So a Navigation Co., a Railroad, a Coal Miner and a Confectionary candy manufacturer...quite a diversification. Candy lasted the longest.
Chocolate covered cherries eh? I'm a "cheesies" connoisseur ...most are pretty bad but there is one company that uses real cheddar. Pretty tasty I tell ya. Survival kits up here in the sub polar climate Northern Saskatchewan contain 'chessies' because they burn like logs and are excellent fire starter, or you can eat them, whichever is the pressing necessity.
MiningmanSurvival kits up here in the sub polar climate Northern Saskatchewan contain 'cheesies' because they burn like logs and are excellent fire starters, or you can eat them, whichever is the pressing necessity.
In other words, fulfilling the same purpose as fruitcakes do in the Lower 48 during the winter around Yuletide.
It is a little-known fact that there are only about 120 fruitcakes at any given time; it seems like more because people keep giving them away so quickly. (This was also said to explain their pemmican-like "texture" as some of them actually date to the 15th Century when current pressed fruitcakes were invented.) I thought when I was in my teens that these were an inspiration and basis for the Keynes theory of the velocity of money.
Overmod Miningman Survival kits up here in the sub polar climate Northern Saskatchewan contain 'cheesies' because they burn like logs and are excellent fire starters, or you can eat them, whichever is the pressing necessity. In other words, fulfilling the same purpose as fruitcakes do in the Lower 48 during the winter around Yuletide. It is a little-known fact that there are only about 120 fruitcakes at any given time; it seems like more because people keep giving them away so quickly. I thought when I was in my teens that these were the basis for the Keynes theory of the velocity of money.
Miningman Survival kits up here in the sub polar climate Northern Saskatchewan contain 'cheesies' because they burn like logs and are excellent fire starters, or you can eat them, whichever is the pressing necessity.
It is a little-known fact that there are only about 120 fruitcakes at any given time; it seems like more because people keep giving them away so quickly. I thought when I was in my teens that these were the basis for the Keynes theory of the velocity of money.
Johnny
Let me tell 'ya, if there's folks out there who hate fruitcake it's because they never had a good one. A well-done fruitcake can make a Christmas one you'll never forget.
We always had a great fruitcake, Grandma and then Dad saw to that. Or maybe you have to be Italian (and from North Jersey!) to get the best out of one.
I forgot to add we knew the Holidays were truly over and only the long dreary winter was ahead of us when the last of the fruitcake, the Scottish short bread, and those cookies Mom made out of an honest-to-God hand-cranked Mirro cookie press were gone.
Lady Firestorm has two Mirro presses. "Only REAL WOMEN know how to use a Mirro press!" she likes to say.
Thank you, Firelock; I know now that there is at least one person out there who will not call me a fruit. My mother may have learned from her favorite aunt how to make them (though I never ate one of hers).
The trend lately has been to pour a bottle of rum or whiskey into it while it is being "constructed". While it is a significant improvement it is a waste of a perfectly good rum or whiskey.
Pemmican is the correct approximation... Eventually Hardtack as well, if all mashed up then Suet. I have seen real pemmican up here, made by the Cree, that looks exactly like Fruitcake. A solid brick that will last centuries.
To each his own.
Firelock76Let me tell 'ya, if there's folks out there who hate fruitcake it's because they never had a good one. A well-done fruitcake can make a Christmas one you'll never forget. We always had a great fruitcake, Grandma and then Dad saw to that. Or maybe you have to be Italian (and from North Jersey!) to get the best out of one.
Now, it is very true that there is fruitcake, and then there are fruitcakes. I'm not talking about the 'real thing' -- I'm talking about the kind people send each other as 'presents' (usually when at something of a loss as what meaningful to send). The kind with the benzaldehyde flavor, engineered-wood consistency, and vulcanized high-durometer elasticity.
That last comment brought up something highly related to fruitcake, in the same gift-basket-fiasco category: Rum Babas. AKA Molotov cocktails in a can.
