I'm not sure what reference Jones1945 got that picture from, and the archives are temporarily inaccessible due to the pandemic. If you PM him he may be able to scan the page at higher DPI and either e-mail it or post here.
A weird thing about Imgur is that an image that displays sharp and clear when enlarged in a post will be blurred if you click through to the stored version and try to enlarge that. This makes little objective sense, but is demonstrated in the Model Railroader post on lubricator and blowdown muffler on a K4 model.
I am fairly sure that the 'turbo-electric' is where the Steins "triplex" locomotive had gotten. There is correspondence in the Hagley about Raymond Loewy wanting credit for use of the term 'triplex' (he had proposed a design in the mid-Thirties that divided a reciprocating locomotive into three modules) even though it's pretty obvious the Steins locomotive had evolved into something radically different, at least with respect to turbo-electric versions.
This is the design that the secret Baldwin design that became the C&O M-1 was designed to compete with. That story, too, is well-documented from the PRR side in the material at the Hagley: it makes amusing reading now.
There remains the location of the fLocomotive Drive 1 and 2 patents that contain the original R2 details. Find them, and you'll have many valuable details to go with sharper illustrations...
Could you post the photos above with better resolution? I am interested to see the height and lenght for this awesome GG1 style version. The resolution is too low and I can t see the numbers. Regards
My introduction to the Fell locomotive was in the notes provided in Ransome-Wallis' Encyclopedia of World Railway Locomotives, which I read avidly when very young and then again when I found a copy 'on the street' in the late '80s. It is possible that the description of horsepower 'tuning' with combinations of different engines was part of the "Mark 2" locomotive (that was never finished) -- I don't have access to the book but someone here will, and can find the section and comment.
Incidentally, I said:
M636CThis immediately brought to mind British Railways No 10100 - http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxfell.htm What caused this to come to mind was that this locomotive had gear drive to the two innermost axles from a single gearbox and originally had coupling rods between these two axles but these were later removed, this being the opposite of PRR's considerations with the S2 mentioned above.My guess is that these were rigid, without buckling flexure. And this might result in differential loading at the gear teeth, and perhaps accelerated wear.
M636CThis immediately brought to mind British Railways No 10100 - http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxfell.htm What caused this to come to mind was that this locomotive had gear drive to the two innermost axles from a single gearbox and originally had coupling rods between these two axles but these were later removed, this being the opposite of PRR's considerations with the S2 mentioned above.
That would be mistaken. Interestingly enough, the Paxman Web site specifically mentions that this was called "Pennsylvania Drive" establishing that not only the concept but the actual detail design was likely carried over ... although this may be more from the GG1-style quill drive than from the flexible-gear approach on the S2, the strange situation Peter described does remain a question, and an interesting one.
Incidentally, the 'nonreversing clutch' arrangements on the multiple-planetary transmission (they are described as Legge clutches, U1 to U4) are like a kind of 20th-Century successor to Francis Webb's original nonconjugated compound. I was initially concerned about how much shock these might produce when they engaged -- note the comment about concern they would not 'release' once engaged -- but the idea that the locomotive might lock up in a way that might require a fitter to release makes the slow-reversing wackiness of the Krauss-Maffei diesel-hydraulics look comparatively benign by contrast.
As noted, the 'pressure charging' arrangements represent one of those endearingly dotty Pommie engineering efforts, here representing a very expensive and maintenance-intensive way to get the engines to produce lower output horsepower than they otherwise would ... but hey! the torque is even across the rpm range! Interestingly in the 'unanticipated consequences' department is the observation that this thing was apparently colossally loud in stations, and probably even more so at starting. I suspect that the exhaust characteristics of high-output forced charging at relatively low crankshaft rpm might have been less than pleasant, too...
Paxman apparently did considerable research on achieving this sort of result with the effort culminating in what was called the Hi-Dyne, and there is a highly interesting page on the Paxman site that describes this, together with a couple of very illustrative papers as appendices. I confess that I am far less diplomatic than Don Meiklejohn in considering what actual overall advantage the approach provided, whether from tapped turbocharger or external 'compressors'...
M636CI am under the impression that 80/8080 never actually turned a wheel burning coal. Even in testing, the turbine burnt the same oil as it had when fitted in one of the 4500HP Turbines... I think that some static testing on coal dust occurred.
I admit I was being sarcastic. But any information you have on the actual testing is valuable.
It seems peculiar that UP would go to all the trouble and expense of building the pulverizing and distribution systems for the plant without actually running them. (I will confess that I'd do this into the mechanical equivalent of a 'dummy load' until I was SURE all 'deleterious contaminants' in the combustion gas had been eliminated, and this may be what colors my interpretation of the test progress.)
I'd be fairly sanguine just from my knowledge of coal combustion and the experimental separation results up to about 1954 that there wasn't going to be a good answer to hot coal-fired gas being usable in turbines at the required power density, unless (as above) you used a de-ashed fuel. Note that the usual methods used in 'clean coal' to reduce ash issues will probably not help problems in turbines, even if you build them to run at comparatively slow speed to reduce impingement relative velocity.
