Mainstays of the Milwaukee Road's freight service prior to the introduction of the 4-8-4s were the 100 locomotives of class L3, 2-8-2s of the heavy USRA design. No. 306, seen here at Bensenville, Illinois in February 1942, came from the American Locomotive Company's Brooks works in 1918 as No. 8620. With 63-inch drivers, she had 27x32-inch cylinders and produced 190 p.s.i. of boiler pressure. Locomotive weight was 320,000 pounds and tractive force 59,801 pounds. No. 306, reclassified as L3-a, was equipped with a booster which raised the tractive effort to 62,949 pounds. The L3 class had a grate area of nearly 49 square feet, with 2950 square feet of evaporative heating surface and 720 square feet of superheater surface. This view of No. 306 comes from the collection of Clifford "Mike" Southard, as preserved at the Kishwaukee Valley Heritage Museum in Genoa, Illinois. She was stricken from the roster in 1953.