Steam Traction Archive
Buffalo Pitts built some of the most distinctive steam traction engines in North America—instantly recognizable by their jacketed boilers, cast-iron smokebox doors with embossed 'BP' emblems, and heavy-duty spur gearing.
Early Buffalo Pitts engines favored return-flue boilers suitable for straw-burning on the treeless prairies of Dakota and Manitoba, where exhaust gases traveled forward through a large main flue and returned to a rear-mounted smokestack. Later models adopted locomotive-style direct-flue fireboxes built for higher working pressures (135–150 PSI) burning coal or wood.
For mining, logging, and municipal stone-hauling trains, Buffalo Pitts produced spring-mounted double-cylinder Road Locomotives with extra-wide steel cleats and two-speed heavy gearing capable of pulling 40-ton wagon trains over ungraded mountain roads.