I clearly remember the family receiving one of these when I was a fairly small child. How excited I was at the prospect of opening the can -- it was one of the first that had its own opening tab, a bit like sardines with the key, as I remember -- and taking out the delicacy inside!
How my mouth burned and burned at the first savage touch! (And that texture, so like pumice stone carefully soaked in kerosene)
Now if you were to make something like these with real Czech slivovitz, 140 proof and ethereal as the apotheosis of cherries ... you'd have something. Just be sure to raise your tray-tables to the full upright position and extinguish all smoking materials before indulging...
Pemmican ... A solid brick that will last centuries.
While you are actively eating on it.
Back when I was doing a lot of hiking and camping Ramsey Outdoor Store had something they called "pemmican" in the trail foods section. Bought some for a hiking expedition and it wasn't bad at all, but from my reading about polar expeditions and the various goings on in the "Great North Woods" I knew it wasn't the real stuff.
No, I don't remember who made it at this point, although I do remember the trail foods were dominated by the Mountain House brand of freeze-dried foods.
Overmod's mention of the Rum Babas can reminded me of something. Anyone out there remember when coffee came in a can with it's own opening key, and that first great "pooooosh!" when the seal was broken and the aroma shot out? Oh, those were the days!
Of course, none of this has anything to do with "Railroad Oscars" but what the hell, we're having fun!
All kidding aside -- I actually like pemmican. Imagine Slim Jims with the good taste of the meat put back into them, and added ingredients to boost the flavor.
There are also versions with additional berries and nuts in addition to the meat.
The only thing you can do wrong when making the stuff is improperly render the fat so it can acquire a rancid taste. It's still edible (especially if you're hungry with no other food handy) just not as tasty.
ALL:
Being an NP man, the NP passenger locomotive colors were the best! A newly painted BN locomotive was also very sharp. Just a side note on the BN, two of the well worn GP30's were on a special nuclear train from Monticello, Minnesota to Northtown (I don't know the destination of the train). There was a lot of TV coverage on that train. The locomotives looked like crap, rusty and dirty!. They were immediately sent to the paint shop and received fresh paint. The GN blue was a short lived color from 1967 to 1970. Big Sky Blue looked great on a solid train of blue cars, but mixed in with other cars, they stood out like a sore thumb. In addition, the paint in both blue passenger cars and locomotives (along with GN freight equipment) did not weather well and began to "powder (fade) quickly.
No question, that two-tone green the NP used was quite classic, I can see why it's still popular today with those who model railroads from that part of the country.
The Erie used a two-tone green passenger scheme for long-distance trains during the diesel era that was also quite handsome. After the merger with the Lackawanna all the long distance diesel units were repainted into the Lackawanna's passenger scheme, which was pretty good as well.
Commuter train diesels pretty much kept their old Erie black and yellow paint jobs, with E-L modifiers.
Firelock76Anyone out there remember when coffee came in a can with it's own opening key, and that first great "pooooosh!" when the seal was broken and the aroma shot out?
You brought back a very distant memory of something I had utterly forgotten until you wrote that. (And I refer to those rolled-reinforced air and vacuum reservoirs on cars as 'coffee can' reservoirs, without remembering how the cans used to be opened...)
We started hand-grinding coffee (in a cast-iron mill with very large crank flywheels, and burr grinders) long before I started drinking coffee, and by the time I started back it came in plastic tubs with self-sealing lids, a vast improvement EXCEPT that the satisfying 'koosh' breaking the vacuum was lost. (I used to be fascinated by the strength of those 'vacuum bricks' of coffee, but opening them was merely a messy pain by comparison).
A color scheme I've always liked, although far from 'classic' in the usual senses, was the original Chessie System scheme -- you couldn't see a locomotive, caboose, or car painted in those colors without smiling. Although it took some major explaining to figure out what the point of the broken dish was -- and I'm a cat lover. (I did suggest using an 'adaptation' of the graphic approach used for the Inuit on the tail of Alaska Airlines planes to put Chessie back on her pillow, but the road merged further and lost the herald before that could be tried in practice...)
