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Photo of the Day Brother, can you spare a decade?

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Photo of the Day Brother, can you spare a decade?
Posted by Miningman on Thursday, September 5, 2019 12:41 AM
20190905

Pennsy steam prowess

A Pennsylvania Railroad T1 4-4-4-4 pauses with an eastbound train at Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1939. The railroad had 52 such "duplex" steam locomotives, along with other wheel arrangements. All were retired by the end of 1946.
Robert A. Hadley photo
 
Well that's wrong!! Perhaps 1949 instead of '39 and 1956 instead of '46. Always nice to get a T1 photo but come on fellas, that's kinda bad. We sort of count on you. 
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Posted by Flintlock76 on Thursday, September 5, 2019 8:41 AM

Oh well, nobody's perfect.

Still, it's hard to believe a gaff like that slipped through the cracks!

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Posted by Overmod on Thursday, September 5, 2019 12:16 PM

Aren't those lights similar to the backdrop in the T1+K4s picture we had a few weeks ago?

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Posted by Miningman on Thursday, September 5, 2019 6:22 PM

Yeah I thought the same thing but then after all both pictures are in Fort Wayne.

"The Pennsylvania Railroad station in Fort Wayne, Ind., was busy each afternoon and evening as the railroad’s eastbound passenger train fleet rolled in. Here, a distinctive T1 class 4-4-4-4 receives some attention under the lights."

 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Friday, September 6, 2019 5:54 AM

I have never expected that I have the privilege to correct  a photo caption of Trains Magazine, let's fix it:

20190905

Pennsy steam prowess

A Pennsylvania Railroad T1 4-4-4-4 pauses with an eastbound train at Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1939 (Should be 1948-1953, #5536(?) was modified on Sep 30, 1948). The railroad had 52 (Should be 80, including S1 6-4-4-6 *1, Q1 4-6-4-4*1, Q2 4-4-6-4*26) and such "duplex" steam locomotives, along with other wheel arrangements. All were retired by the end of 1946 (Should be 1953).
Robert A. Hadley photo
 
 
Note that the as-built front-end of PRR #5536 was kept for 856 days before modification, 13 days longer than #5517. If the T1 in this photo was #5535 or #5538, the earliest day of this photo was taken after Dec 13, 1946.
 
 
Coffee
 
 
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Posted by Flintlock76 on Friday, September 6, 2019 8:44 AM

Mr. Jones!  Praise be, you're back!  We were getting worried about you!

Everything OK with you?  Anything we need to know?  Anything we can do?

Don't stay away so long, you were missed!

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, September 6, 2019 8:48 AM

Good to see you back Jones. 

How do you get 100.. 52+1+1+26= 80

Pictures exist of T1's at Altoona as late as '56 but long in dead lines, still on the property but retired nonetheless. 

Arguably the most successful of them, the Q2's were gone so fast as to make your head spin. What a waste.

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Friday, September 6, 2019 10:13 AM

Not really, PRR should have started dieselization a lot sooner than they did.  The railroad took a loss in 1946.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by Jones1945 on Friday, September 6, 2019 10:21 AM

Flintlock76

Mr. Jones!  Praise be, you're back!  We were getting worried about you!

Everything OK with you?  Anything we need to know?  Anything we can do?

Don't stay away so long, you were missed!

Thank you so much for the warm welcome, Wayne! I really have that coming home feeling when I start posting on Classic Trains forum again after a month "break", I really miss and love you guys!

I am 100% alright, I wish I could share my adventure story with you guys in person, now! I can feel all the blessing from you guys during my "adventure" in Hong Kong,  I'm so grateful for all your support and concern. Tension eased off a little bit here after G7 but this is going to be a struggle of attrition fighting against the largest authoritarian regime in the world. I understand that this is a hobby forum, but I would like to invite everyone who cherishes the value of democracy and liberty keep following the news of the democracy movement in Hong Kong. #StandWithHongKong 

I wish I could posting stuff as frequently as before, but if the situation getting worse again, I might need to take another break. But I can promise, I won't stay away too long! CoffeeSmile, Wink & Grin

 

Miningman

Good to see you back Jones. 

How do you get 100.. 52+1+1+26= 80

Pictures exist of T1's at Altoona as late as '56 but long in dead lines, still on the property but retired nonetheless. 

Arguably the most successful of them, the Q2's were gone so fast as to make your head spin. What a waste.

Good to see you too, Vince. I thought I wouldn't come back for another month, but the tension eased off a bit right now so I don't want to wait anymore. Yes, my brain was probably jammed again, it should be 80, not 100.

