Please guys when talking about facts at least use his real name Lucius Beebe not lucas.
ALL:
The worst railroad book I read was "Empire Builder" by William Yenne. I wrote him a two page single spaced list of all the errors in the book. He poo-pooed my corrections was nit picking. There was a picture of a rebuilt BN (X-CBQ) E8/9 for a commuter train. He claimed that was on the Empire Builder! How could a X-GN E7 was was scrapped in 1971 be on a 1980's commuter train. He could NOT tell the difference between the two locomotive models or that one number could be used on two locomotives, as 1st 9901 or 2nd 9902.
"Trains" did not review that book.
Ed Burns
Happily retired NP-BN-BNSF from Minnepolis.
Ed...luckily I was able to thumb through a copy and not have to buy it. It was c..p. A typical Motorbooks quickie. But I will say that the best RR book I've had in my library in a long time is Stan Mailer's "The Omaha Road" (CStPM&O) Truly a throwback to the detailed rr books of yore!
ABD
AB:
As information, I crossed the BNSF's Hinckley Sub at Andover, MN and saw a UP freight with covered hoppers with reporting marks "CMO"! I worked a clerking job once in a while in 1966 at NP's Lower Yard just north of downtown Minneapolis. My first task after midnight was to check the Omaha interchange track north of our yard to make sure the Omaha did not sneak cars in before midnight so the NP would get stuck with a day's per diem for said cars.
Happily retired NP-BN-BNSF
You reminded me of the supposed origin of the term "Wabashing." It seems that the employees of the Wabash were going to strike, so orders were given that all foreign road cars were to be delivered before midnight--whether or not there was room in the receiving yard(s). So, the transfer crews pushed the foreign cars into other yards--and kept pushing until they were all in, with no concern that the cars stayed on the track or not.
Johnny
AB Dean:
Please e-mail me at enburns@comcast.net and I will attach the letter to Mr. Yenne. No, I am not crazy for giving you me e-mail. I have met two great railfans, one from Israel and one from New Hampshire.
ED Burns
All Mallets are articulateds but all articulateds are NOT Mallets!
Also the Pennsy T-1 and Q classes as well as the B&O George Emerson were rigid frame engines with 4 cylinders and not articulateds or Mallets.
I always question Motorbooks, Solomons books and most any picture books from the Big Box stores, B&N, and stores like them. They DO have nice photos and unsually the reproduction is well done but as to facts........I wouldn't count on them being accurate. Just enjoy the pictures!
Same goes for some Morning Sun and TLC.
We need to give a lot of credit to Beebe & Clegg for starting the rail photo book industry. They were the first to do it and, like I said in an earlier post, while they were huge railfans from the early days they were first and foremost artistic types and not historians per se. They sure did cover a lot of territory and some railroads most of us would probably never have heard of without their books.
Roger Huber
Deer Creek Locomotive Works
In all fairness to "Morning Sun"...
I've got at least a dozen "Morning Sun" titles and haven't been disappointed in any of them. Some are better than others to be sure but I enjoy them all.
Keep in mind the "M-S" books are essentially railfan "slide shows" in print. If the data from the original railfan who took the shots is incorrect then it follows it's going to be incorrect in the book. Personally I think we should thank our lucky stars that some folks cared enough in decades past to make the effort to document the rail scene as it was, and in color too! If they flubbed the facts on occasion, well so what? Enjoy the pictures and remember what was and will never be again.
And dittos to what oldline said. God bless Beebe and Clegg who started it all!
Being a published author, you folks make me nervous. <G> Seriously, I'm only aware of one small factual error in my recent Wabash book, but I may never tell... <G> (With more research than writing, I tried to cover myself, including over 700 endnotes...) But the railroad actually dips into another county for just a short distance...not like the 1922 Rand McNally map I used as a source. And then there is the creek the railroad misnamed in its maps. (I suppose I was preoccupied with the factual information and assumed a map from a good source would be correct. I am double sourcing the maps in my new book.) But my point is that there will always be some kind of mistake in a book, but hopefully doing a lot of research from good sources will cover you and folks can tell you made a good effort anyway. Do we have any other authors here?