... but they also followed up a few years later with that magnificent UP80/8080 locomotive, the finest piece of adaptive reuse that may ever have been seen in American railroading.
I am under the impression that 80/8080 never actually turned a wheel burning coal.
Even in testing, the turbine burnt the same oil as it had when fitted in one of the 4500HP Turbines...
I think that some static testing on coal dust occurred.
The actual turbines were used turbines from the 4500HP units that had reached the end of their effective life and could be destroyed by the abrasive solids left in the gas...
Peter
I remember one of the salient points of the Fell being the different sizes of the four traction engines, part of the idea being you could 'fine-tune' the actual horsepower of the locomotive in fairly fine increments by firing up different combinations of motors.
The Paxman website reference suggests that all four main engines on 10100 were identical:
The prototype Fell locomotive built at the L.M.R. Locomotive Works, Derby, employs four main propelling engines each of nominally 500 H.P. and two auxiliary engines driving the blowers etc., each developing 150 H.P. It will be seen that the four main engines are arranged in pairs at the ends of the locomotive. These engines are Vee type 12 cylinder R.P.H. series made by Davey Paxman & Company Ltd., Colchester. They are of 7" bore and 7¾" stroke and operate over a speed range of 500 to 1500 r.p.m.
Some thoughts on these things:
Jones1945Interesting discussion! Some drawings of the proposed steam turbine locomotives of PRR:
This is notable for implicitly using many of the cores and molds GSC developed for the production T1s -- that is the most likely reason for the rigid-wheelbase spacing here. I'd presume there is even more likelihood for 'commonalty of design details' in the T1-styled design referenced in the caption.
Unlikely that this would work satisfactorily as drawn, given what we know about high-speed adhesion of four-coupled engines on 'typical' PRR right-of-way construction. You might be able to make up 'special' long conjugating rods at lighter weight per foot to connect the 'inside' driver pairs without throwing off the rotating balance 'too far'.
There are two things about this that may deserve interest. First, this is very likely co-developed with the V1 project, not a 'predecessor' and certainly not a successor; and second, note the very large provision for a train-heat boiler.
These tell me that this is likely a help-win-the-war project, something capable of handling very long troop 'main' trains (presumably divided into consists to be handled by more 'normal' locomotives when that was desirable) as well as working fast and very heavy freight in 'minimum time'. It is condensing to cut down on the need either to 'scoop' or to stop and take water ... something that you can expect would be dramatically often for the anticipated horsepower.
It would probably not work for anything except full effort in a 'hot' war, let alone be a profitable thing to run actual PRR passenger trains with the right 'distinctive competence' ... or scarce-capital utilization!
Here is the drawing from the second Steins "V1" patent. Note the Garratt-like ashpan arrangement, specifically designed to keep the second-engine lead truck out of trouble. This is pointedly absent from the C&O M-1 design, which implicitly used the 'leading' truck on the "4-8-4" rear engine to support the firebox and ash arrangements ... in part to keep the overall length of the already-long locomotive from becoming still more insane, and perhaps avoiding Cooper loading issues for the axles adjacent to the heavy-framed 'gap' in the Steins design.
I confess I'd have liked to see what happened if the Baldwin chassis had been 'pushed' to "1948 electric drive" V1 power level (more than 1000hp per driving axle in the Baldwin chassis as detail-designed!) using a Q2 firebox over that intermediate truck.
Note that by some point between 1950 and 1952, the N&W version of the Steins chassis was motoring the small lead truck axles too. I'd be interested to see if there was any give-and-take between the team at N&W working on this and the people at PRR who did the P5b; a great many of the design details ... and problems found out 'after the fact' ... would have been common.
M636CI had wondered about the central coupling rods on 6200...
I don't know if there's been a formal analysis of why these were added, comparable to the discussion of torque-strut addition to the Roosen motor locomotive in Germany.
It is pretty clear, though, what the problem would have been. Each of the two 'independent' four-wheel groups would have had the same issues with transient adhesion that the unconjugated T1 does. Any slip, or more precisely the shock when adhesion is restored, will not be taken through the flexible gear, but the gear train from the flexible gear's rim outward to the axle gears.
The sensible thing to do here was to implement the 'shock abatement' as full coupling (using, as Chapelon noted, the considerable lateral flexure of the Timken rods for any shock compensation needed to save the gears) Whether you could in fact then go to single-gear drive (onto the equivalent of a 'main' driver pair) rather than split between the two central axles is a question likely reserved for a second, lighter prototype. (Which Westinghouse retained interest in up to some point in 1948...) Technically there is 'overconstraint' when you have mutual gear drive on two central axles that are now rod-conjugated; I do not know if this produced any effects (probably on the rod eyes or bushings) in service.
This immediately brought to mind British Railways No 10100 - http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxfell.htm What caused this to come to mind was that this locomotive had gear drive to the two innermost axles from a single gearbox and originally had coupling rods between these two axles but these were later removed, this being the opposite of PRR's considerations with the S2 mentioned above.
What caused this to come to mind was that this locomotive had gear drive to the two innermost axles from a single gearbox and originally had coupling rods between these two axles but these were later removed, this being the opposite of PRR's considerations with the S2 mentioned above.