52 T1s,

26 Q2s,

1 Q1,

1 S1.

80 duplexes,

54 of them were streamlined as-built, 

53 of them were passenger engines.

Compared the fleet to Southern Pacific's Daylight locos GS-2/3/4/5 (50 locos), P-14 (3 locos), the fleet of PRR's streamlined passenger steam engine (53+5 locos) is larger than SP's streamlined steam fleet by only 5 engines...... though the SP GS series was much less troublesome or ... "technologically advanced" Shy......

 

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Friday, September 6, 2019 10:27 AM

CSSHEGEWISCH

Not really, PRR should have started dieselization a lot sooner than they did.  The railroad took a loss in 1946.

 

Yes, that "...take a loss..." has had railfans, especially PRR fans, scratching their heads for years, especially since they should have been making money hand over fist like all the other 'roads did during WW2.  

Did they spend it like drunken sailors?  Strange.

Mr. Jones, I've been paying attention to Hong Kong and I suspect most of us are.  The West may do a lot of business with the PRC but I for one have never lost sight of who and what they are.  Quite frankly, I've never been 100% comfortable with it, for a variety of reasons.  

Of course, this isn't the place for discussions like that, so that's all I'll say on the matter.

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, September 6, 2019 10:43 AM

Flintlock76
 
CSSHEGEWISCH

Not really, PRR should have started dieselization a lot sooner than they did.  The railroad took a loss in 1946. 

Yes, that "...take a loss..." has had railfans, especially PRR fans, scratching their heads for years, especially since they should have been making money hand over fist like all the other 'roads did during WW2.

No head-scratching required: it was a paper loss, and JPS1 can explain it far better than I can.  What was actually happening in that time was the same colossal inflation of costs that Chesapeake & Western observed with their steam, combined with the recognition -- I'm not sure precisely when, but likely right around the '46 to '48 window -- that modern boilers require treated water, and high horsepower in steam implies large water rate that can't go through track pans.

The thing that killed steam wasn't any paper "loss" -- it was the observation that F7s could go across five divisions without change or watering or refuelling, with zero need for coast-to-coast anything.  There is of course a corollary for passenger engines on long-distance trains, and I don't think we need to invoke the conspiracy theory quite yet to see why PRR prioritized reliable diesel-electrics over T1s by 1948.

 

MEANWHILE -- the great 'what if', and Mike can probably go back and flesh this out, is the story in the mid-Twenties, as told by Clessie Cummins.  There was strong support for internal-combustion power, at both large and small scale, up to 1927.  Then a key advocate died, and wasn't replaced 'in kind', and the next couple of decades are history.  

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Posted by Jones1945 on Friday, September 6, 2019 11:33 AM

Flintlock76

Yes, that "...take a loss..." has had railfans, especially PRR fans, scratching their heads for years, especially since they should have been making money hand over fist like all the other 'roads did during WW2.  

Did they spend it like drunken sailors?  Strange.

Mr. Jones, I've been paying attention to Hong Kong and I suspect most of us are.  The West may do a lot of business with the PRC but I for one have never lost sight of who and what they are.  Quite frankly, I've never been 100% comfortable with it, for a variety of reasons.  

Of course, this isn't the place for discussions like that, so that's all I'll say on the matter.

I totally understand your feeling, Wayne. No matter how they dressing up themselves in the past 30 years, the CCP gov is still a cancer of modern human civilization. What they have been doing to the people in Xinjiang and the concentration camp the CCP built for them is disgraceful and disgusting. Their HSR network is indeed impressive, but imagine a civilian couldn't even buy a train ticket (or many other things) if he/she (or his/her friends, employees) complained/criticized to any government department, or committed any "crime" that is against the ridicules rules set by the regime. Their infamous "Social Credit System" is turning their whole country into giant prison with billions of CCTVs installed and connecting to the Big Data. No justice, no freedom, no privacy, but a score above every civilian's head! We should stop them. Lightning

Speaking of dieselization of the PRR, I think a custom-made trainset by the Pullman Standard and EMC would have been an interesting trainset like UP's City of San Francisco (ok, let's forget about the wreck of it...) and City of L.A. I believe Raymond Loewy was capable to create a new fabulous train which matched the taste and class for the New York to Chicago market. Such a train could have been saved the unfavorable ridership of the Broadway Limited! Anyway, we had some very deep discussions of why PRR has chosen the "duplex adventure" instead of accepting EMC's offer. CoffeeSmile

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