Victor A. Baird
www.erstwhilepublications.com
I am a well-published author, but my field is architectural acoustics.
I do try to be as accurate as possible, with good footnotes.
For further information: daveklepper@yahoo.com
Like Victor, I'm a bit nervous. I may be setting myself up as a target when I admit that I was very much involved in the production of the new Morning Sun book on the Akron Canton & Youngstown and the affiliated Akron & Barberton Belt. I'm not credited as the author. That honor belongs Bob Lucas, a dedicated gentleman who contributed far more to the book than I, or anybody else, did. I was enlisted as a fact-checker and a proofreader and a rewriter. There were several of us involved in the project. There is at least one usage issue that was resolved by consensus, with which I disagreed. So when the book comes out in April, I'm prepared to duck to avoid the brickbats.
As was mentioned above, Morning Sun prints what the author provides, and he does a terrific job of it. TLC is, as far as I know, pretty reliable when the subject is the C&O. I'm not sure about his reliability when it comes to some other roads. I have a few quibbles about his B&O material, particularly his book on the B&O EM-1's. By the way, a B&O railroader in the 1950's knew an EM-1 as a Mallet. I'm not sure I knew the difference myself at the time, as I was about 12 years old; but if I had corrected him, he'd have considered me a smart-aleck, snot-nosed kid. So I just bit my lip and listened to what he had to say. I learned a lot that way. Discretion.
In this and other threads I've seen more errors in fact, punctuation, spelling, and usage than I can count. LUCAS Beebe? SD40-2T? PRR T-1? (PRR didn't use a hyphen in locomotive classes)
So anyway, I'm the next target. Gentlemen, please step up to the firing line.
Tom
(edited)
To ACY, and any of you other gentlemen getting ready to publish, or are thinking about trying your hand at writing, just remember what Teddy Roosevelt said about "The Man In The Arena" and press on!
For those of you who've never read "Man In The Arena" in a nutshell what Teddy says is one man in the arena getting dirty, sweaty, and bloody but gettin' it done just the same is worth a dozen carping critics sitting on their butts not doing anything but talking.
And best of luck to all of you!
The SP refered to all of their Articulateds as "Malleys" wether they were simple or compound, not saying they were RIGHT, but that was their practice.
I believe all of their Early cab-forwards were built as compounds, and that I am sure is where the practice started. Later when many(all?) were converted to simple, and later classes were built as simple, the habit was ingrained and never changed.
I have always heard, and followed the definition of a "Mallet" as being a COMPOUND Articulated, but seeing that Anatole Mallet is no longer alive, this debate is not likely ever to be decided conclusively, what Mallet himself considered to be a "Mallet".
Doug
May your flanges always stay BETWEEN the rails
Ajax Please guys when talking about facts at least use his real name Lucius Beebe not lucas. Thank You, You beat Me to it Doug
Thank You, You beat Me to it
challenger3980 I have always heard, and followed the definition of a "Mallet" as being a COMPOUND Articulated, but seeing that Anatole Mallet is no longer alive, this debate is not likely ever to be decided conclusively, what Mallet himself considered to be a "Mallet". Doug
I vaguely remember reading, but can't recall book, chapter, or verse about this, but I seem to recall that Mssr. Mallet designed his locomotive expressly as a compound, was rather proud of his acomplishment, and was none too pleased when simple articulated locomotives came on the scene.
Dan
challenger3980 The SP refered to all of their Articulateds as "Malleys" wether they were simple or compound, not saying they were RIGHT, but that was their practice.
The SP did make a distinction between Mallet's and articulateds. The original Mallet cab-forwards were class MC-1 (Mallet Consolidation), while the later non-compounds were called AC's for Articulated Consolidation.
