Thank you CT for presenting the "cab forward roster." I'm sure these are difficult facts to verify after all these years.
In reading Dick Murdock's "Smoke in the Canyon" reminiscing of his days out of Helper - Dunsmuir - he uses the term "cab ahead" consistantly throughout his book. And Brian Solomon, who has established his bona fides in railroad literature, refers to "cab aheads" in his tome on the Southern Pacific Railroad.
So the question becomes one of, is one term as acceptable as the next?
They were also called "back-ups".
oil-electric Thank you CT for presenting the "cab forward roster." I'm sure these are difficult facts to verify after all these years. In reading Dick Murdock's "Smoke in the Canyon" reminiscing of his days out of Helper - Dunsmuir - he uses the term "cab ahead" consistantly throughout his book. And Brian Solomon, who has established his bona fides in railroad literature, refers to "cab aheads" in his tome on the Southern Pacific Railroad. So the question becomes one of, is one term as acceptable as the next?
Evidently.
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I believe this came up not too long ago, perhaps in the MR forum?? The answer I recall from there was that it didn't really matter since neither term was used officially or even unofficially by SP or it's employees. They're strictly railfan terms, like "phases" of a GM diesel. In the current Classic Trains with the cover story on the "cab forwards" one of the former SP railroaders mentions he never heard the term used while working for the SP.
The terminology varied by division, or in even broader terms, by region.
The terms "Cab Forward", "Cab Ahead", "Backups", "Mallets or Malleys" and "4200's" (generically used for all Cab Forwards) were used with a great deal of interchangeability throughout the Pacific Lines. Regionally, one or two names were used more than the others but all were common.
In Truckee, CA, where I spent a lot of my miss-spent youth during the steam era, they were generally known as "Malleys" (a generic term), "Cab Forwards" or often "Wamps" due to the sound they made especially when they were in the yards waiting for a helper assignment from Truckee west over Donner Summit to Norden. "Wamp", according to my Uncle Tom, who was a brakeman assigned to helper service between Truckee and Norden, had to do with the particular thumping sound coming from their boiler-front (rear?) hung 'talking' air pumps.
I've also heard that the term "Wamp" had to do with the peculiar chuffing sound from the early 4000 series 2-8-8-2's after they were converted from compound to simple articulation.
"Cab Ahead" is not a term I'm familiar with to describe these locos. At least not out here in the Donner Pass passage, which is what they were designed for in the first place. However, if someone intimately familiar with them refers to them as "Cab Aheads", that's good enough for me. Could be just a difference between nomenclature on individual SP Divisions. But I never heard Uncle Tom describe them that way. Usually, he just called them "Malleys."
So do I, for that matter.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Seems to me that it really doesn't make much difference what you call them, as long as the word(s) are descriptive and not perjorative.
A couple of additional names I've heard:
Note that only the Steam-Powered Interurban could possibly cause confusion, because there actually were steam-propelled tramcars - but none ever ran in SP country.
Chuck
Chuck:
I love that term "Backward Yellowstone". Actually, I'd never heard that term until the past 30 years or so (long after the last AC drew its breath, LOL!), but I hear it much more frequently, now.
Which gets me thinking: If you add the 75 'forward' Yellowstones to the total of over 200 SP 'backward' Yellowstones, then you end up with an articulated wheel arrangement that would have to be the most numerous and popular ever designed for American railroading, LOL!
Eat your heart out, Challenger!
twhite Which gets me thinking: If you add the 75 'forward' Yellowstones to the total of over 200 SP 'backward' Yellowstones, then you end up with an articulated wheel arrangement that would have to be the most numerous and popular ever designed for American railroading, LOL! Eat your heart out, Challenger! Tom
Simple semi-articulated, maybe. Mallet - I seriously doubt it.
A quick look at my reference library notes that there were over 200 Y-various built for and by the Norfolk and Western. N&W was not the only user of 2-8-8-2s, by a long shot!
I wonder how N&W would have coped if they had ever decided to run an oil-burning Y-whatever cab forward. There was barely room for that single-axle trailing truck between the last driver and the rear of the cab, never mind one with four wheels.
Of course, N&W would have had a problem if they insisted on coal fuel...
One more AC tidbit: from the retirement of steam through the sale of Taylor Yard to Metrolink, a whistle off of a cab forward (The SP 4255, as I was told by the old heads there) acted as the change of shift, lunch, break and back to work whistle. While working at Taylor, it was common to hear that thing from almost anyplace in the shop area and even into the yard on some quieter nights when it was cold and the sound would carry. It was supposedly up on a steam pipe near the northeast corner of the shop, near the wheel peeler building.
Supposedly Sacramento Shops used a whistle off the 5009, but I don't really know for sure.
I doubt Metrolink or UP kept that whistle, but one never knows......
tomikawaTT twhite Which gets me thinking: If you add the 75 'forward' Yellowstones to the total of over 200 SP 'backward' Yellowstones, then you end up with an articulated wheel arrangement that would have to be the most numerous and popular ever designed for American railroading, LOL! Eat your heart out, Challenger! Tom Simple semi-articulated, maybe. Mallet - I seriously doubt it. A quick look at my reference library notes that there were over 200 Y-various built for and by the Norfolk and Western. N&W was not the only user of 2-8-8-2s, by a long shot! I wonder how N&W would have coped if they had ever decided to run an oil-burning Y-whatever cab forward. There was barely room for that single-axle trailing truck between the last driver and the rear of the cab, never mind one with four wheels. Of course, N&W would have had a problem if they insisted on coal fuel... Chuck
No, I wasn't thinking of the early AC's that went from compound to simple--they were 2-8-8-2's (or the "Baby Mallet" 4-6-6-2's). I was thinking of the 4100 to 4295 4-8-8-2's which were all designed by Baldwin as simple articulateds.
But wow--over 200 N&W 2-8-8-2's? Shows my ignorance of eight-driver articulated wheel arrangements (he said, hanging his head in shame, LOL!). I had no idea that N&W had fielded THAT many of that wheel arrangement, so considering the 2-8-8-2, both Mallet and simple from various railroads, I take back what I said about the Yellowstone, backward OR forward, LOL!
However, talking about Yellowstones, I was really surprised to find out that ALCO built only one--the original 5000 for NP. The rest of the wheel arrangement were either Baldwin or Lima. And actually, mainly Baldwin, only 10 of those beautiful SP AC-9's coming from LIma.
They're still my favorite articulated wheel arrangement, either 'back' or 'front', though.
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