I suppose the Ft. Wayne division was pretty straight and grade free as well but went through more towns and other railroad crossings.
Do you think Paul Keiffer ever wanted to call his counterpart over at the Pennsy and bring one through up to Buffalo/ Ft. Erie and give it a whirl?
HSR before HSR, with T1's.
Interesting..wonder what a T1 would have done on this trackage.
April 21, 1928 - CASO hudsons can travel at 110 mph versus earlier K5 pacifics restricted to 92 mph
If my memory serves me, I read that NKP's last steam operation was a few 0-8-0's in yard service in Calumet Yard in 1960. The layout of the yard would make photography from other than the 103rd Street overpass difficult to impossible.
Yes there always seems to be some dispute as to the last use of steam by a particular railroad...stories emerge after the official last use is recognized. Locomotives in a dead line but stored serviceable could be put back in service pretty quick. This happened in the Montreal area on the CPR. Russell over at Southern Pacific kept his steam stored for some time, and used them for peak periods because he thought Diesels were too expensive to be laid up. CB&Q used stored steam here and there. Lots of "we need a temporary boiler for heating" kind of thing.
You would think that a resurrected steam locomotive would cause quite a stir and someone would take a picture.
CNR was certainly running steam at the International Bridge in 1958 and the Central's 0-6-0's and 2-8-0's mentioned could have been hanging around over there for coal and water and ash disposal as the facilities were still very much in use. Not regular everyday use, just on an as needed basis, which I assume would be infrequent.
Y'all beat me to it. Note on H7e 1977 - there is supposedly a picture and some mention of the event in Trains Magazine. The run was just a turn up and down in the yard - not a road run.
Some argument that one or more of the ex-P&LE class U 0-8-0s at Riverside might have been steamed for an emergency later than May 1957 - they were not officially retired until August 1959. I have seen rumors that some classes of 0-8-0 and 2-8-0 may have worked International Bridge into early 1958.
Interestingly enough - it appears there was an L-2 in steam as late as winter 1959, at Highbridge yard supplying car heat.
You're welcome Miningman, also 2 photos in NYC Headlight, June 1957, page 17.
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/headlight/images/headlight-0657.pdf
That was 8 days after the 1290 dropped it fires. Mike 1977 was the last NYC steam, in Cincinnati. 1290 was the last on the CASO, as the photo caption stated.
Somber music, curtain, Fin.
Thank you Wanswheel
Excerpt from Focus: The Railroad in Transition by Robert S. Carper (1968)
On May 2, 1957, the last steam locomotive ended its run on the New York Central in Cincinnati, dropped its fires, and went dead to become the last of the long line of locomotives consumed by the open-hearth furnace.
Photo caption from The Diversity of New York Central’s Diesel Fleet by William D. Edson (1975)
https://nycshs.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/pages-from-dieselroster1.pdf
On May 3, 1957, the New York Central announced the complete dieselization of all train operations on the System. A small ceremony was held at NYC's Riverside Yard in Cincinnati, Ohio, marking the occasion ending more than a century and a quarter of steam power operation. H-7e Mikado No. 1977 prepares to shuffle off to the scrap line after 40 years of service, as No. 6043 a new GP-9 fresh from E.M.D. idles nearby, preparing to take over her duties. Also retiring on this day was Engineer A. N. Weidner, who concluded a 50 year career on the NYC.
Well we could try to keep it going along those lines. We seem to be down to a smaller cadre here on the Classic Forum, which could be advantageous. I certainly do not have the technical mechanical expertise that you do but if you wanted to talk about Lamprophyres of the Mesozoic Outliers north of Montreal in the Shield then I'm your guy.
RME (or anyone else)- just out of hand do you know if 1290 of St,Thomas/St. Clair Division was indeed the last running New York Central steam?
There were outposts further West stateside that were quite rural and I've heard rumors of something on the Leamington Branch off the CASO but that was 20 years ago and the fellow may have it confused with the St. Clair.
