one. On December 28, 1958 it ran from Chicago to Galesburg and back with 490 people aboard, for the Illinois Railroad Club. President Harry C. Murphy wanted the trips to continue after the freight engines were cold, and they did. From 1960 on, the steam program was two locomotives: this Mikado, and Northern 5632.

On May 21, 1961, 4960 went into the Galesburg roundhouse for a Class 3 overhaul. It came out on August 1, with the firebox and the running gear gone through, arch tubes and flues among the new parts. In 1962 the passenger department took the trips over from the clubs and started the Steam Choo-Choo school trains. David P. Morgan, in Trains, called 4960 “The Great Teacher.” The school trains had carried more than 45,000 students by the end of 1962 and more than 75,000 in 1963. The railroad dropped that program in 1964. The fan trips continued, on fewer dates.

Burlington 2-8-2 4960 leading a fan trip past the depot at Ohio Illinois in June 1965

Number 4960 passes the depot at Ohio, Illinois, on a fan trip in June 1965. Roger Puta photo.

Burlington 2-8-2 4960 on a fan trip waiting for Nebraska Zephyr train 11 at Meriden Illinois in March 1966

A fan trip behind 4960 waits at Meriden, Illinois, in March 1966, while train 11, the Nebraska Zephyr, goes by. Rick Burn photo.

Gold paint, a flood, and July 17, 1966

The trip people remember is Casper. The Burlington’s line into that city was fifty years old in 1963. On October 18, 4960 was deadheading the equipment west and ran into the rear car of a passenger train at Douglas, Wyoming. The damage was superficial. The Casper shop replaced the bent headlight bracket on the smokebox door with a temporary platform. On October 20 the engine was sprayed gold and pulled the anniversary excursion, 58 miles from Casper out to Arminto and back. Trains called the gold engine the Tenshodo Mikado, after the importer whose brass models were the color of that paint.

In April 1965, with the Mississippi out of its banks, 4960 was stationed at Savanna and pulled revenue passenger and freight trains through the flood, because the diesels could not get at the work. On July 1 of that year it took the first Schlitz Circus World train from Baraboo to Milwaukee on the North Western. The same day, Harry Murphy retired. Louis W. Menk succeeded him and began cutting what the steam program cost. Number 5632 was already out of service for an overhaul that it would not come back from as a Burlington excursion engine. Number 4960’s flue time ran out on August 1, 1966. An extension for another season was the usual next step. Menk did not take it.

Burlington 2-8-2 4960 at Galesburg Illinois on June 19 1966 with SD9 366 and Hudson 3006 on display

Galesburg, June 19, 1966. Number 4960 is on an excursion. SD9 #366 is on a freight at the left. Hudson #3006, class S-4, is on display at the right. Roger Puta photo.

The 1966 season was a farewell. On June 30 the Mikado pulled the circus train again, Baraboo to Milwaukee. On July 17, 1966 it pulled the Burlington’s last steam excursion, billed the Denrock Zephyr, from Chicago out to Denrock, Illinois, and back. That was the end of the program.

A bridge that would not hold it

The Burlington gave 4960 to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, which owns the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, on the condition that the engine keep its Burlington paint. A light bridge kept it out of the museum grounds. On July 29, 1966, it moved under its own steam to the Mid-Continent Railway Museum at North Freedom. The next day it was fired and shifted in the yard. That was the only time it ran there. The museum’s track was too light for an O-1A. In October 1970 the society gave the title to Mid-Continent, again with the paint clause, and the engine sat.

In 1979 Harold Keene’s Lonesome Pine Recreation Corporation took a 29.6-mile piece of former Southern, Bristol to Moccasin Gap, Virginia, and called it the Bristol & North Western. Mid-Continent leased 4960 for ten years, paint clause included. Gary Bensman overhauled it inside the old Jackson Iron and Steel mill at Jackson, Ohio. The work was finished March 1, 1981, and the engine was held at 150 pounds instead of 200. It pulled a three-car train on summer weekends between Bristol and Benham, up a 3 percent grade out of Bristol toward Haskell. More than 10,000 people rode in 1981. The next two summers were thin. A few weekends in the fall of 1984 were the last Bristol trips. The lease ended, and in March 1985 the engine went to New Haven, Indiana, to Bensman’s shop at Casad Industrial Park, next to the work being done on Nickel Plate 765. A Quad Cities group that had offered to lease it disappeared. Mid-Continent had an engine and no railroad that could use it.

Sixty-four miles, and a different fire

Max and Thelma Biegert were rebuilding the Santa Fe’s 64-mile line from Williams to the South Rim as the Grand Canyon Railway. Gary Bensman, their first chief mechanical officer, told them 4960 was available. The railway bought it from Mid-Continent on September 16, 1989, the day before ex-Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2-8-0 No. 18 pulled the new company’s first train. The plan was a quick return in Burlington paint. Norfolk Southern would not move the engine: the axles were pitted. The wheels went to Irondale, Alabama. The shop at New Haven then told the railway to get the rest of the locomotive off the property. The boiler was cut off the frame and shipped on flatcars. The original smokebox did not survive the cut.

