How is it easier to load more wood? The wood is loaded from above, not from the end.
Loading wood is not a big enough deal to go through the hassle of unpinning the drawbar, unhooking the tender hoses, turning the tender, somehow re-inserting a locomotive drawbar into a link-and-pin mouth, and re-routing the water from the water legs to the water pump piping under the engine.
Steve, we respect your experience with steam locomotives, but I think you need to look at the larger picture regarding the place and time of this photo. You had previously doubted that the loco was actually being operated this way, but the photo has multiple clues that it really is. Those were desperate days of the Civil War when every available piece of equipment was pressed into service at this very busy supply depot. It's difficult for us to imagine, nearly 150 years later, all of the improvising that might have been done, possibly in ways that might seem bizarre or unworkable to us now.
http://www.nps.gov/history/logcabin/html/cp.html
... City Point became one of the busiest ports in the world for a brief, 10-month period during the war. Logistical operations were enormous ...
I appreciate all of the comments that help to understand this early era of railroading.