I think the 'death' of the Fontaine locomotive is largely due to some combination of effects of Sinclair's hatchet job and the business 'reverberations' starting around 1882. The 'failure' appears to be just the fledgling company founded to make locomotives, and there are examples of far better companies that failed, never to rise, merely on bad circumstances or unfortunate timing -- Stevens in the late 1850s being one that springs promptly to mind. One striking thing in White's history of the American passenger car was how often, over and over, the idea of a self-propelled branch-line car died just as technical proficiency was being demonstrated... or as unfortunate things occurred, as for the Stanley Unit Car; one might also consider the bright future Clessie Cummins foresaw at PRR prior to 1927.
Nice to see so many of the theoretical issues and discussions all in one place ... thanks, Mike.
Thanks to Wanswheel latest post and RME's fine explanation we have the complete story of the Fontaine from start to finish. Terrific stuff gents. The hopes, theoretical or otherwise, the lost investment as well, and the fairly quick dismissal is reminiscent of the T1's although a totally different thing. The T1's would have been outstanding on the CASO as well, a racehorse on a perfect racetrack.
RME daveklepper I can understand the gearing principle. But the thing only makes sense if there was some limit on piston and valve-gear speed. Perhaps there is some limit, but I doubt that it was ever reached in a practical lomotive. Well, it helps to remember that this is the early 1880s, a time when metallurgy, machining, and tribology, for example, were not as advanced. Both the idea of 'increase-speed gearing' from crank to smaller road wheels and of steam traction increasing were well-known (if somewhat discredited) at that time - see Sinclair's 'Development of the Locomotive Engine' for a few details. Yes, there would have been a relatively low limit on machinery speed, much more for piston and rod lubrication and balance than for the valve gear. (Remember that at this time the 'basic principle' in slide-valve design was to shorten the physical distance moved by the valves, even at the cost of more tortuous steam passages, and to use trick porting to increase both the relative speed of unporting and the total area open to steam -- I believe in some cases a great many parallel ports were involved, giving some of the value later attributed first to long-lap/long-travel valves with respect to port opening, and to Willoteaux valves for large net opening. Balance was still a primitive thing in most American practice, and I suspect dynamic balance was not extensively practiced (though it seems an obvious thing if you're interested in high road speed) and the trade-off between reciprocating and rotating balance becomes significant on relatively light locomotives worked at high mass flow. More significant was the issue of lubrication, both of the piston and rings and of the piston-rod glands. We're only talking 85psi or so nominal boiler pressure, but there's still considerable heat there, and how good the effective 'lapped-in' finish between ring and bore, or rod and packing, might have been is not known to me. All this a fancy way of saying 'yes - the reduction in machine speed due to the gearing effect would have been non-trivial'. Some of this effect, of course, would be lost with the steep pitch of the cylinders, which are located where they are for good steam-distribution reasons but will have some trouble with condensate and lubrication together even if the cylinder-cock arrangements are carefully made to suit the angle (as I suspect the Fontaine people whould have done). There may be more than a semantic similarity between the 'advantages' touted for this arrangement and the political explanation of compression lift nearly a century later (a similar 'more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts' "gain" in performance for mysterious reasons). Here again, I have suspected the answer is tribological in origin, hinging in part on the ability of the Fontaine's drivers (by which I mean the wheels directly driven by the cranks) to run substantially unloaded by weight at high speed, with 360 degrees of strong bearing support. One fundamental issue with a 'conventional' contemporary locomotive is that the horizontal component of piston thrust causes nothing but binding and additional load at right angles to the "bearing" (weight-bearing) brass in the driving box; there is also the need to assure good suspension following with road wheels, so there's a fight between play and lubrication in the pedestals. On the Fontaine, the effective 'adhesion' onto the road wheel is accomplished with some combination of springs and steam pressure, perhaps but probably not enhanced by gravity. This is 100% in the vertical plane (in other words, the way the road-wheel brass expects to be loaded) and any augment force will be expressed similarly, only in the vertical plane to the road-wheel rim (the 'horizontal' or more precisely axial augment being taken in the A-frame pedestals, fixed to the locomotive frame). This in turn means that tractive force is consistently (and non-reversingly) applied only to the forward face of the road-wheel pedestal when the engine is running forward, and there will be no working or binding of the bearings or the suspension due to reciprocation. I would note that some of these 'advantages' go away or are mitigated, perhaps severely, if more than one road wheel is provided below the elevated driver pair (which is an obvious "improvement" to people like, say, Holman, and certainly does get around some of the issues with adhesion of a single road-wheel pair). I have not seen drawings of the Fontaine with two sets of drivers and road wheels, but there is no 'objective' reason why something like this could not have the drivers rod-connected while preserving some (or all) of the free-running characteristics. Where the design founders, I think, is implicit in some of the reports wanswheel has provided -- note that "high speed" here is still only about 60mph, and it was not long from the time of these early runs on the CASO to W.H.Vanderbilt's somewhat celebrated outburst about how high speed and express service didn't pay where it counted. When I was much younger, I speculated on how a combination of the Shaw principle and Fontaine-style drive could produce high effective torque on an optimized running-tread profile ... but you'd need a reason to build an expensive racehorse for American service, and even the finest flower of such a service, anywhere in the pre-superheat era (I would argue the competing Atlantic City services) needed no more than high-drivered Atlantics to achieve.