My youngest daughter ( now 31) cats name is Chessie..."of course" she told me whe she got her...sure as heck can't call her CSX.
My youngest daughter ( now 31) cats name is Chessie..."of course" she told me when she got her...sure as heck can't call her CSX.
Firelock76Commuter train diesels pretty much kept their old Erie black and yellow paint jobs, with E-L modifiers.
This was interesting to watch -- but on the Northern Branch where I watched them, the situation was a little more complicated.
I only remember a select few locomotives in the actual Erie 'wings' paint (these were all RS-2s on the Northern - I believe) - I didn't like these because the dark headlight surround and wings made me think of Halloween skeletons (and the similarity with "Eerie" didn't help!). What I remember as the 'normal' Erie (and then Erie-Lackawanna) scheme for the trains was more like this:
with the "E" for Erie in the diamond and no "Lackawanna" -- the herald was morphed slightly and, I thought, very cleverly by painting a couple of little bars into the "E" to make the left side an "L". For some reason, I remember the Stilwells having "Lackawanna" added off-center from the 'Erie' at the center when first painted, and now don't remember if that was done on any RS units.
As I remember it, most of the RS2s on the Northern got the showy ex-DL&W passenger colors rather early; I remember it being fairly common by the time the passenger trains were taken off (in 1966) and ubiquitous in freight service on the branch right up to the time I left for college in 1975.
Of course, when I was little, I thought these were all RS-3s and never heard them referred to as anything but RS-3s. They were my definition of a 'normal' locomotive for a good part of my childhood, when I still thought all northbound trains went to Chicago.
BTW: I'm still of the opinion I'm the youngest person ever to apply for their own subscription to Trains Magazine. When I was 5, a girl came to the house selling magazines door-to-door. While my mother was going over the options, I noticed that there was a magazine called "Trains" -- my mother said 'that's a bit too grown-up for you' but I countered with 'well, I can look at the pictures'. I can conclusively say that much of my interest in (and knowledge of) railroads started with the stories ... and pictures ... in those early DPM issues of that magazine. And I can credit RS3s and Stilwells for a big part of the interest leading up to that.
Overmod, that picture you posted of that E-L RS-2 is pretty much what I had in mind when I mentioned the Erie branch line engines getting E-L modifiers.
Now you were lucky. growing up with a ringside seat to the old Northern Branch. The town I grew up in, Paramus, had no rail lines although we could hear the horns from the trains on what became New Jersey Transits "Pascack Valley Line" over in River Edge. Going east, every once in a great while I'd get to see the trains but at this point memory's hazy as to what they looked like, although I certainly remember that serious businesslike green the passenger cars were painted.
It's always puzzled me the Northern Branch didn't get too much railfan attention, at least not enough to make it into todays railfan books. I DID get very lucky several years back and found a softcover book put out by the "Railroadians of America" in 1976 in their "The Next Station Will Be..." series that was devoted to the Northern Branch, although as it was circa 1912!
There was a video put out in the early 2000's that covered the Northern Branch. It was well done and interesting, and showed the Northern Branch as it was from about 2001 to 2006. It was produced by Wislew Publications but doesn't seem to be available anymore. Too bad. If you attend train shows keep your fingers crossed, you might just run into a copy. There are several Northern Branch videos on YouTube, believe it or not. Search "YouTube Northern Branch Railroad" and you'll find them with no problems.
We moved to Tenafly, and later to Englewood, in both cases only about 2 blocks from the tracks. When I was younger, I wasn't allowed to cross busy Tenafly Road, so didn't do what you might expect and watch trackside every evening I could, and oddly, despite being driven to school many times, never saw a morning train at the crossing (but did see a couple passing from parallel Grand Avenue just before it was changed from 2-way to 1-way near Englewood Hospital).
