Soviet streamlined steam locomotive

[BN7150]

A streamlined steam locomotive model from the Soviet era was put up for auction in Japan. The seller said it was very expensive on a Russian handmade HO scale and would not be shipped overseas. Does anyone know this locomotive? The starting price is 175,000 yen (about US$ 1,700). How about you millionaire?

[Overmod]

The prototype was as I recall intended for the October Railway, ruler-straight between Moscow and Leningrad (at the time) and unless I am mistaken is road number 6998.  This is the one from Voroshilovgrad in 1938 (2-3-2V), the 'production' engines from Kolomna a year earlier (2-3-2K) were streamlined differently.

Due I think to the war this engine never was actually used 'as intended'; I believe it survived to 1969 before being scrapped.  (That it was not preserved, in a land that honors its P36s, perhaps indicates it was not quite  the DR 05 competition intended...)

You'd have to have specific interest in Soviet steam to pay that price, but it certainly looks to me as if careful craftsmanship went into the production.  I would ask if it's scaled in 1:87.1 or slightly smaller so "HO gauge" track equals the Russian 5' prototype (pity it's not O gauge where 1:48 would be just right!)

Be interesting to see if this modeler also did the Kantola-inspired streamlined 2-8-4...

[SeeYou190]

BN7150

Does anyone know this locomotive?

I did not know about it, but I love it! It just screams "Soviet Union" from pilot to rear coupler.

The image has been saved to my idea file... thank you.

-Kevin

[Overmod]

SeeYou190

I did not know about it, but I love it! It just screams "Soviet Union" from pilot to rear coupler.

As I was digging around looking for a picture of a 2-3-2K for you, I came across something far better.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8DgIm8jyDc8

(The "2-3-2B" uses the Cyrillic V; it's not a different class)

i don't think we ever celebrated streamlined steam in any of our subways...

 

[dknelson]

Not only does it scream "Soviet Union" but to my eyes at least it screams my mom's Sunbeam Mixmaster.  Compare the speed control to the smokebox front:

Dave Nelson

[Overmod]

I think it's a response to Otto Kuhler.

It's tempting to mention Ruthie Egnor, who would probably have 'developed' enough by then, but she wasn't famous yet in '38.

[rrinker]

Overmod

 i don't think we ever celebrated streamlined steam in any of our subways...

 

Maybe not technically "in the subway" but - Philly Market East station:

                           --Randy

 

[doctorwayne]

Overmod

...It's tempting to mention Ruthie Egnor, who would probably have 'developed' enough by then, but she wasn't famous yet in '38.

Ah, yes....Dagmar, built like a Dagwood sandwich...loaded.

Wayne

[Ringo58]

Overmod

 

 

SeeYou190

I did not know about it, but I love it! It just screams "Soviet Union" from pilot to rear coupler.

 

 

As I was digging around looking for a picture of a 2-3-2K for you, I came across something far better.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8DgIm8jyDc8

(The "2-3-2B" uses the Cyrillic V; it's not a different class)

i don't think we ever celebrated streamlined steam in any of our subways...

 

 

The first locomotive looks like a Russian version of the Hiawatha

[BN7150]

I think that streamlining at that time had three purposes. The first was purely reduction in running resistance, which occurred in Germany and the UK. The second was a commercial appeal that flourished in the US. It's a way to counter competing railroads, rising aircrafts and highways. (Is there any dissent?)

The third is enhancing national prestige (nationalism?). That was the case in Japan. There is a record clearly stated by the designer. The Soviet is probably this third.

[BN7150]

I think it's exactly what Lastspikemike says. However, there were rolling stocks in the United States that was seriously developed to reduce air resistance. These are McKeen cars. The manufacturer tried to help the poor prime mover as much as possible and adopted this form. The photo is Ken Kidder's O scale.

