Portrait of a dinkie. In November, 1958, 0-4-0T number 13, a 1929 product of Davenport Locomotive Works, was shepherding cars of sugar beets at Great Western Sugar Company’s Loveland plant, its permanent home. GW Sugar had 13 of these little engines, known as “dinkies,” working refineries in Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. They pushed loaded cars through a “wet hopper” where steam and hot water jets thawed the frozen beets for unloading. Separate from the company’s regular railroad, they were set up for one-man operation, with controls within reach of the right side of the cab. The coal bunker was on the left side.
