We’ve seen nine 1939 Plymouth cars here at Barn Finds, as in Chrysler Corp 1939 Plymouths. This 1939 Plymouth Model DLH 10-Ton Switcher is from another mother: Plymouth Locomotive Works. You can find it listed here on Facebook Marketplace in Manistee, Michigan, and the seller is asking $10,000 or best reasonable offer, or it’s going to the scrapyard, and that would be a crying shame. Here is the original listing, and thanks to Lothar… of the Hill People for the tip!

Our own Michelle showed us a railroad switcher recently here on Barn Finds, and it was an 80-ton monster compared to this little 10-ton model. Also, from the Barn Finds family, Jamie Palmer showed us what I believe is a 25 or 30-ton Plymouth switcher here. Make mine a 10-ton switcher, I mean, if a person wanted one to tool around the yard. If that person had tracks set up, which I don’t. Yet. Speaking of that, the seller says this switcher runs on “standard gauge”, which equates to railroad tracks 4′-8 1/2″ wide. You can see that it needs windows and lots of other work, hopefully, mostly cosmetic, but we don’t know.

Plymouth Locomotive Works started as the J.D. Fate Company in 1910 and became the Fate-Root-Heath Company in 1919. They were all powered by gas engines until around 1927, when diesel engines were introduced. This example has a four-cylinder Hercules gas engine, according to the seller and they show a video of it running, a very nice touch. The company changed its name again to Plymouth Locomotive Works, since they were located in Plymouth, Ohio, and again in the late 1970s to Plymouth Industries. They were eventually bought out by Ohio Locomotive Crane in 1997, and in 1999, they moved production to Bucyrus, Ohio. They no longer make trains, so, sadly, you can’t buy either a Plymouth car or a Plymouth switcher anymore.

What is this, a 1966 one-ton 4×4 Dodge pickup with four shift levers?! In trying to identify this 10-tonner (I’m on the road and don’t have my railroad books with me), this switcher is an early mechanical drive model. The torque converter drive models came out in the 1940s. It’s a model DLH 10-Ton, as seen here. The letter D = a weight rating of between 8 and 15 tons. The letter L = locomotive. H = Hercules, a gas engine in this case. We have some railroad experts in the Barn Finds family, so please let me know if I’m correct on that.

And here is the Hercules four-cylinder engine, which the seller says is backed by a four-speed manual transmission. I wish they had included more photos inside the cab, more engine photos, and just more photos in general. They say it was bought new by the Chris-Craft Boat Company in Michigan, so that’s a cool history. It would be a crying shame to have this sweet little switcher heading to the scrapyard, it would be YouTube gold to restore this little switcher. Does anyone have any more info on this model?