- Erik
IIRC, the "Original" cab-forwards were "MM's" (Mallet Mogul 2-6-6-2's) which later were reclassified as "AM's" Articulated Moguls when they were simpled. I was writing about what I had read about how the working train crews spoke of the equipment, not how the company offices classified the equipment.
Noted. It wasn't clear from your original message whether "SP" referred to trains crews only versus train crews and front office.
My not always reliable recollection was that SP's first Mallet's were normal cab 2-8-8-2's, with the MM's ordered after the cab forward MC's were proven out.
Morning Sun Books often have great color photography, but some of the authors definitely fall into the "think they knew more than they did" category.
I'm sorry to say I was disappointed in the Santa Fe in Color series books, because Lloyd Stagner made some inaccurate quotes regarding the Santa Fe steam power (tractive effort and horsepower curves) in those books.
Those of us latter day railfans, who were not there, are imo better served by going back to the original source to get the real facts. The bibliographies listed S. Kip Farrington's "The Santa Fe's Big Three" as one of the sources, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Mr. Farrington was a man of means who had the connections to the railroad to actually be there when some of the steam motive power tests were run--and he published a significant portion of first hand locomotive data in his book--including the drawbar horsepower curves. Though perhaps a bit dry to anyone who doesn't happen to work in engineering design, it is a great read. Unfortunately, not all the Santa Fe's locomotive test data survived, but what was published by Mr. Farrington proves they were indeed some marvelous engines.
When talking horsepower, it is important to consider in what speed range, as it varied significantly...
A few comments (since we have revived this thread from the grave):
I was taught that the reason for using "simple articulated" rather than something like 'single-expansion Mallet' was that it was a courtesy to honor M. Mallet's express wishes that compounding be considered an essential part of one of 'his' locomotives. This is mentioned in Wiener's canonical book on early (pre-1930 or so) articulated locomotives, among other places. That does not mean that it would be 'wrong' to use the term 'Mallet' as an engineer's description of the chassis and steam-pipe arrangement, and there was at least one discussion on this list in the past which involved the use of the term 'single-expansion Mallet' (which is used in at least one place in Wiener's book). I prefer to abide by the inventor's declared wish and use 'Mallet' only for compound locomotives.
The use of the + to describe an articulation point was introduced (I believe with the use of parentheses, and a discussion about why the convention was going to be more accurate) around the time Kalmbach was reprinting Wiener's book, circa 1970. Wiener adopted it because it's almost impossible to torture Whyte coding into expressing what some of the more exotic articulation systems could present ... and it would be of great benefit for Texas Chief to review a copy of this book as there are wildly many more kinds of articulation than the Mallet arrangement! I do not think that the + convention really caught on very well, any more than the school of thought that says Whyte coding should go from the smokebox end and not the front of the locomotive, even though that makes more engineering 'sense' in some situations.
"Beyer-Garratt" should never be spelled differently, and of course that goes for 'Garratt' (with the capital letter and the double 't') too.
erikem, you're half right: there were 'Consolidation Mallets' a bit before the 'Mogul Mallets', but mot by much, and I don't think the cab-forward idea was 'proved out' for more than a few months at most (both classes in cab-forward configuration are from 1911, I think). I do find it fascinating that SP found it worthwhile to put the four-wheel lead truck and simple expansion on the six-driver locomotives. Yes, they had conventional-cab 2-8-8-2s earlier ... I believe some with those fascinating hinged boilers, too. (Weren't the first ones, MC-1 class, the little engines that ran in Texas?)
There WERE two versions of the T1, but the other was the T1a (the one modified to have the piston valves). The other T1 that was rebuilt with the rotary-cam valve gear was not reclassed, perhaps because it kept the same valves and arrangement as the others.
