Hope the smokestack vents above rather than in the enclosed observation area.

Otherwise it'll be a hot smokebox (or smoky hotbox) ;)

Cool photo!
Thanks for sharing.

Wonder what the visibility was like for the engineer?

Stack can been just above the roof line. Looks like it has an air horn too. Visibility can't be that much different than running a diesel engine long hood first.

Bernd

Visibility was obviously not necessary seeing as how they ran long boiler first for over 100 years...and the boilers got bigger and longer. I bet visibility was NIL!!

Next we're gonna get a question about where the steering wheel is...or how the engineer can drive without seeing where he's going... :p

A close inspections says it's a 4-4-0 and probably a coal burner. You can see what looks like the top of the flue just sticking out of the roof of what appears to be a front cab. 

Could this be a prototype/engineering experiment  cab forward steam loco?

Rick,

I wonder if it has a safety bumper and air bags? I would not want to hit a tall cow while riding in the front.

Regards,

John

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Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself - like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks. >> Jean Kerr

Just an inspection loco.

Some roads put a couple seats on the front of a loco for this purpose. Some did a lot more.

Some has a very simple four wheel specially designed loco for the top officials. All that was needed was a simple boiler  and basic running gear. I have seen quite a few photos of inspection loco's in railroad books over the years.

The one in the photo is a more elaborate version.

It was not a cab forward experiment. The below from an article on the cab forward that I saw in a couple books some years ago.

After a number of crews nearly asphyxiated, someone had the idea of running his locomotive in reverse. This meant that the tender was leading the train, which introduced new problems. The tender blocked the view ahead and put crewmen on the wrong sides of the cab for seeing signals. The tenders were not designed to be pushed at the lead of the train, which limited speeds. Southern Pacific commissioned Baldwin Locomotive Works to build a prototype cab-forward locomotive, then ordered more before the prototype had even arrived.

Not too long before this, a road built a cab forward, oil fired 4-4-0, NG, version.

Rich