daveklepper I can understand the gearing principle. But the thing only makes sense if there was some limit on piston and valve-gear speed. Perhaps there is some limit, but I doubt that it was ever reached in a practical lomotive.
Well, it helps to remember that this is the early 1880s, a time when metallurgy, machining, and tribology, for example, were not as advanced. Both the idea of 'increase-speed gearing' from crank to smaller road wheels and of steam traction increasing were well-known (if somewhat discredited) at that time - see Sinclair's 'Development of the Locomotive Engine' for a few details.
Yes, there would have been a relatively low limit on machinery speed, much more for piston and rod lubrication and balance than for the valve gear. (Remember that at this time the 'basic principle' in slide-valve design was to shorten the physical distance moved by the valves, even at the cost of more tortuous steam passages, and to use trick porting to increase both the relative speed of unporting and the total area open to steam -- I believe in some cases a great many parallel ports were involved, giving some of the value later attributed first to long-lap/long-travel valves with respect to port opening, and to Willoteaux valves for large net opening.
Balance was still a primitive thing in most American practice, and I suspect dynamic balance was not extensively practiced (though it seems an obvious thing if you're interested in high road speed) and the trade-off between reciprocating and rotating balance becomes significant on relatively light locomotives worked at high mass flow. More significant was the issue of lubrication, both of the piston and rings and of the piston-rod glands. We're only talking 85psi or so nominal boiler pressure, but there's still considerable heat there, and how good the effective 'lapped-in' finish between ring and bore, or rod and packing, might have been is not known to me. All this a fancy way of saying 'yes - the reduction in machine speed due to the gearing effect would have been non-trivial'.
Some of this effect, of course, would be lost with the steep pitch of the cylinders, which are located where they are for good steam-distribution reasons but will have some trouble with condensate and lubrication together even if the cylinder-cock arrangements are carefully made to suit the angle (as I suspect the Fontaine people whould have done).
There may be more than a semantic similarity between the 'advantages' touted for this arrangement and the political explanation of compression lift nearly a century later (a similar 'more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts' "gain" in performance for mysterious reasons). Here again, I have suspected the answer is tribological in origin, hinging in part on the ability of the Fontaine's drivers (by which I mean the wheels directly driven by the cranks) to run substantially unloaded by weight at high speed, with 360 degrees of strong bearing support. One fundamental issue with a 'conventional' contemporary locomotive is that the horizontal component of piston thrust causes nothing but binding and additional load at right angles to the "bearing" (weight-bearing) brass in the driving box; there is also the need to assure good suspension following with road wheels, so there's a fight between play and lubrication in the pedestals.
On the Fontaine, the effective 'adhesion' onto the road wheel is accomplished with some combination of springs and steam pressure, perhaps but probably not enhanced by gravity. This is 100% in the vertical plane (in other words, the way the road-wheel brass expects to be loaded) and any augment force will be expressed similarly, only in the vertical plane to the road-wheel rim (the 'horizontal' or more precisely axial augment being taken in the A-frame pedestals, fixed to the locomotive frame). This in turn means that tractive force is consistently (and non-reversingly) applied only to the forward face of the road-wheel pedestal when the engine is running forward, and there will be no working or binding of the bearings or the suspension due to reciprocation.
