Pennsylvania Railroad A5s

The Pennsylvania Railroad class A5s was a class of 0-4-0 steam switching locomotives, the most powerful of that wheel arrangement. Many American railroads had retired their 0-4-0 engines as too small by the 1920s, but the Pennsylvania kept the type for the complex street, dockyard and industrial trackage along its broad network, where its larger 0-6-0 B class switchers could not fit the tight curves. The railroad built 47 of the A5s in its Juniata Shops between 1916 and 1924. Diesel switchers began replacing them in 1948, and the last was withdrawn in 1957. Number 94 is the only one preserved, at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg.