Y6B 2171

[NW Mailing List]

I am not familiar with the roster in the Y Book. The 2171 could have been scrapped in 5-1970, but I cannot verify this. But that was not the last Y6b scrapped.

In late 1975, I walked around both Y6 2143 and Y6b 2174 in the yard of the Virginia Iron and Metal in Roanoke. I even walked on top of the boiler of the 2174 and being a bright sunny day, I viewed the "waffleiron" exhaust ports by looking down the stack. The 2174 had its tender; the 2143 did not.

I went overseas in early 2-1976. Soon afterward, I received a Roanoke Times newspaper clipping dated Friday, February 20, 1976. The clipping was about the scrapyard cutting up the 2174, the last Y6b. The article stated that the scrapping began on the previous Monday [that would the February 16th] and that its sister [that would be 2143] had been scrapped a couple of weeks earlier.

The 2143 was the last Y6 and the 2174 the last Y6b. The article also stated that only one other Y6 class was left--that would be the Y6a 2156 in St. Louis at the National Museum of Transportation. BTW, the 2171 had been in the VI&M, too.

I understand that there was some effort to save the 2174 but scrap metal values were extremely high in the mid-70s. The figure I heard was the 2174 was valued at about $50,000 and that the scrapyard had paid only about $5,000 for itin 1960. If this is so, the scrapyard made a killin' on this one.

Bud Jeffries

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:11 PM
  Subject: Y6B 2171


  The Y6b roster on page 118 of the N&W Class Y book from TLC Publishing shows that engine #2171 was not scrapped until May of 1970.  Why was this the last Y6b to be cut-up?  Were there any efforts made to save her?  I always thought that all Y6b's were scrapped by the 1960's.

  Jeff Morfit


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