The regular trains were all RS-powered with Stilwells -- most were the letterboarded 'modernized' version; I don't remember having seen any that still showed the arched windows. Once ... just once ... we rode the train in to do shopping, but I have little organized memory of the trip except looking back at the fronts of all the locomotives at what was then only recently the terminal (moved from Erie to Lackawanna). That includes what had to be a long switchback reverse move to get up to approach level of the Bergen Hill tunnel, or whether we took a ferry or PATH to get across to Manhattan. I do remember vividly, though, that the 'inboard' engine was running long-hood-forward, the only time I ever saw one pointed that way on a passenger train, and we 'missed' it in Tenafly and had to chase it south to Englewood (the stop at 'Highwood' long since gone).
In those days of course the train service ran all the way north to Nyack, and there was one train each way that stopped at 'Susquehanna Transfer' where you could get a bus connecting to the Port Authority 40th St. terminal. (Why you would do this instead of taking the Public Service 66 with its cool red-triangle-in-blue-circle emblem, or the Red and Tan 20, both of which ran every 20 minutes most of the day and took you one-seat right to Manhattan, in the first place was the question that effectively led to discontinuance of the trains in 1966...)
I don't now remember whether, early on, anything other than a RS unit ran north with the peddler freights in the early '60s; supposedly there was a connection with the Piermont branch where the engines ran across, I guess to Suffern, but I never saw anything go that way. There was a wide range of freight that was dropped on some kind of team-track arrangement at the north end of Tenafly station, including the first time I saw a straddle loader regularly used on lumber (for the Benjamin Brothers yard, I don't think any of it went to Demarest's hardware outfit). By the time I was old enough to understand what was going on with the switching operations, most of it was gone.
There was unusual stuff worked up there -- I came to discover to my great disgust that when the great Rt 80 and 95 viaduct was constructed across Englewood, cement trains worked up that far north ... behind A-B-B-A sets of FAs. I had no idea then that trains would work up that far and no further... ignorance is sometimes NOT bliss. I have also seen one firsthand report of a PA on a Saturday train through Northvale, although that would have been long before my time (no weekend service at all by 1961) and it seems a bit unlikely (very, very clearly in the 'if there's no photo it didn't happen' category). In this respect I DID actually have a camera the day I photographed a meet, at West Street crossing, between a Century 424 and a U25B (the only time I ever saw an EL U-boat up close that wasn't a 6-motor U34CH) -- I have no idea where that negative is now, but at one time I could prove it.
When I went off to college, the usual engine north of Englewood was still a RS, but it wasn't unusual to find a NW or even SW idling just south of Palisade Avenue (this was the place I learned to love the chant of an idling 567). By the time I came back for any appreciable time, Conrail had moved in, and that was the first time I saw a six-motor unit (a blue SD40, I think) run through Englewood. The first Select-A-Power unit I saw was the last engine that did any switching in Tenafly, some time in the early 80s I think -- and I did not understand what the system did on single locomotives (I thought it derated the prime mover for fuel savings somehow). If you had told me that it would be 'normal' to see SD50s through Englewood, I wouldn't have believed it ... on the other hand, I still distinctly remember when SD50s were brand-new Really Big Conrail Power, and I have a little trouble imagining not only that there was something wrong with them, but that most of them are now obsolete and gone; in fact, that their replacements the Dash-9s are becoming obsolete and gone.
I wasn't watching carefully as the line was progressively cut back from Nyack -- I sort of assumed that was always where service would go, and occasionally I would find a train north of Piermont (where it was difficult to train-chase on a bicycle) heading out with what seemed pretty good acceleration. By the time I was taking long unattended bike-hikes (in about 1972) there was still an operating wig-wag signal on one of the crossings between Norwood and Northvale; I can't say when it disappeared or where it went, but it was a delight to find. Now I think all those crossings are flag only.
