My connection to Pine Bluff is all old family, many being buried there going back to the Confederacy and much earlier, but I have only visited. On one of my last visits to bury an uncle, when my kids were younger, over 25 years ago, I visited the Pine Bluff shops. There I learned that they built 4 Class L1 4-8-4 engines right there in the Pine Bluff. The question is, how did a remote shop like that make their own engines from scratch when you normally assign locos of this size with the big engine makers like Baldwin. Did Pine Bluff have their own foundry and pour their own iron for everything?
I found a picture I had, no copyright on it, added the info to it. The Pine Bluff shops which were the Cotton Belt shops, have been at the mercy of the UP, first closing them and laying off 750 in 2019, and saying they would reopen some time in 2022. Overhead cranes had been removed so apparently no heavy duty work, wheel turning was reported to be coming back. How many skilled workers will come back after being laid off when the UP was making money hand over fist, is unknown.