The real rebuild started in the fall of 1993, under Robert Franzen. It cost $1.6 million and took thirty months. Flues, tubes, both flue sheets, parts of the firebox, and nearly the whole cab were new. Eight transverse arch tubes went into the firebox. The smokebox was smaller than the Burlington one. The Burlington tender, 10,000 gallons and worn out, was replaced by a Soo Line 4-8-2 tender holding 18,000 gallons. The engine was converted from coal to oil, with a fuel tank of about 3,800 gallons, and it was painted for the Grand Canyon rather than for the Q. It was test-fired in May 1996, made a test run on July 9, and pulled its first Williams–Grand Canyon Village train on July 27, 1996. Nine coaches, without a diesel, was the load it was trusted with on the 3 percent into the canyon. More cars were possible. They were harder on the engine at that speed on that grade.

Later changes were about the draft and the fuel. In 2005 a Lempor exhaust replaced the six-jet Kiesel star the front end had been using. In 2007 a Worthington SA feedwater heater, built for a Chinese QJ 2-10-2, went on in place of the old type. The Biegerts sold the railway to Xanterra in late 2006. In September 2008 Xanterra stopped the steam. Each round trip was burning on the order of 1,450 gallons of oil, more than twice a diesel’s fuel on the same run. The engine came back on September 19, 2009, the railway’s twentieth anniversary, burning waste vegetable oil collected from restaurants. The shop’s name for it was the French Fry Express. The stack does not smell like a kitchen. A Trains account of a 2023 round trip put the vegetable oil at about 1,200 gallons and the water at about 12,000.

As of 2026 it is still the Grand Canyon Railway’s operating Mikado, alongside 2-8-0 No. 29, and it is the only former Burlington steam locomotive in service. The paint is the railway’s. The boiler pressure, the 64-inch drivers, and the 27-by-30-inch cylinders are still the 1923 engine.

The other two

Two classmates from the same 1923 order were not scrapped.

4963, Baldwin 56812, also August’s neighborhood of that order, went to the Illinois Railway Museum at Union, Illinois, in 1991. It had been a parts source for the excursion program, then Richard Jensen’s engine, then a long resident of a Chicago scrapyard after Jensen was put out of the Chicago & Western Indiana roundhouse. The museum traded five ex-Grand Trunk Western 0-8-0s for it. It is a static display, cosmetically restored. It has not run since the Burlington days.

4978 was given to the LaSalle County Historical Society in 1965 and is displayed at the Union Depot Railroad Museum in Mendota, Illinois, where it was moved on November 16, 1997. Mendota was on its old division. It is a complete O-1A to look at, rods on, and it is not a candidate for a fire.

Those two, and 4960, are the Burlington Mikados that were kept. The one that still runs is 4960.

Sources

Corbin, Bernard G., and William F. Kerka. Steam Locomotives of the Burlington Route. 1960. Class O-1, O-1A, O-2, O-3, and O-4 dimensions, as carried in Steve Llanso’s Locobase entries 474, 10, 11020, 2902, 5441, and 9462 on steamlocomotive.com, with the DeGolyer Library’s Baldwin specification volumes (Vol. 67 for the 1923 order).
Baldwin works numbers for 4940–4999, 1923, including 56804–56818 in July. Number 4960 is construction 56809. Number 4963 is 56812.
Stagner, Lloyd E., and the excursion chronology summarized from his Burlington steam accounts: last commercial work at Herrin Junction in 1958; December 28, 1958, Chicago–Galesburg, 490 passengers; Class 3 overhaul at Galesburg, May 21–August 1, 1961; Casper deadhead and the Douglas collision, October 18, 1963; gold excursion Casper–Arminto, October 20.
Trains. David P. Morgan on the school trains (“The Great Teacher”); the October 20, 1963, gold engine as the Tenshodo Mikado. Carl Swanson, “Grand Canyon Railway’s 4960,” September 11, 2023: waste vegetable oil, and a 2023 round trip at about 1,200 gallons of oil and 12,000 gallons of water.
Bianchi, Curt, and John Moungovan, in the Grand Canyon Railway mechanical accounts: purchase September 16, 1989; rebuild from the fall of 1993, $1.6 million; first revenue trip July 27, 1996; Soo Line tender; Lempor exhaust, 2005; Xanterra and the September 19, 2009 return on waste vegetable oil.
Bristol & North Western: Harold Keene’s lease of the former Southern between Bristol and Moccasin Gap; Gary Bensman’s overhaul at Jackson, Ohio, finished March 1, 1981; operation at 150 psi, Bristol–Benham; move to New Haven, Indiana, March 1985.
Circus World and Mid-Continent: donation to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; move under steam to North Freedom, July 29, 1966; title to Mid-Continent, October 1970.
Sister engines: 4963 at the Illinois Railway Museum, Union, Illinois, since 1991. 4978 at the Union Depot Railroad Museum, Mendota, moved November 16, 1997.

Related pages: Chicago, Burlington & Quincy · Mikado type · Baldwin · CB&Q 5632 · 4-8-4 type · Steam locomotives

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