Now, something very useful about long-distance bicycling is that it made it possible for me to reach certain other railroads that had been intriguing mysteries all my previous childhood. I was aware that some VERY high-grade railroading (compared to the Northern peddlers) was running just to the west - occasionally I'd hear a horn of a very different kind, and when we first moved to Englewood, high on the East Hill in a quiet neighborhood and higher still on the third floor with the windows open at night, I'd be able to hear fast trains with very distinctive chimes traveling quite a way. That was the West Shore, which passed from NYC to PC before I was able to get there 'under my own power' but which occasionally sported ex-PRR power (with those nostalgic red nose keystones!) or NYC power with the cigar band. 55mph on jointed rail seemed very fast then.
But then we come a bit further east still, to the magic of the Pascack Valley line, and my first introduction to it just before the arrival of the U34CH and lightweight trains. You may not like hearing this, but regular stuff running there was passenger Geeps and RS on Stilwells, E8s on whole trains of matching authentic prewar ATSF stainless cars ... and would later feature such interesting things as cowl units with conventional short hoods (!) ... add to that the occasional D&H PA being tested, and odd 4-motor units on peddlers. And into this, with little advance warning, came the closest thing to an honorary steam engine I have yet to experience. Here River Edge was one of the best places to get the 'experience' -- from the parking lot of the McDonalds on River Edge Rd being the best. The U34s on the evening trains would pull up just to that point, past the station a couple of car lengths south, and would idle there until ready to go. They would be running at some notch -- I think notch 5, for the HEP on the train -- and when it was time to go (in that more innocent age at the beginning of the EPA) they would be wound straight to full throttle, not much if any 'computer delay', and very often first red and then yellow flame would jet feet in the air out of the stack as the C-B engine commenced its barking, which was extremely reminiscent of steam-engine exhaust. By the time the cab car cleared the crossing the train would be moving faster than 30mph and still accelerating hard, and you'd then get to listen for almost 5 minutes as the exhaust and the light clatter of fast wheels reflected back to you off various lineside things. It was something I never got tired of, even when I made a special trip back up from Louisiana in 1994 when they were finally taken out of service. (Nothing with an EMD engine ever came close then, although I am delighted to note that the PL-42ACs, though they may look as if wearing clown suits and have engine blocks from Poland, most definitely keep the tradition of aural excitement alive.
Gets me to thinking that it would be an interesting project in "projecting" what the corporate identities and logos along with paint schemes and such, would be if all the merged roads were still independent. You would assume they are all freight only with Amtrak and commuter services evolved to what it is. The only one for sure we know is Union Paciifc and it's shield and armour yellow. KCS as well. CN, CPR I suppose.
Well thanks for that detailed and interesting response!
I have to say my first railroad memory comes from the old NYC West Shore line at one of the Bergenfield crossings. I couldn't have been more than three years old, the NYC ran it's last steam in New Jersey on the West Shore in1956 and by God a steam engine was what I saw! I can close my eyes and see it still, and in my minds ear can still hear the "WOOOOMPH! WOOOOMPH!" stack talk, although oddly enough I don't remember hearing the bell or whistle. And no, I wasn't frightened, I was fascinated an have had a love for steam engines from that day to this.
You certainly got to see some fascinating power. Seem like every time I got to a grade crossing the head end had already passed!
Let me add that Wislew video covers the whole Northern Branch from North Bergen to the NJ/NY state line, the tracks beyond being lifted by the time the video was made. I'm sure there's a lot you'd recognize.
Check out those YouTube vids in the meantime.
Oh there is a Pascack Valley Line head-end ride video available from Anchor Videos which is very enjoyable. It was shot in 1991 but the 'road and surroundings haven't changed that much since then. I must have watched it a dozen times in the week after I bought it. www.train-video.com
Select "Railroad Video Productions" on the menu bar. They've got quite a few other North Jersey head end rides but the Pascack Valley one's the best.
MiningmanGets me to thinking that it would be an interesting project in "projecting" what the corporate identities and logos along with paint schemes and such, would be if all the merged roads were still independent. You would assume they are all freight only with Amtrak and commuter services evolved to what it is.
