Originally Posted by Tim O'Malley:
Happy Back to the Future Day! Midweek Photos encourages you to post some old-timey photos of real trains for this week. I have not seen the steam engine from Back to the Future 3, (Sierra Railroad 4-6-0 number 3) but in 1999, the B&O Railroad Museum was running their 4-4-0 number 5. At the time, this engine was famous for the Wild Wild West movie. She has also been know by other names and numbers. Built by the William Mason company, she was called the William Mason. It is believed she also carried the original Abraham Lincoln funeral train on the B&O. In 1951, the Erie Railroad borrowed her to run as their centennial engine.
The B&O #25 is one of only two Mason built locomotives left in existence. The other being the 1873 Mason Bogie 0-6-4T "Torch Lake" that I work on in Dearborn, MI. Unfortunately "Torch Lake's" cab isn't quite as luxurious as the 25's (although it's quite cozy in the colder weather). 
William Mason was known for his locomotive designs (the company built 754 locomotives between 1853 and 1889 according to Wikipedia), but the company quit building them shortly after his death in the late 1800's and focused on the textile machine industry.
The Mason Bogie design is probably one of, if not the first type of articulated locomotive ever built. The engine has a pivot point above the center axle which allows the everything below the running boards to pivot independently of the rest of the locomotive.
Torch Lake's builders photo. She was originally a 4'-2" narrow gauge engine that was later regauged to standard gauge. You can definitely see the decorative touches Mason put on their locomotives. Unfortunately, she was involved in a roundhouse fire in the early 1900's which was when she was rebuilt as a standard gauge locomotive that looked a lot like how she does today. Torch Lake was the only one of her sisters (and all other Mason Bogies for that matter) that survived the WW2 scrap drives.
And while on the subject of Mason Locomotives, our smallest operating locomotive in Greenfield Village, "Edison" was built in 1932 by the Ford Rouge plant locomotive shops out of an 1860's Manchester 0-4-0. Henry Ford was an admirer of Mason 4-4-0's (Mason's were known for their heavy decorative accents) and wanted one for his recently built museum, the Edison Institute. Ford couldn't get his hands on a real one however (B&O 25 may have been the only one around then too?). His good friend Thomas Edison gave him the Manchester, and using it as a base along with some parts from other engines, Ford had a replica made, which is what survives today as the little 25 ton locomotive called "Edison." Originally it was just a static display in the museum, but was removed in the 1970's and rebuilt as an operable locomotive when the railroad around the village was constructed. This is about the time Torch Lake arrived to the village from Michigan's upper peninsula where she had been located since she was built.
Obviously it's been modified over the years and now represents a more modernized 4-4-0 with a steel cab, electric lighting and slightly less brass than it originally had among other changes. Originally as Ford built it though, it definitely had some resemblance of a Mason 4-4-0.
