Second Pearl Brewery Locomotive on Display

I happened upon the above photo on Facebook the other day, and it has led to a PNAERC update. The steeplecab shown is Texas Transportation 1, one of two surviving locomotives that for decades switched the historic Pearl Brewery in San Antonio. When the wires came down in 2000, TT 1 spent over two decades in storage, first in an ex-SP yard in San Antonio and then on private property in Elmendorf, Texas. Last year, though, it was repainted and moved back to San Antonio, and sometime in late 2023 or early 2024 it was placed on a short section of track under a nice open-sided roof overhang. It's located next to an entrance to the "Pullman Market," formerly known as Samuels Glass, in an alley behind Karnes Street - and you can even see it here on Google Street View. Isn't technology grand? I've changed TT 1's status from "stored inoperable" to "displayed inoperable."

The locomotive itself was built by Baldwin-Westinghouse in 1917 and was initially sold to the Milwaukee Road, supposedly as a regenerative braking test unit, before being returned to B-W in 1919. It then went to Monongahela West Penn as their 2000 (sister locomotive MWP 3000 is also preserved), which sold it in 1948 to the Kansas City Kaw Valley & Western, where it was 504 (two other ex-KCKV&W steeplecabs still run today on Iowa Traction). Texas Transportation bought it in 1953. The Pearl Brewery locomotive fleet of two has fared pretty well. Although neither locomotive is on live rail, TT 2 - an ex-Texas Electric cab-on-flat - has been displayed since 2006 in similarly attractive fashion just two blocks to the north, also in home territory.

Texas Transportation 1 Returns Home

Thanks to Olin Anderson, who alerted me to this post from the Facebook page of the San Antonio Railroad Heritage Museum in Elmendorf, Texas, from back in September. Elmendorf is where Texas Transportation 1, the ex-Pearl Brewery Baldwin-Westinghouse locomotive, has been stored for a number of years. Recently, SARHM repainted the locomotive in its cheery TT yellow livery. Per this post, in September it was moved back to home territory in the Pearl Brewery area of San Antonio. It appears that the locomotive may have been deposited in (I'm hoping "in" and not "behind" because it looks like it doesn't have its doors or windows installed) the ex-Samuels Glass Company building at Newell and Karnes Streets. Recent Street View images suggest this building is undergoing a major renovation, so I can only presume that locomotive 1 is part of the plan, joining fellow TT locomotive 2, which is attractively displayed under a roof about 750' to the northeast. Locomotive 1's location has been updated to return it from Elmendorf to San Antonio, but for the moment it's still "stored" and not "displayed."

Which brings up a question: anyone know who owns the two TT locomotives? My best guess is that it's whatever company owns the land that Pearl Brewery once sat on, but I'm not sure what to call the company. For the moment, both are listed as still being under Texas Transportation ownership, though that seems a bit disingenuous given that rail operations ended over 20 years ago.

One mystery solved

Many thanks to Wesley Paulson, who has successfully solved one of the more perplexing mysteries of recent years: whatever happened to Texas Transportation 1? With help from Wesley and Hugh Hemphill, plus an assist from Google Maps, it's been discovered that this Baldwin-Westinghouse - whose last confirmed siting that I knew of was back in 2006 - is indeed still in storage. It's now in Elmendorf, Texas, stored in a building behind the site of the future San Antonio Railroad Heritage Museum. The image above, from Google Street View, shows the locomotive in the distance, safe and under cover. (There's another photo here.) Evidently the locomotive is still owned by the Pearl Brewery (of which Texas Transportation was a subsidiary) and is just being stored, with no particular plans for it.