Well, a lot of work has been done with the NS Heritage units, and to admittedly a more mercenary extent and a bit less 'historical integrity' by the UP 'predecessor' units. There are some other versions that have come out of Josh Moldover's Railroad Paint Shop or used his drawings as a basis.
Now, if we relax the condition of using contemporary equipment as it's come to be, and predict what the various 'unmerged' roads would be using if the world had evolved in such a way as to keep them independent... imagine Reading, for example, with the Alco equivalent of the M640, or what PRR would have evolved for high-speed conventional trains to go with the Metroliners (there are some highly interesting follow-ons to the GG1 that would have been logical, and the Rc4/4 design would likely NOT have been among them...
I, personally, would like to see what a second-generation Baldwin Essl modular locomotive would have resembled, or whether commuter lines would have found a use for it or for the C636P somewhere (we know PRR very seriously considered the 2400hp 6-motor Alco for the Bay Head service when it came on the market).
Something I'd propose is to carry forward the 1920s merger scheme 'as if it had happened' (with the fifth system being DL&W-Nickel Plate as a basis for G-d's own bridge line) perhaps with proper political action to preserve rail profitability and keep industry in the Northeast and the Ohio basin instead of letting it bleed away first to North Carolina and other cheap-labor states and then overseas... might be fun to see ma New Haven that the little weasels didn't bankrupt.
Didn't mention the Heritage Units deliberately because they represent a "frozen in time" logo and identity. It would be interesting to see what a Milwaukee Road or Great Northerm had become, not to mention the Erie, Lackawanna or EL.
Poor Baldwin. Such a shame. Alco fared better and it could be argued is sort of still around today, dormant within Bombardier.
I think Baldwin, or better yet BLH, went into Joy Machinery, a major supplier of underground mining equipment. I am very familiar with Joy machinery and equipment. Whether it is still within the company or not is unknown to me.
I suppose if you were an eccentric billionaire you could purchase BLH and ...naw, forget it. It will be there in its glory awaiting in the next journey.
The part of BLH that went into Joy was the equipment part of Lima (and, I think, Austin-Western) -- the cranes, scrapers, etc.
The locomotive part, after the strategic decision to stop locomotive production (which was driven by then-owner Westinghouse) kept going with export stuff (and the exotic diesel-hydraulics for lightweight trains) until the late '50s. They had a decent shot at building lightweight power with what were then considered high-speed diesel engines (compare the Maybachs in the Krauss-Maffei Amerika-Loks) especially when you consider the grand experiment they made into V-12 and V-8 diesels before WWII. But nothing came of it, just as little would come out of heavy hydraulic transmissions in the '60s. The business collapsed down to the spare-parts (and licensing) market, finally finishing up when the last of the running Baldwins hit their guarantee lifetime.
I considered it a very great privilege to correspond with the last of the Rentschler family that ran Baldwin at the end, Henry ("Hank') -- the stories that man could tell! Alas, he was more on the finance than the technical side... but still!
There were two interesting technical possibilities going in the '50s that I thought should have been pursued and perhaps exploited -- in fact, some combination of the two might have proved highly interesting.
The first came about, in principle, in the late 1940s, and may still be a more-or-less open secret. Everyone knows the Ingalls 4-S locomotive, and many know that Ingalls proposed a line of different designs with a 2000-hp passenger unit with length and low weight to compete with the PA, but few can tell you the special thing about the Ingalls passenger unit: it was scheduled to have a Bowes drive, rather than an electric or hydraulic drive. It's difficult for me to describe the precise working of the evolved version of a Bowes drive, except that it allows input and output speeds to vary different of each other with little loss of working torque. With a very little care this would have proven very effective in very high speed service (with no necessary top speed limitation on small wheels due to TM birdsnesting, bearings, or comm bounce, or high hydrostatic back pressure in a transmission.