Wizlish The use of the + to describe an articulation point was introduced (I believe with the use of parentheses, and a discussion about why the convention was going to be more accurate) around the time Kalmbach was reprinting Wiener's book, circa 1970. Wiener adopted it because it's almost impossible to torture Whyte coding into expressing what some of the more exotic articulation systems could present "Beyer-Garratt" should never be spelled differently, and of course that goes for 'Garratt' (with the capital letter and the double 't') too.
The use of the + to describe an articulation point was introduced (I believe with the use of parentheses, and a discussion about why the convention was going to be more accurate) around the time Kalmbach was reprinting Wiener's book, circa 1970. Wiener adopted it because it's almost impossible to torture Whyte coding into expressing what some of the more exotic articulation systems could present
Like "Mallet", "Beyer" and "Garratt" are surnames, Beyer one of the original partners in Beyer, Peacock and Garratt an inspecting engineer employed by the New South Wales government (at Beyer, Peacock among others). It is said that Garratt got the idea for his locomotive watching large naval guns being moved on two four wheel rail wagons.
The British used the "+" for articulation continuously, at least post World War II, particularly for Beyer Garratts. It was used for electric locomotives and later diesel locomotives where the bogies (trucks) were connected by an articulation (so a GG1 would be 2-Co+Co-2)
So a Mallet or a simple articulated would be 2-8+8-2 for example. However while these had the same general form of articulation as the electrics and diesel locomotives, the Beyer-Garratt boiler cradle rested on conventional truck pivots and there was no articulation hinge justifying the "+" as in 4-8-2+2-8-4 and it could as easily be 4-8-2-2-8-4 except that the "break point" isn't clearly identified. Fairlie types, too, used conventional pivots not justifying the "+" associated with a hinge-type articulation.
M636C
Wizlish erikem, you're half right: there were 'Consolidation Mallets' a bit before the 'Mogul Mallets', but mot by much, and I don't think the cab-forward idea was 'proved out' for more than a few months at most (both classes in cab-forward configuration are from 1911, I think). I do find it fascinating that SP found it worthwhile to put the four-wheel lead truck and simple expansion on the six-driver locomotives. Yes, they had conventional-cab 2-8-8-2s earlier ... I believe some with those fascinating hinged boilers, too. (Weren't the first ones, MC-1 class, the little engines that ran in Texas?)
The MC and MM stand for Mallet Consolidation and Mallet Mogul respectively. (picking nits here...)
The MC's had separable boilers, hinged boilers were used on some AT&SF Mallets. When the MC's were rebuilt into AC's, the separable boilers were replaced with conventional boilers with superheaters. The "simple-ing" took place in the late 20's after the new 4-10-2's were proving mostly superior to the MC's.
If you are a stickler for facts, avoid The Great Railroad Revolution by Christian Wolmar. Although this overall gist of this book gives a good overall history of the development of North American railroads, it is rife with factual errors. Mr. Wolmar is British, and although I can accept use of British nomenclature (ties called "sleepers", for example) the text shows the author didn't do his homework.
Remember that railroad terms and railroaders' terms for locomotives may not be very accurate. Many terms are thrown around without factual basis when it comes to railroaders. I dare say most have little knowledge of the locomotives other than what is required for their actual jobs. They were concerned with tonnage pulled, weight on drivers/wheels, ease of operation and things like that. Most railroaders I know don't really know (or care) GP-9 from GP-30 and refer to them as 800's and 500's. I knew guys that knew Alcos from EMDs simply due to operating differences and an RS-3 was no different from an RS-11, etc.
The use of "malley" was commonly used to denote ANY locomotive with two engines hinged under one boiler by many crews. These folks had more serious stuff to consider than how often the steam was used or which body phase an RS-3 was. All of us armchair experts have to worry about that stuff while they had all the fun running trains!