My guess is that these were rigid, without buckling flexure. And this might result in differential loading at the gear teeth, and perhaps accelerated wear.
I remember one of the salient points of the Fell 'design concept' being different sizes of the four traction engines, part of the idea being you could 'fine-tune' the actual horsepower of the locomotive in fairly fine increments by firing up different combinations of motors. It is always amusing to see engineers spend hundreds of thousands of pounds building mechanical contrivances to save a few pints of fuel oil ... although I always enjoy a good complex design when somebody else is paying for it.
The 'separately-fired supercharger' idea is similar to some of the early turbojet research which used a separate combustion engine to drive the compressor -- the Italians in particular tried this approach with some very large engines (as they would have to be!). The problem is that that's an awful lot of packaging and weight. (Of course in those days, effective turbocharging was still an infant science, and power-assisted turbocharging still something years in the future.)
For the early BR world, especially given the economic issues surrounding suitable fuel-oil supply that could be paid for in pounds sterling, absolute fuel conservation at the cost of massive amounts of high-tolerance mechanical complexity and careful maintenance by intelligent people might have made sense. For a while. I confess to being highly suspicious about how that bolt got loose in there, or whether the train-boiler fire might be related in some respects to the "loose" smokebox-door situation that finally ended the Leader test program.
Interesting discussion! Some drawings of the proposed steam turbine locomotives of PRR:
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Among the things of potential interest here is that no attempt to show a lateral-turbine drive for the six-coupled engines in the '212 patent seems to have been made, even though it should have been relatively simple to provide gearing between two of the axles with conjugating rod drive as provided on the evolving S2 (there was originally no rod between the two geared axles, but one was found to be necessary in service).
I had wondered about the central coupling rods on 6200...
This immediately brought to mind British Railways No 10100.
I'm sure Overmod is completely familiar with this fairly unusual locomotive but for anyone else interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_10100
Anyone who needs real detail will need: http://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/paxfell.htm
M636CIn the case of the V1, they could have used four transverse turbines each driving two axles as was done on the S-2. That part of the S-2 worked, as far as I can tell, and avoided the right angle drives that would have caused most of the problems in the twin turbine configuration.
The plot thickens, of course, when you recall what Steins patented in 1944 (applied for as late as 1942) which clearly shows 6-coupled reciprocating engines with the two-axle lead and no trailing trucks. This patent (2338212) is the one cited in Steins' subsequent patent application for the [highly necessary] pumped water-balancing system (which was applied for in 1946 after the application for the famous patent already cited).
(Incidentally, a good quiz question along the lines of the one I recently foisted on the forum involves a patent Steins cites as a precedent. In 1872 an inventor proposed an improvement on locomotives which involved three driver pairs with four-wheel trucks before and aft of the driver wheelbase. What was the inventor's name?)
But four turbines would cost more than two. How did they intend to reverse the V1?
Steins conveniently does not disclose his reversing arrangement in the '119 patent, which is more than a little strange; I don't think I have come across anything at the Hagley yet which says in black and white what reversing arrangement was incorporated into the 'greenlighted' production design, although there surely would have been one.
I do not know the time by which it would have become obvious that the reverse-turbine arrangements on the S2 as built were incompetent; I do not have information on what the 'best fix' according to PRR and Westinghouse for this issue would have been. Apparently both the idea of providing a clutch for the reverse turbine and the use of a reversing 'idler' close to the turbine output shaft (as was proposed for at least one of the '20s turbines in Europe) were considered insufficiently robust for railroad service on a locomotive of that size and weight; I'd presume the same argument would apply to the V1's 4000hp drivelines, so I'd think you would have the same arrangement of higher-reduction smaller reverse turbine acting on the primary reduction gear arrangement between turbine and line shaft. (This might have also been applied at the 'distal' end of the primary-turbine rotor, turning the whole arrangement backward without steam being admitted to the primary rotor...)
I have not been exactly sanguine about the 'fix' for the most logical reason for full-power reversing: setting back against a standing train. It is rapidly clear that the many mechanical issues posed by this are relatively easily solved by using an electrical transmission -- and that the Bowes drive provides both the essential 'contactless' flexibility and the ability to lock up in direct drive that are desirable without the expense of full-power generators, switchgear, and traction motors.
I wasn't trying to imply a relationship, just trying to describe the appearance (before I remembered the patent application.)
Looking at the M-1 drawing, I could see two convincing reasons for neither trailing axle being motored: on the leading four axle truck the motor would have been outboard right next to the the firebox. On the trailing four axle truck, the pivot of the trailing motored delta truck is located right where the motor should be...
I feel sure they could have avoided both of these problems with some foresight.
In the case of the V1, they could have used four transverse turbines each driving two axles as was done on the S-2. That part of the S-2 worked, as far as I can tell, and avoided the right angle drives that would have caused most of the problems in the twin turbine configuration. But four turbines would cost more than two.
How did they intend to reverse the V1?
M636CStoffels in Lokomotiven und Dampftechnik illustrates the PRR V-1 on page 283 in a very detailed artist's impression in side elevation. For example, it shows the water scoop between the trucks on the tender, so I think we can assume that it accurately shows one version of the locomotive. It is however described as a turbine-electric design of 1948.