The other half is the commercialized diesel version of the free-piston engine, or more accurately the free-piston compression-ignition gasifier, except that a good modern one will also generate considerable electricity. This is a bit like an OP engine with air springs rather than crankshafts to return and control the pistons, run up to high speed with the hot exhaust being used for turbine power.
The fundamental design was worked out in the '30s, as an air compressor for submarines. Here is where the story gets interesting: the Hamilton machine company acquired the rights to this thing, and started engine research. Lima smells possibility knocking, and acquires Hamilton -- ostensibly for their 4-stroke diesel engine, but manifestly NOT the powerplant of destiny for anything bigger than an endcab switcher or double-end transfer engine. Baldwin now sees a way out of their slow-speed tugboat engine dilemma, and buys up Lima-Hamilton. Meanwhile GM is hell-for-leather on automotive versions (a colossal failure ... decidedly unlike the coal-burning turbine Eldorados, but I digress...) and large shipboard installations (including one in a Liberty ship in 1956 that demonstrated rather dramatically where one of the problems with the technology was0 and locomotive instantiation. Now, people will tell you the Fontaine locomotive was never used in service, and they'll tell you EMD never built a free-piston locomotive, but...
check this out. (It was, in fact, not completed, for reasons I think I can guess pretty easily). The thing in the early '50s was this: Baldwin was behind the curve with lightweight diesel design, after being ahead of everyone in modular genset tech but not being able to sell it for profit, and here was the chance to scoop everyone on the way to lightweight turbine power without the turbine inlet temperature problem (note how happily I avoid troublesome acronyms!)
But it did not work, didn't keep Westinghouse happy, didn't in the long run pan out for anybody. That is, I think, changing now ... but no one is still listening, and in any case some of the fundamental problems with it may be cost-effectively insoluble...
Fascinating...so what became of all of the Baldwin records, blueprints patents, ...all the stuff?
So many behind the door goings on, perhaps abandoned and lost technologies. I'm certain we are not privy to all of it.
"Sorrows come not as single spies, but in battalions". ...close enough, it's Shakespeare
Overmod- Yes the Turbine Inlet Temperature reported as an acronym could pose an even bigger problem.
MiningmanYes the Turbine Inlet Temperature reported as an acronym could pose an even bigger problem.
I can get away with 'obsessive' technical detail over here; the 'clientele' is different.
TIT was the major stated factor in the relative failure of gas turbines in the early 'dieselization' of North American railroads. To get reasonable Brayton-cycle efficiency out of a powerplant that would 'package' correctly, high power density was needed. Especially with regeneration (which is really a necessity on small turbines) the peak temperature on the first rows of turbine blading (probably the compressor turbine) was too high for the available alloys, and controlling it with the usual methods at that time (hollow roots in the blading, bypass air, etc.) compromised power-turbine efficiency.
There were other issues, some of which (though not well-recorded) can be deduced by UP experience with their 'later' range of turbine power. Things involving a turning gear combined with road shock do NOT lead to confidence with turbomachinery longevity. (The answer that did work, multiple smaller turbines such as the PT6, with the same unit for APU as for traction, wasn't cost-effective yet.)
Enter the free-piston engine, in which the volume of gas generated is essentially independent of the nominal exhaust temperature. When I was a kid, I couldn't figure out the point of a free-piston engine; what was the point of having the pistons if you didn't extract power from their motion? (Good thing I hadn't been exposed to Besler tubes at that age! -- and in fact most modern free-piston engines do extract power from the cycle, but they do it electrically...) One great salient point, which I believe Hamilton recognized early, was that this removed the compressor consumption of the Brayton cycle, about 3/4 of the shp of the power turbine, replacing it only with whatever scavenge air is needed to get the OP free-piston engine to run. (Which is nontrivial -- compare the FM OP engine and its air requirements -- but still remarkably low even when you start to provide CAC)
The lethal drawback of the free-piston engines appears to have been much the same as the drawback of full-active hydraulic suspensions for road vehicles, in a sense I wouldn't have anticipated. See if you can guess what that trouble was (research is permitted) and in what part of the engine it manifested.
