These ten locomotives were built in 1870 in France for service in the USA, but were ultimately used in Spain. They had been ordered by the Memphis, El Paso and Pacific Railroad that started to build a line from the eastern Border of Texas to San Diego on the Pacific in the 1860s. They had the works numbers 1253 to 1262 and were to be named after rivers. When Koechlin in Alsace had shipped the first two, they learnt that the customer was in serious financial problems. So the locomotives were loaded off from the ship in Bordeaux and Koechlin started to search for new customers.