>>1964733The way that story goes, its scrapping was far from careless. Word is SNCF management was a bit annoyed with their most powerful engine being a steam locomotive (one rebuilt from a subpar one-off early 30s design, even) while they were busy electrifying and transitioning to diesel. The 242 A1 didn't even sit for a full month in the scrapper's yard.
It's perfectly legitimate to withdraw your one-off peek steam prototype that would probably have been a nightmare to keep operational (unlike the boring but numerous, simply reliable and mostly adequate Baldwin 141R that lasted well into the 70s), but deliberately scrapping it instead of giving it to a very much asking museum was shameful.
Also, someone said articulated locomotive.