You mean in addition to 1) high cost 2) added complication of the mass of the apparatus 3) frequent maintenance 4) specialized tools 5) difficulty in diagnosing problems 6) use of "sky hook" technology
MiningmanYou mean in addition to 1) high cost 2) added complication of the mass of the apparatus 3) frequent maintenance 4) specialized tools 5) difficulty in diagnosing problems 6) use of "sky hook" technology
Well, actually...
1) Apparatus really lower-cost than contemporary diesels, absent the lower-grade 'exotic metals' needed for the turbine; free-piston engine part had very few control pieces and turbine really didn't have (or need) any;
2) less complicated than most internal-combustion engines; easier to maintain; MUCH less mass than a comparable shp with any contemporary (early '50s) diesel technology -- these were all well-understood advantages of a free-piston locomotive, here and in Europe (the French built at least one 'gasifier' locomotive, but I haven't been able to read the technical report as, like SAE, the organization with rights to it wants a pound of flesh to see it.
3) very INfrequent maintenance. What about bounce chambers and no valves would lead to any more 'maintenance' than one of those "diesel" pile drivers? What about a power turbine running on clean gas requires maintenance? Natural-gas pump turbines (derived from aircraft cores!) were running upwards of 140,000 hours MTTF when I saw a statistic for them ... this was a couple of decades later than the free-piston work, but not involving any significant materials-science breakthroughs.
4) no more specialized tools than the set required to work on diesels, and far less reliance on complex maintenance procedures. A fingerprint on a 567 injector would keep it from going together properly. And that's an example of a good diesel-engine design... Very likely the specialized tools and jigs needed for free-piston practice would be built once, used consistently ... perhaps fewer of them, or more with multiple use or purpose.
5) you can't get much more simple than this. Troubleshooting leaks in the bounce pressurization system is about the most 'complex' thing you could have ... mechanically. (There are very complex issues that almost surely couldn't have been solved with cost-effective '50s technology, but they don't involve the functioning of the parts of the powerplant directly.) Otherwise you have a bunch of ducts that carry pressure to a couple of fancy pinwheels and some recuperators...
6) Where is the sky-hook tech here? There is no real mystery about using a gas generator to provide a virtually constant-pressure source to a continuously-compounding expander. What is more fun is considering how to get the turbine power to the wheels (and for that, the report I provided and its cognate reference (6) on tilt technology -- which I figured out how to download if you want a copy to read -- are pretty useful.)
The critical issue was NOISE. Not so much the roar of the 'turbine exhaust' as with the hopeless UP approach that blistered the asphalt off bridges. Look up the GM repower of a Liberty ship in the mid-Fifties for the grim details; there were pulses in the intake tract that produced the off-frequency racket, and as noted there was no good technical way to ameliorate or mask it then. Today you might use noise-cancelling techniques with predictive initiation, combined with that Device I Wish I'd Thought To Invent, the rotating subwoofer, to produce enough modulated excursion energy to counteract the duct action.
I can't imagine a crew actually making it through a shift with a functioning FG-9, let alone an unsynchronizable string of them in MU. And I think it was increasing recognition of that, and the relative uselessness of any sort of contemporary 'hearing protection' which would get around that, which was a proximate cause of the FG-9's demise at such an advanced state of construction...
So what became of the French built gasifier locomotive. I assume this was an experimental prototype. Even if one cannot read the technical report there must be some pass/fail history to it. Thanks for the complete answer. Noise eh? Well there you go.
Try standing next to a diamond drill underground. Ear plugs and ear muffs both and it still is difficult to be around for long.
Not a jack-leg, stoper, or jumbo drill .. A diamond drill for extracting core in exploration work.
Login, or register today to interact in our online community, comment on articles, receive our newsletter, manage your account online and more!
Get the Classic Trains twice-monthly newsletter