Locomotive 2579 was a typical example of more than 350 small steam locomotives known as Consolidations that the Southern Pacific Railroad used from the early 1900s well into the 1950s. During those years, she and her sister engines handled almost every imaginable duty and on rare occasions even pulled passenger trains. Weighing nearly 400,000 pounds and measuring 71 feet, she was large by many standards, though small compared with modern diesel locomotives. She stood for the workhorses that carried America from before the Civil War into the 20th century. Built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1906, she appeared in an early known photograph at Drain, Oregon, around 1915, when she was still a relatively large and modern locomotive. By October 15, 1936, she was at Roseville, California, equipped with a large snow plow that suggests preparation for helper duty in Donner Pass. On April 25, 1950, she was at Ashland, Oregon, by then assigned to switching and local freight service after being displaced from heavier work by larger steam locomotives and then by diesel locomotives. Last used in revenue service in Nov. 1956, she was donated to the City of Klamath Falls on Sept. 8, 1957. In the different photographs, she appears with different sizes and styles of tender, reflecting the Southern Pacific's practice of changing tenders as a matter of convenience.