Big long overdue shoutout to the Spirit of Windsor volunteers who worked painstakingly to restore this beauty. It looks great and with all the work done, will hopefully last another century. Great job guys!
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Built for the Grand Trunk as GTR 213. Believe the Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society had something to do with the restoration. These are the folks who own Essex Terminal 0-6-0 #9.
Indeed, the “Spirit of Windsor” was built in 1911in the Point St. Charles shops (Montreal) of the Grand Trunk Railway as class P-6 number 213, a 4-6-2 Pacific-type locomotive. This is contrary to the onsite bronze plaque which says it was built by the Montreal Locomotive Works. Some of these GTR engines were indeed built by the MLW and also the Baldwin Locomotive Works, but not this one. This class of locomotive was in such high demand at the time that, in order to satisfy its needs, the GTR built 39 examples of the P-6 itself in its own shops using its own employees. At a weight of 190 tons including coal tender, this passenger engine could pull 12 heavy cars at speeds over 85 miles per hour. Its class of engine was found throughout the Grand Trunk system, from Portland, Maine to Montreal to Toronto and to Southwestern Ontario. Of the 39 built at Point St. Charles, this is the only survivor. In 1923, the GTR was amalgamated into the new Canadian National Railways, and number 213 became CNR number 5588, now a class K-3. It ran many years on a route from Owen Sound to London by way of Palmerston and Stratford. It made its last trip, and was the last steam engine out of Owen Sound, on train174 on April 15, 1959. It was saved from the “dead line” of the London reclamation yard by the Windsor-Essex chapter of the Historic Vehicle Society of Ontario and was dedicated to the citizens of Windsor in a ceremony at its present location on May 6, 1963. It was expertly cosmetically restored between 2007 and 2013 by the volunteers of the Windsor (now St. Clair) Chapter of the Southern Ontario Locomotive Restoration Society, who also own ex-Essex Terminal steam locomotive number 9, operated occasionally by its Waterloo Central Railway tourist line out of St. Jacobs, Ontario.