The 'original' V1 material (the freight-specific design) at the Hagley all matches the language in the Steins patent (2413119) in being a straight mechanical drive using 'line shaft and gears'. Part of the 'secret project' at Baldwin involved getting around the durable mechanical conjugation with traction motors -- which were only on three axles of the cast bed frames, as indicated in Stoffels' rendition of the M-1 wheel arrangement. (I have read more than one explanation why all the 'principal' axles were not driven.)
It is possible that PRR did go to traction motors by 1948 for higher-speed work, but where were the generators going to be packaged? is it possible that Stoffels mistook the Bowes-drive version for big electric motors connected to the driveshafting (as this was one interpretation of what the drive did as propulsion)?
Certainly N&W gave up on direct lineshaft drive fairly early, as even if they had only intended powering the 'rigid' axles in the two chassis, they had extended this to all axles including the trucks by 1950 or so (there are reports in the trade press tht will corroborate this) I think electrifying the twin-turbine drive was a mistake, not just because it followed the expensive C&O 'experiment' with few apparent improvements but because it added wild levels of expensive complexity on top of all the high-maintenance and catastrophic-failure characteristics of the high-pressure Q2 style boiler and its auxiliaries. But that is because I recognize the interesting approaches to provide functional geared lineshaft drive to one of these things...
The locomotive looks pretty much like a C&O M-1 missing both its trailing truck and the section of body containing the turbine and generators, painted and lettered for the PRR.
Remember that what you're looking at is from 1944. The Baldwin work that resulted in the M-1s didn't begin until 1945. It would be fairer to describe the M-1 as a slightly longer and 'improved' version of the V1 rather than get things out of cause-and-effect order just because the M-1s were more infamous.
In this illustration the leading truck of the trailing turbine unit is clear of the firebox.
Note that the Steins patent shows the 'moral equivalent' of a banjo frame to support the direct weight of the Q2-size firebox. This allows the pin-guided truck underneath to steer the rear four-axle chassis correctly without centering rockers to take some of the weight on the truck frame. It is interesting to contemplate ashpan arrangements over and perhaps around this truck and its equalization.
Each truck shows the outline of equipment above the leading truck which I take to be the turbine and its reduction gear.
Compare it with the dotted lines in the Steins patent.
I do not yet know what reduction arrangements were used to adapt the Bowes drive to the turbine and driveline, particularly the large-diameter 'pancake' version depicted in the early-version Bowes-drive patent. There is limited space under relatively harsh conditions for this machinery as designed...
Yes, I think the thing would not be easy to back up against the kind of train it would likely be assigned to. It would be interesting to see how it would actually ride and track, too.
These have a nominal 4-8-0 arrangement, and there are two turbines, smaller than those for the S2, one per underframe in line with the longitudinal axis and driving shafts. The modified Q2 boiler sits backward with the low firebox and ashpan over (and carried by) the second unit's 'lead' truck, and there is no 'trailing truck' as on the Baldwin turbines.
Stoffels in Lokomotiven und Dampftechnik illustrates the PRR V-1 on page 283 in a very detailed artist's impression in side elevation. For example, it shows the water scoop between the trucks on the tender, so I think we can assume that it accurately shows one version of the locomotive. It is however described as a turbine-electric design of 1948. Elsewhere he describes the locomotive as 2'Do' 2'Do' wheel arrangement which matches the idea of electric drive.
The M-1 is described as having a wheel arrangement 2' Co1' 2' Co1' Bo'.
In this illustration the leading truck of the trailing turbine unit is clear of the firebox. Each truck shows the outline of equipment above the leading truck which I take to be the turbine and its reduction gear.
Each power truck is seen to be pivoted between the second and third powered axle although there may be some form of sliding support pad above the turbine. The drawing is very similar to this patent drawing previously posted by Jones 1945 in another thread.
Jones1945I am under the impression that V1 would have been a "direct-drive" steam turbine locomotive which was similar to the PRR S2...
It was different in almost every significant mechanical way (aside from the principle of direct connection of the turbine to the wheels)
Much of the detail design of the original version, including a very clear elevation drawing, survives in the Hagley. The locomotive uses relatively low drivers (IIRC 40, like the Centipedes) in groups of 8 in cast underframes. These have a nominal 4-8-0 arrangement, and there are two turbines, smaller than those for the S2, one per underframe in line with the longitudinal axis and driving shafts. The modified Q2 boiler sits backward with the low firebox and ashpan over (and carried by) the second unit's 'lead' truck, and there is no 'trailing truck' as on the Baldwin turbines.
The coal bunker is all the way forward and the stack at the rear, just as with the M-1s, and you will recall this was in Loewy's original 'Triplex' idea and was a major bone of contention in Loewy's subsequent "discussions" with Steins et al. about what part of the V1's design was whose. The styling adopted for the 'production' locomotive was reminiscent of the DD2.
