At the Western Pacific Railroad Museum, there are many pieces of railroad equipment: locomotives, cabooses, rolling stock, and maintenance equipment.

It has been said that this railroad museum has the greatest amount of equipment from a single railroad family: Western Pacific (WP).

There is lots to explore at the WPRM and you are free to wander around the yard and look at the diesels and rolling stock. I was in search of an FP7 mock up of WP No. 804-A that was used to pull the California Zephyr. The mockup was just of the cab section and it was on display at Disney’s California Adventure park.

While looking for the cab I came upon an old tender that had the faded WP logo on its side. It was a six axle tender so it must have been attached to a substantially sized steam locomotive.

I thought perhaps that this tender once belonged to the largest locomotive that WP owned and operated the 2-8-8-2 mallet or perhaps a 4-6-6-4 Challenger. The railroad owned 27 mallets, some of which operated up and down the Feather River Route. Sadly all 27 mallets were scrapped as the age of diesels took hold. Was this tender a last relic of the mighty mallets of the WP?

Turns out the answer was much more exciting!

I found out from one of the volunteers that the tender belonged to a GS-6, No. 484. These Northern type 4-8-4s were some of the best passenger locomotives ever made for the Southern Pacific.

The GS originally stood for Golden State and the streamlined locomotives were on point of one of the most beautiful passenger trains, the Coast Daylight. The train took passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in under 10 hours. During the war when the GS-6s were produced in 1943, the GS meant “General Service” because the locomotives were designed for freight as well as passenger service.

During the war railroads needed approval from the War Production Board to order new locomotives. SP and WP both petitioned for a new order of passenger locomotives. They were turned down because they didn’t think streamlined passenger locomotives were necessary for the war effort.

The zenith of the GS class (Golden State or General Service) was the GS-4.

28 GS-4s were built by the Lima Locomotive Works in 1941-42. 10 GS-6s were built in 1943 under war time restrictions, meaning the locomotives had to also be used for freight service and lack the streamlining of the GS-4s. What I was unaware of is that Western Pacific had six GS-6s on its roster (No. 481-486).

During the end of the age of steam (the 1950-60s) many railroads scrapped their steam locomotive fleet. The idea of steam preservation did not take hold until the 1960s and 70s.

One GS locomotive that was preserved and put on static display in Oakes Park in Portland, Oregon was Southern Pacific GS-4 No. 4449. The locomotive was restored to working order and pulled the Freedom Train across the United States in the late 1970s.

There is only one other GS class locomotive that is still is in existence. This is the GS-6 No. 4460.

4460 was the first GS-6 manufactured (built in July of 1943) and it is the last steam locomotive to operate on the Southern Pacific when it made an excursion run from Sacramento to Spark, Nevada in October 1958.

4460 was donated to the National Transportation Museum in St. Louis, Missouri in 1959.

Until my visit to Portola, I assumed there were only two relics of the Southern Pacific’s mighty GS class and finding the tender in the yard was like finding a piece of railroad history gold!