I would note that some of these 'advantages' go away or are mitigated, perhaps severely, if more than one road wheel is provided below the elevated driver pair (which is an obvious "improvement" to people like, say, Holman, and certainly does get around some of the issues with adhesion of a single road-wheel pair). I have not seen drawings of the Fontaine with two sets of drivers and road wheels, but there is no 'objective' reason why something like this could not have the drivers rod-connected while preserving some (or all) of the free-running characteristics.
Where the design founders, I think, is implicit in some of the reports wanswheel has provided -- note that "high speed" here is still only about 60mph, and it was not long from the time of these early runs on the CASO to W.H.Vanderbilt's somewhat celebrated outburst about how high speed and express service didn't pay where it counted. When I was much younger, I speculated on how a combination of the Shaw principle and Fontaine-style drive could produce high effective torque on an optimized running-tread profile ... but you'd need a reason to build an expensive racehorse for American service, and even the finest flower of such a service, anywhere in the pre-superheat era (I would argue the competing Atlantic City services) needed no more than high-drivered Atlantics to achieve.
I wonder how mechanical superintendent John Ortton took it when the end came. He seemed more invested than Fontaine himself.
daveklepperI can understand the gearing principle. But the thing only makes sense if there was some limit on piston and valve-gear speed. Perhaps there is some limit, but I doubt that it was ever reached in a practical lomotive.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NYC-STEAM-ENGINE-1290-4-6-0-1953-NEW-YORK-CENTRAL-DUP-SLIDE-ST-THOMAS-ONTARIO-CA-/162567717330
From what I've read of the Fontaine locomotive it was one of those "Great in theory, poor in practice" things and just didn't amount to much.
I can understand the gearing principle. But the thing only makes sense if there was some limit on piston and valve-gear speed. Perhaps there is some limit, but I doubt that it was ever reached in a practical lomotive. With every up-gearing for speed there is, of course, a proportional down for tractive effort.
RME can explain far better than me and in technical 3D colour!
There is a fair account in the description of the locomotive provided by Wanswheel.
The "gearing" was supposed to make the wheels revolve faster than a conventional setup. It was a fast locomotive, but apparently all it really did was increase slippage. Fontaine was no fool and he believed in something better but his creation did not survive to any refinements or further developments. The locomotives were converted to a conventional drive.
This is all news to me. Did not know anything about this "invention."
But I cannot see any real advantage to the additonal complications over regular rod-drive locomotives. Anybody able to explain?
3.5 Million Pins every 10 hours. Wow. Seems Mr. Fontaine worked very hard, was very innovative, was very inventive and industrious. Hope he did not lose all his money on the locomotive.
Reading accounts of the locomotive the reasons behind the thinking were solid enough. The criticism afterward is mostly ridicule.
Well, here's to Mr Fontaine and his pin machine and his short lived speed record and claim to the fastest man in the world.
Above photo:
From A Locomotive Engineer's AlbumGeorge B Abdill 1965
http://detroithistorical.pastperfectonline.com/photo/14AC135D-5675-4FA4-B05B-914379932228
American Railroad Journal, Dec. 11, 1880
Mr. Eugene Fontaine, the inventor of the new locomotive bearing his name which is attracting so much attention in the West, was born near Quebec of French Canadian parents, learned his trade as machinist at Rouse's Point N.Y., is 46 years old and lives in Detroit, Mich., where five years ago he took charge of the “Pin Works” and in April last began work on the drawings of the new locomotive which has just been built at Paterson, N.J., and successfully tried at Detroit. The Fontaine locomotive has four drive wheels, revolving above the boiler upon the flanges of the smaller wheels below running upon the track; the lower wheels revolving one and three-quarter times to each revolution of the upper wheels. It is reported to have run a mile in forty-eight seconds.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E07E3DF113CEE3ABC4A51DFB667838A699FDE
Mechanics, Aug. 5, 1882
Eugene Fontaine, probably better known in connection with the locomotive which bears his name, came to the United States a number of years ago from a backwoods life in Canada. After various ups and downs he started a pin factory at a point in Indiana, using machines mostly of his own invention. Working without capital, however, the results were not profitable until some 10 years since he enlisted Mr. D.M. Ferry in the enterprise. The machinery was then removed to Detroit and organized as the National Pin Company, of which Mr. Fontaine became superintendent. This factory is probably the most rapid and economical manufactory of pins in the world. Recently Mr. Fontaine invented a machine for manufacturing needles. The machine is automatic in character, and is fed with a continuous steel wire of the size of the desired needle, from which it clips a piece of the requisite length and continues its manipulations until it emerges a perfect needle ready to be tempered. We understand that a joint stock company has been organized in Brooklyn for working this invention. The capital stock is $500,000, of which Mr. Fontaine retains $100,000. The capacity of the works about to be built is stated as 3,500,000 needles per day of 10 hours.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9500E6DB173DE533A25751C0A9619C94639FD7CF
Michigan History Magazine, Nov. 1, 2013
Some technical experts called it "peculiar," "ungainly," and "a mechanical mistake." The public, judging the contraption by its looks and not its operational merits, referred to it as "the grasshopper" and "the go-crab." The machine in question was the Fontaine locomotive.