It is probably important to look at the timeline carefully. The V1 was 'greenlighted' for production in 1944, presumably as the next logical evolutionary step in war-winning high-capacity freight power; it was not 'proceeded with' postwar because the water rate was so colossal. Much of the problem changes when you have asynchronous control of turbine rpm vs. driving-wheel speed at high torque, which even the early version of the Bowes drive (which would be the one considered in 1946) would permit. (The operative question, of course, being "is much of the problem enough of the problem?" and of course the definitive answer is 'not as much answer as F units provide' as we all know by now.)
As late as 1948 we see a cut in the trade press, discussing the N&W further interest in the mechanical steam turbine, that still has the "4-8-4-8" chassis and DD2-like nose. This would change radically by 1950 as N&W ... perhaps influenced by the Baldwin approach ... went to all axles electrically motored. As we've discussed in other contexts, the general trend from 'high-speed' cast underframes to bogie trucks (usually C trucks for freight work) was very strong in the late '40s, including in heavy electric-locomotive design, so it shouldn't be surprising how we got from a N&W six-motor-per-underframe design (with two types of motor in custom castings) to six-motors-in-two-span-bolstered-trucks as on the TE-1. (Much more surprising, or less surprising if you are aware of the ongoing issue of water rate, is the almost ridiculous underpowering of the TE-1 even relative to existing reciprocating steam locomotives in comparable service; PRR in the late Forties even had flackery proposing the mechanical turbine power be increased to '9000hp' which, to anyone even slightly familiar with atmospherically-exhausted steam in the late '40s, was a laugher...
Overmod Note in the 1949 patent the specific detail drawing showing the device at 'minimum length' (it is much more highly effective at large diameter than by extending the length) although this does not show the 'spider' that would have been used to connect to the mechanical shafting, and perhaps one or more gearcases to lower the shaft line of the drive. If you are familiar with the mechanical layout in the V1 chassis you will see the somewhat interesting packaging concerns here.
Note in the 1949 patent the specific detail drawing showing the device at 'minimum length' (it is much more highly effective at large diameter than by extending the length) although this does not show the 'spider' that would have been used to connect to the mechanical shafting, and perhaps one or more gearcases to lower the shaft line of the drive. If you are familiar with the mechanical layout in the V1 chassis you will see the somewhat interesting packaging concerns here.
I found the 1943 patent and still looking for the 1949 patent. I am under the impression that V1 would have been a "direct-drive" steam turbine locomotive which was similar to the PRR S2...
It should be borne in mind that the version of the Bowes drive under initial discussion at PRR is very much a 1940s-era device, even if Bowes kept the patent 'open' with improvements until 1949 -- which I think is likely. (We know there was a revival of interest for something very similar to the V1 chassis for passenger service by 1947, since we have the design patent for the shell issued that year, and of course the device was adapted for high-speed diesel-mechanical service in the Ingalls 2000hp passenger unit...)
It is also potentially interesting to note that the technological development of this approach to high-power torque conversion did not end with the late versions of the Bowes drive. One particular example from the early '70s was Mole's work on segmented homopolar magnetic devices (see patent 4034248 and some of the associated dtic.mil periodic reports) which, while science fiction for most bankrupt railroads in that era, certainly allowed for dramatic flexible performance at good efficiency.
Miningman Very nice Mr. Jones. Always a fascinating but tragic locomotive to look at. What a way to burn up all those wartime profits. In today's world this would have been a government funded project with all kinds of consultants and spokespersons and all that jazz.
Very nice Mr. Jones. Always a fascinating but tragic locomotive to look at. What a way to burn up all those wartime profits. In today's world this would have been a government funded project with all kinds of consultants and spokespersons and all that jazz.
These big-boned sisters were indeed very huge from our perspective, but imagine you look at them from a very tall skyscraper or a structure like the CN-Tower, they were a tiny steam-electric power station on wheels!
Overmod The Baldwin locomotive was really little more than a conventional electric's undercarriage with a plain old riveted-construction boiler propped on top. By that time I'm sure Vauclain & Co. had seen plenty of the preliminary design for the mechanical PRR V1 and decided its configuration was just nifty for electrical axle power instead of gears ... before figuring out anything relating to the Bowes drive. Meanwhile N&W was proceeding to fall off the trolley in a different impractical direction, succumbing to the siren call of all-axles-driven in a complex V1-style chassis ... and then, of course, going to all truck-borne design.
The Baldwin locomotive was really little more than a conventional electric's undercarriage with a plain old riveted-construction boiler propped on top. By that time I'm sure Vauclain & Co. had seen plenty of the preliminary design for the mechanical PRR V1 and decided its configuration was just nifty for electrical axle power instead of gears ... before figuring out anything relating to the Bowes drive. Meanwhile N&W was proceeding to fall off the trolley in a different impractical direction, succumbing to the siren call of all-axles-driven in a complex V1-style chassis ... and then, of course, going to all truck-borne design.
Speaking of the Bowes drive, it is something I never have seen in person before. But after reading the patents of Thomas D. Bowes, I realize why Pennsy thought that the device, a dynamoelectric machine transmission unit, would have been too large for the engine, let alone the construction cost of it.