My negative comment about Morning Sun was aimed at caption inaccuracies. Their books are a treasure and well worth the money for the 128 pages of color photos. Photos don't lie! TLC has some amazing books and I probably have most of them but I think they just have sloppy proof reading and I've found lots of mistakes that could and should have been corrected before publishing. Captions on the wrong picture and stuff like that just aren't acceptable in a quality publication to me. It helps promote inaccurate history.
I have yet to see an "Arcadia" book that wasn't chock full of errors.
.
I can't comment on Arcadia's "Images of America" railbooks as I've never bothered with them, they cover areas I've already got in other books.
Their "Images of America" books concerning the towns in Northern New Jersey (where I'm from, by the way) are spot-on accurate. I haven't been disappointed in any of them.
Just sayin'.
M636C Wizlish "Beyer-Garratt" should never be spelled differently, and of course that goes for 'Garratt' (with the capital letter and the double 't') too. Like "Mallet", "Beyer" and "Garratt" are surnames, Beyer one of the original partners in Beyer, Peacock and Garratt an inspecting engineer employed by the New South Wales government (at Beyer, Peacock among others). It is said that Garratt got the idea for his locomotive watching large naval guns being moved on two four wheel rail wagons. The British used the "+" for articulation continuously, at least post World War II, particularly for Beyer Garratts...
Wizlish "Beyer-Garratt" should never be spelled differently, and of course that goes for 'Garratt' (with the capital letter and the double 't') too.
The British used the "+" for articulation continuously, at least post World War II, particularly for Beyer Garratts...
Just so y'all know, here is my reference for putting the hyphen in 'Beyer-Garratt':
I think anyone who is interested in these locomotives will enjoy this.
In my opinion, the + symbol ought to be reserved for unusual hinging that is not in a straight line or group. Wiener is using the + sign (see pp 8-9 in Articulated Locomotives) to describe a hinge between engines. So the Triplex (which had Mallet-style hinges fore and aft of the 'rigid' engine is in his system a 2-8+8+8-2, and the Henderson quads and quints would also have been longitudinally hinged (with their relevant boiler sections accommodated above) and would similarly be dashed.
But we now crash into the Scylla and Charybdis of the Whyte coding system: Wiener's expansion cannot distinguish between hinging 'in line' between engines, and pin or pivot articulation of engines (as on a Meyer or Fairlie), although it neatly distinguishes articulateds from duplex-drives (e.g., the wheel arrangement of the ATSF 1398 class or the B&O MK-1 from the PRR Q-2). I am of the opinion that keeping the dashes for Mallets, especially simple articulateds using the Alco method of stabilization, makes better sense (considering how many Americans use that convention!) and retain the + for more special cases. The N&W TE-1 with its span bolsters is not a B-B-B-B and a case could be made for calling it a B-B+B-B if you want to avoid parentheses. By the time you get to the C&O M-1 you will have a headache understanding what is going on without a + in there somewhere (4-8-0+4-8-4), and I have never entirely understood how the PRR could call the V1 a "4-8-4-8" with a straight face (it is a 4-8-0+4-8-0, a full-blown example of a wheel arrangement that cannot be taxonomically described in Whyte coding accurately without special punctuation).
I did note with some amusement that LeMassena, who would as I understand it come in for his share of trouble over introducing this + in the middle of Mallet codes in Trains Magazine, resolutely stuck to hyphens in his Introduction to the Kalmbach reprint of 1970...
Wizlish Just so y'all know, here is my reference for putting the hyphen in 'Beyer-Garratt': By the time you get to the C&O M-1 you will have a headache understanding what is going on without a + in there somewhere (4-8-0+4-8-4), and I have never entirely understood how the PRR could call the V1 a "4-8-4-8" with a straight face (it is a 4-8-0+4-8-0, a full-blown example of a wheel arrangement that cannot be taxonomically described in Whyte coding accurately without special punctuation).