Eugene Fontaine was born in Quebec, Canada in 1834. At the age of 16, he left home for Rouses Point, New York, where he served as an apprentice in the machine shop of the Ogdensburg Railroad. After three years, he resigned his position and spent the next 36 months traveling the world, including Asia, Australia, and South America.
Upon his return to the U.S., Fontaine took charge of a machine shop near New Orleans. By the fall of 1858, he was back up north, running a locomotive between Rouses Point and Montreal, a job he held for two years before becoming foreman of the machine shops of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. Before long, he took charge of an express engine on that road, and continued in that service for 14 years.
He spent his leisure hours studying and devising inventions. One of the first products of this creative effort was the Fontaine Stack, a special chimney for reducing sparks and cinders from wood-burning engines. In the same year, he also invented a livestock car with adjustable floors, the rights to which were sold to the Montgomery Palace Stock-Car Company of New York for a large sum.
In 1872, Fontaine devised a machine for the manufacture of metal straight pins. He equipped a plant in Valparaiso, Indiana to utilize these instruments; in 1875, the firm was moved to Detroit and thereafter operated as the National Pin Company. Fontaine came to Detroit as part of the deal, agreeing to superintend the running of the new firm for a period of 10 years.
"It ran like a bird and rode like a parlour car. I want to tell you that I can go faster than any man in the world. The engine hugs the rails and is as steady as a clock"
I believe RME was a fan, or was it as Overmod.
Would have been really something to behold trackside.
Suppose they chose the CASO for the run because of its long straight runs with zero grades. They claim only one curve all the way between Amhertsburg and St. Thomas.
Yes, the first one. It seems there two Fontaines and another unbuilt.
I'm not quite getting this one Wanswheel. Am I missing something?
Is it about the Fontaine Locomotive?
https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ljZOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA218&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U0r2MIag9Tr8ifMd2ypM0Rs4MPMpQ&ci=31%2C119%2C871%2C1249&edge=0
https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ljZOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA219&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U0Iy9RT-Yx23YDJfvzfrPPUHzUhvA&ci=83%2C129%2C875%2C1271&edge=0
]https://books.google.com/books/content?id=ljZOAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA220&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U1DpsSL4PHKY-Yub8QYfnQnwupNPQ&ci=21%2C122%2C878%2C63&edge=0
From the book gratefully posted by Wanswheel.
"The run from Amherstburg to Fort Erie, two hundred and twenty nine miles, was made on May 5 1881 with Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt and party of New York Capatalists in two hundred and thirty five minutes by the celebrated Fontaine Locomotive.
A print of it appears on Page 5 on the page titled "The Canada Southern Railway" " A few notes of interest along the line"
I'm sure most of us are somewhat familiar with the Fontaine locomotive. I did not know it achieved this remarkable feat and with the Big Boss on board. Suppose it was not such "folly" after all.
Fascinating reading on both links. Another great book for my digital library.
Here is another account of a stuck whistle.
May 15, 1944 - NYC 2058 had its whistle stuck while hauling an oil train.
Now that is not a Hudson. It's a Mike, 2-8-2 H7 class.
https://ia801904.us.archive.org/9/items/jstor-3304931/3304931.pdf
New York Central was in Canada Southern’s financial picture in the Commodore’s lifetime.
https://archive.org/stream/canadasouthernra00canauoft#page/12/mode/2up
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