PRR CHRONOLOGY 1946
"June 13, 1946 Chief of Motive Power Howell T. Cover request the use in the proposed Class V1 turbine locomotive of an electric drive and reversing mechanism invented by Dr. Thomas D. Bowes, naval architect and used in ship propulsion; it will raise the cost of the complete locomotive by $10,000 to $985,000; Cover recommends building and testing one truck complete before proceeding with the whole locomotive, and speed is necessary to secure the use of the patent if it proves successful. (VPO)
---
Aug. 20, 1946 Meeting of PRR, Baldwin Locomotive Works and Westinghouse Electric Corporation personnel held in Philadelphia on the proposed Class V1 turbine locomotive; both the Bowes drive and DC transmission are rejected as they would make the locomotive 10-20 feet longer; Carleton K. Steins calls for the coal capacity to be increased from 32.5 tons to 42 tons. (CMP)"
Hmmm... you're applying late 40's thinking to this... we know what happened with the underhanded and clandestine moves with, of all companies, Baldwin, and the C&O. I'm saying that today Pennsy would have sought out great gobs of Federal funding and Baldwin would do the same working with C&O. No need for super secrecy and dirty betrayals just mountains of mullah with plenty of gender equality, muchos diversity, slick but wholesome ah sucks spokespeople, a fine sprinkling of nepotism and long long lines around the block of lobbyists and consultants. In the end the result would be the same, scrap pile in 2 years or so, the other one cancelled.
MiningmanIn today's world this would have been a government funded project with all kinds of consultants and spokespersons and all that jazz.
It probably wouldn't.
The steam-turbine development program at Baldwin was a rushed and kept-top-secret effort, apparently largely intended in 'scooping' the PRR including Steins which had some key patents on steam turbine locomotives and was expecting to capitalize on them in the late Forties. There is some amusing correspondence at the Hagley regarding what the PRR team thought of the resulting locomotive detail design.
There were a couple of design efforts in that period that would qualify as 'government funded with all kinds of consultants and all that jazz'. One was the effort to develop free-piston locomotive idea ... the thing that I argue first ate Lima, then Baldwin as relevant diesel-era locomotive builders. The other was the great, almost incredibly ill-starred BCR effort to design a coal-burning gas turbine, which had almost as many lives as a cat -- a black cat showing more and more symptoms of FIP, as it were -- all more or less disastrous. By the time this began to be perceived as the self-sustaining think-tank scam it was (at least under Yellott) there was an awful lot of various railroads' development capital tied up in what was increasingly looking like the sort of R&D locomotive builders ought to be paying for -- or securing national grants to figure out how to build in practice. Hirsimaki covers this in some detail but not nearly enough to get the fine flavor of the technological issues actually involved, and supposedly at one time or another 'solved'...
Some fine-tuned photos from the public internet archive of The Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society ( https://cohs.org/) :
" 1949 Chicago Railroad Fair showing GM Train of Tomorrow, PRR steam turbine, and RR GG-1 electric." That is a NYC Niagara in the pic but the PRR S2 Direct-drive Steam Turbine was in the Fair. It was the last time she attended a publicity event.
"C&O STREAMLINED COALING STATION AT CLIFTON FORGE, VA CA 1948 - Built to fuel M-1 steam-turbine-electrics powering The Chessie train."
Thank you.
Jones1945A duplex version of the Js? or something like the long-forgotten NYC C1a, PRR T2 proposal? A PRR Q2 boiler, 70" drivers, Franklin Type C poppet valve gear, 4-8-4 or 4-4-4-4 wheel arrangement, 7900hp dual-service steam engine. The maximum power output of the (_____) on a N&W Class J is 5,300hp (4,000 kW) at (_____mph) or 5495hp using Alco's simple formula to calculate. They were one of the best 4-8-4 ever made but I think there is nothing wrong to imagine how to make them even better or make a hot rod Class J...
Much, much more simple than that. And the fun part is that (aside from the Q2 boiler conversion) examples were BUILT. It's the last few As, difficult to explain coherently otherwise...
The traction-motor issue is fixed with better seals at the case and relocating the TM blower intake to a filtered duct or box up high or on the roof behind the bunker. A simple multiple-shield cavity wall with airflow through one of the cavities neatly shields any smoke box-end radiation from anything at the back -- I must be missing something, probably weight distribution, but I'd put the turbine adjacent to the smokebox end and use longer connections from the generator.
Of course, Baldwin was famous as a kind of American Lucas when it came to running power wiring (and other lines) from point to point -- for example they would put the stuff in a closed chase neatly under the floor, in the articulated chassis, where the oil and grit would naturally build up and compromise the insulation and connections. Most of the lube lines had flexible hose connections where EMD had gasketed joints -- chronic source of oil leaks to trickle down to... see above.
Little detail design stuff not found on steam locomotives so 'designed around' by smart engineers without a clue.
Overmod It was far from that; I'd suspect that with the same kind of attention PRR gave the T1s in this same era, many of the bugs could have been worked out. It's just that there was no use for a 6000hp dedicated locomotive of this complexity with diesels available. Especially since the heavy consists the engines were designed to pull were stillborn.