By the time you get to the C&O M-1 you will have a headache understanding what is going on without a + in there somewhere (4-8-0+4-8-4), and I have never entirely understood how the PRR could call the V1 a "4-8-4-8" with a straight face (it is a 4-8-0+4-8-0, a full-blown example of a wheel arrangement that cannot be taxonomically described in Whyte coding accurately without special punctuation).
Typical British documentary of the time. I note the use of the music "Coronation Scot" not quite matching the train.
I trust the spelling in that advertisement is correct.
The pronunciation of the town names (apart from Brisbane and Rockhampton) was a bit suspect, and I don't think Rockhampton was ever in the top 100 ports in Queensland. As far as I know the coal was always exported through Gladstone as it is now. Of course much of it is double track electrified at 25kV running 106 tonne wagons.
Although I did work for QR in that area, I never saw a Garratt working.
And I never saw coal shipped in open (gondola) wagons, always hoppers although many were four wheel hoppers.
The red paint used on the Garratts was left over from a cancelled luxury passenger train. Waste not want not.
But to the C&O turbines...
Wikipedia gives them as 2-C1+2-C1-B
I make that as 4-6-2+4-6-2-0-4-0 in Whyte notation
I never did understand why two traction motors were on the trailing truck, unless it helped adhesion somehow...
My understanding of the 'local detail' color in the Beyer Peacock film -- strongly tempered, you understand, by the unique Strine insight of my father's friend "Oz Pete" Dunn, is that the Poms didn't bother to fact-check every jot and tittle of the places in the Colonnaaays where the locomotives happened to be used...
M636CBut to the C&O turbines... Wikipedia gives them as 2-C1+2-C1-B
Which is, of course, more correct than Whyte coding for a locomotive -- steam or otherwise -- equipped with bogie trucks and electric transmission. I would tinker with the syntax very slightly in an attempt to clarify that the "C1" is actually a four-axle rigid underframe with the last axle left unpowered (the three motors are 'in between' the axles in the very substantial cast underframe section and there is noconvenient room for a fourth without making a hysterically overlong locomotive even more so...) I would do this either with parentheses, 2-(C1)+2-(C1)-B, or with apostrophes, 2-C'1+2-C'1-B. I would also at least think about using the little 'o' to show the powered axles are not conjugated - 2-Co'1+2-Co'1-Bo...
I think they are there to get the maximum number of power-limited traction motors in the layout. You don't want them on the leading bogie, and you dare not have them on the bogie under the firebox, and you have to give up one axle in each of your main underframes ... so why waste that trailing truck? You will see very similar 'motor-number overkill' as the N&W progressively pisses over the PRR V1 turbine design in the late '40s and early '50s, and finally throws the whole thing over in favor of plain old span-bolstered Co truck on the TE1.
Wislish wrote:
"I would do this either with parentheses, 2-(C1)+2-(C1)-B, or with apostrophes, 2-C'1+2-C'1-B. I would also at least think about using the little 'o' to show the powered axles are not conjugated - 2-Co'1+2-Co'1-Bo..."
My understanding of the German Wheel Arrangement notation is that the apostrophe indicates that the preceding set of wheels can move relative to the rest:
So a Pacific is 2'C1'
The C&O turbine would be
(2'Co1)' (2'Co1 Bo') since the brackets and apostrophe indicate that the leading "truck" is articulated and the lead truck is in turn articulated (or flexible) relative to its main frame as is the trailing truck... however, the non motored axle in the four axle truck (or frame) is not flexibly mounted relative to the motored axles.
To return to the thread topic a bit more closely, I picked up a book on locomotives of the Great Northern Railway of Ireland.
In the 1930s, a light blue scheme was selected for passenger locomotives, and it was said that the locomotives were known as "Blue Birds" after the speed record cars and boats of Donald Campbell... Of course, in the 1930s it was Donald's father, Sir Malcolm Campbell who was chasing the records (often using Napier Lion w-12 aero engines).
I'm not taking the book back, it is really excellent and includes diesel railcars and the MAK 0-8-0 No 800...
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