Nord 3.1101 and 3.1102
Nord 3.1101 and 3.1102 were a class of two express passenger 4-6-4 (Baltic) tender locomotives designed by Gaston du Bousquet for the Chemins de Fer du Nord, and built in the company's La Chapelle Workshops. Origins The Nord needed more powerful locomotives to haul with increasingly heavier passenger train loads. The company's existing 4-4-2 (Atlantic) type – the 2.641 to 2.675 series (later SNCF 2-221.A) – could no longer cope; and so in 1909 the Nord's chief mechanical engineer Gaston Du Bousquet produced a design for a locomotive that had six driving wheels with four-wheel leading and trailing bogies. This was the first application of the 4-6-4 (Baltic) wheel arrangement anywhere in the world. Two prototype were built and numbered 3.1101 et 3.1102. Description The locomotives were built by the Nord's workshops at La Chapelle, in April and July 1911, and were placed in service the same year. Fixed to the long wheel splasher were three cast brass plates: two carried the company's name and the locomotive's number, while the third, in the centre, carried a star – one of the symbols of the Rothschild family. The two locomotives differed in one respect: the type of boiler fitted – 3.1101