It was far from that; I'd suspect that with the same kind of attention PRR gave the T1s in this same era, many of the bugs could have been worked out. It's just that there was no use for a 6000hp dedicated locomotive of this complexity with diesels available. Especially since the heavy consists the engines were designed to pull were stillborn.
I love Young's idea and appreciate his passion for creating another vanguard streamliner, the first time I saw an O gauge C&O M-1, I thought it was a very successful locomotive; but how to prevent the coal dust and cinders from entering the motor? On a ship, the generator could be placed somewhere wholly isolated to the boiler room, on M-1, some of the motor mounted on the truck was just a few feet away from the firebox, and the coal bunker; the smokestack was very close to the generator as well. This sounds like a fundamental design flaw, and I do have the impression that the M-1 was"unrescuetable," C&O already spent $1.6 million for three of them but scrapped all of them after merely two to three years, I wonder how much more money would have been required to fix all the bugs. Yes, we know C&O didn't want to spend the time and money, just curious! (and because I know you would have fixed them, Overmod)
Overmod I think we do have to thank the Young Chessie initiative for one very special thing. I suspect the N&W gave careful thought to how it was going to compete with something like the Chessie ... and what would match the M-1 speed through mountains and around curves. And they came up with the other 70"-drivered Timken-rod-equipped locomotive capable of high dash speed but with one-and-a-half times the power of a J... ...now put the promised Q2 boiler on it, and let the fun commence! No one will ever bother with a silly overweight Allegheny again...
I think we do have to thank the Young Chessie initiative for one very special thing. I suspect the N&W gave careful thought to how it was going to compete with something like the Chessie ... and what would match the M-1 speed through mountains and around curves. And they came up with the other 70"-drivered Timken-rod-equipped locomotive capable of high dash speed but with one-and-a-half times the power of a J...
...now put the promised Q2 boiler on it, and let the fun commence! No one will ever bother with a silly overweight Allegheny again...
A duplex version of the Js? or something like the long-forgotten NYC C1a, PRR T2 proposal? A PRR Q2 boiler, 70" drivers, Franklin Type C poppet valve gear, 4-8-4 or 4-4-4-4 wheel arrangement, 7900hp dual-service steam engine. The maximum power output of the (_____) on a N&W Class J is 5,300hp (4,000 kW) at (_____mph) or 5495hp using Alco's simple formula to calculate. They were one of the best 4-8-4 ever made but I think there is nothing wrong to imagine how to make them even better or make a hot rod Class J...
Jones1945The C&O M-1 was a complete disaster,
As it turned out, the anticipated desire to reach Cincinnati as if it were a new Chicago-class destination turned out to be not too subtly overrated. Which is a shame considering B&O's entry in the sweepstakes...
Flintlock76 Great write-ups Mod-Man, thanks! A thing that should never have been built, is what it amounts to. I keep remembering the wise words of Mischa Kalashnikov... "All that is complex is not useful. All that is useful is simple!" That concept sure worked in his case.
Great write-ups Mod-Man, thanks!
A thing that should never have been built, is what it amounts to. I keep remembering the wise words of Mischa Kalashnikov...
"All that is complex is not useful. All that is useful is simple!"
That concept sure worked in his case.
Yeah! Thank you for everyone's input. I am taking a short break somewhere in Southeastern Europe, thus the late and quick response. I thought there would be zero respond to this thread when I was posting it, to be honest.
The C&O M-1 was a complete disaster, but it was also an exciting over-engineered machine that people probably could only find inside a Steampunk fantasy world. C&O had some remarkable express passenger steam engine like their class L 4-6-4s equipped with RC poppet valves, should have been powerful enough to lead the proposed Chessie train but Robert R. Young made some very ambitious and risky decisions that was supposed to wow the public, including millions of money that C&O wasted on purchasing new passenger cars. Well, we know not only C&O made such a mistake during the transition era.
I love new ideas, and appreciate businessperson who willing to take risks, though sometimes it would cost the future of their entire company :
Erik_MagI strongly suspect that the M-1 generators were set up with a Lemp control scheme, where the battery, shunt and differential field windings conspire to produce a more or less constant power output with respect to load.
My understanding of the Lemp system is that it is designed to be load-following to whatever the prime mover is set to, so the throttle only regulates the shaft power and the electrical gear adjusts to an output comparable to input. See here in the 1924 patent. The earlier Lemp scheme (from 1914) combined throttle and excitation together in a system adjusted from a single unified 'power controller', to keep from getting into any setting where the engine was commanded too high or too low for the required electrical load.
This makes somewhat better sense for an engine governed to run at one of a limited number of programmed shaft speeds (as is a diesel engine with an 8-notch Woodward governor) but it still works well, as Erik noted, for a locomotive where the turbine throttle is adjusted by a simple mechanical grapevine to be familiar to steam railroaders ... as I believe the M-1s were.
Here are some of the questions I'd have to look at with this setup:
1) in a conventional first-generation EMD, there is a careful note to close the throttle when running over crossings or known hard shock sources, to protect the traction motor brushes. Is there such a note for the turbine, and does it effectively derate current when the throttle is closed instead of continuing to load as the turbine winds down?
2) how is series/parallel adjusted on the M-1s? - to my knowledge automatic transition a la 'hunting season' didn't come along until later, and to provide engineer control to soft-drop the generator excitation and bring it up again as part of manual transition might be 'interesting' to implement. As far as I can see, Lemp not only has his motors permanently in parallel but indicates in the patent that his invention optimizes keeping them so.
I wish I could remember more about the Giesl article (I believe you mean the one from 1968?) as it was a formative influence on my interest in steam technology. I remember thinking that a typical Giesl might not benefit from progressive nozzles in its 'fan' for excessively high mass flow unless the stack were so long that the escaping steam path at the 'ends' produced little effective entrainment -- I doubted this would be likely.
In any case we know that steam-turbine designers were often a bit overenthusiastic in providing the necessary very low effective back pressure in atmospheric-exhausting turbines -- the dimensions of the exhaust plenum in the condensing UP locomotives of the late Thirties, and the four rather large stacks that caused so much woe for the PRR S2 are a couple of visible examples. One would expect that Baldwin would have sized the front end for proper exhaust mass flow at 6000hp, and further adjusted things so that in some control regimes only the amount of exhaust needed to produce steam generation would actually go through the nozzle and stack arrangement to make draft, with the rest being bypassed directly (through proper diverging plenum arrangements) to atmosphere, or condensed to practical extent in FWH. It would be highly unusual for Baldwin to undersize the draft elements on this poster child of a postwar locomotive; perhaps they felt so 'burned' by the disasters enabled by the four-stack arrangement that they overcompensated -- but that seems strange and unlikely for Baldwin.
In any case, it seems logical to me, with no particular hindsight that wouldn't have been present for Baldwin designers in 1945, that the same kind of arrangement used in the early-Twenties automatic cutoff control could have provided additional feedback control based on back pressure, keeping turbine mass flow proportional to back pressure -- this would certainly tend to affect actual achieved shp from the turbine in a way that would permit lower effective excitation to maintain the Lemp control's fixed engine output speed, and that might easily result in the locomotive not producing the anticipated power at speed or in certain operating conditions.
Overmod In any case, in this pre-60s era, the large generators are just that: DC generators, and the voltage they make is proportional to speed. The control system used for the turbine governor is probably a version of at least a modified Ward-Leonard scheme (see Erik for better details in comprehensible English) so both the speed and excitation of the generator will be modulated to produce the DC output actually fed to the motors... this may be very similar to load regulation on contemporary Baldwins. The trick here is to minimize 'slip' by getting the turbine rotor to a speed that matches mass flow (thereby getting around the single biggest problem of the direct-drive PRR S2) and then balancing turbine speed and generator excitation as you increase, make transition, etc.
In any case, in this pre-60s era, the large generators are just that: DC generators, and the voltage they make is proportional to speed. The control system used for the turbine governor is probably a version of at least a modified Ward-Leonard scheme (see Erik for better details in comprehensible English) so both the speed and excitation of the generator will be modulated to produce the DC output actually fed to the motors... this may be very similar to load regulation on contemporary Baldwins. The trick here is to minimize 'slip' by getting the turbine rotor to a speed that matches mass flow (thereby getting around the single biggest problem of the direct-drive PRR S2) and then balancing turbine speed and generator excitation as you increase, make transition, etc.
I strongly suspect that the M-1 generators were set up with a Lemp control scheme, where the battery, shunt and differential field windings conspire to produce a more or less constant power output with respect to load. This effectively gives a continuously variable transmission, although some shuffling of motor connections (e.g. series, parallel) has to be done to keep the output voltage and current of the traction generator within spec. This is pretty close to being a lossless control mechanism. The kicker was that the output power of the turbines required two traction generators, so a gearbox was used to reduce shaft speed for the generators and split the torque. The electrical set-up wasn't too horrendously different than from what was used on the 4500HP GTEL's.
The Lemp control system should require less torque from the prime mover at reduced speeds, which would be a much better match to the turbine than a straight mechanical drive such as the PRR S2.
The Trains article on the Geisl ejector implied that exhaust back pressure was a problem, and I'd bet that was a major cause of poor performance.
BaltACDWhat I found most interesting was that the F117 was designed in the way it was, was because there wasn't sufficient computer power available to calculate the Radar reflectance of rounded objects - they could only calculate the reflectance off flat surfaces. Remember - the F117 was designed and developed in the 1970's.
You're being handed a piece of subtle disinformation: the 'curved surfaces' only work because of better-performing RAM coatings. The point of the flat faceted surfaces and edges is precisely to give specular reflection of any incident EM radiation at an angle that would not engage either the original emitter or any likely aircraft being vectored to the stealth aircraft's vicinity (as the Russians were famously set up to do). The reflectance characteristics were known; what wasn't known was how to absorb incident radiation over a wide GHz range effectively, which came later (and much of which is still effectively 'classified').
Of course there's a cognate of the Australian OTH tracking: even if the aircraft has the radar signature of a bird, you can set Doppler radar to look for a 400kt bird in all the noise, and it will likely find, discriminate, and track it. THAT is one place where extra computer power applies.
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