Hydrodynamically, if you move forward as it is, turbulence will occur at the rear end and it will become a resistance. On the contrary, the reverse has less air resistance. Well, this car shouldn't be fast enough to create turbulence. The principle can be understood by envisioning the shape of the DC-3's fuselage.

The NYC Jet car also has a shape that ignores this fluid dynamics. For a long time I believed that jet engines were at the rear end. The photo is from Kato and is N scale.

[gmpullman]

 

 

https://dl.mospace.umsystem.edu/umsl/islandora/object/umsl%3A314433

 

Good Luck, Ed

[Overmod]

https://patents.google.com/patent/US49227A/en

Designed, appropriately enough, with reference to the hydrodynamics of crew shells.

[rrinker]

 Yje fiorst wind tunnel was invented in 1871. The Wright Brothers used a wind tunnel to help design their airplane. Aerodynamics was much more understood, much earlier than people think. The biggest problem was getting a power plant that could produce enough power while beign light enough to lift itself,t he plane, and the pilot. Some of those relatively huge early hit or miss engines look liek they ought to be 100's of horsepower - they're maybe 10 for the bigger ones. ANd weigh tons. Great for grinding corn or loading the silo or pumping oil, not so great to power an airplane.

                                         --Randy

 

[Overmod]

Lastspikemike

 Leonardo de Vinci obviously understood aerodynamics.

Actually he understood their practical import relatively poorly in terms of practical utility, although he was one of the first to recognize how progressive aerodynamic resistance worked.  Note his helicopter, designed by analogy of how a screw bites into wood -- and how the equivalent in air works much differently in a number of respects.  And heavier-than-air flight was held up by the ornithopter idea for centuries... even though nature provides perfectly good, and well-observed models: any bird can flap, but it takes smart birds to fly.

The Great Leap Forward occurred at Kitty Hawk.

Actually, the Great Leap Forward by the Wrights was the realization -- finally! -- that the issue of practical flight was controllability, not propulsion or lift.  The astounding thing to me, now almost as much as ever, was that Langley could use so much erudition, and do so much work, and spend so much money, and not produce something that would actually fly.  

In a sense we're only just catching up with the Wrights regarding variable-geometry 'wing warping' as a low-drag-loss method of control.  But note the optimization of all the different expedients in the 'meantime' when materials science dictated more rigid construction of physical control and lifting surfaces...

A better Great Leap Forward, in my opinion, is Sikorsky with rotary-wing aircraft: he actually figured out what was necessary to drive the thing, and then implemented that.

Very fast submarines are not yet feasible.

Not the case.  But a quite different use of aerodynamics (more precisely, gasdynamics) in conjunction with hydrodynamics is necessary to make that trick work... the amusing thing being that some of the early experiments were inspired by what the lemon oil does on crew shells.

The problem with submarines is not making them very fast, it's making them very fast in relative silence (or at least inconspicuity) to keep from being interdicted by even faster munitions.  That is truly difficult.

[Overmod]

Lastspikemike

Remember British usage refers to an aircraft propellor as an airscrew and that is precisely how it drives an aircraft forwards.

Nobody, even in Blighty, seriously spells it 'propellor'.  And it is named an 'airscrew' by extension from 'screw' ship propellers, which themselves were somewhat misnamed right from the start -- interestingly enough, some of the classic 'failures' are those with blading designed to 'bite into the water' as on the fascinating first set applied to Turbinia.

Lift on each blade is one thing. The blades also have to be opposed.

Damned if I can quite figure out what you mean.  Obviously the lift has to be balanced across the blading.  Are you referring to the action of contrarotating propellers?  

The Wright brothers actually got it wrong by trying to copy bird flight.  Bird flight is much different to fixed wing flight, combining propulsion with lift.

You must not have seen too many birds -- many of them 'know' perfectly well how to fly with only air movement and gravity for 'propulsion (hence my comment about the difference between flapping and flying).  What precisely do you think the Wrights 'got wrong' in their approach?

Feasible and possible are not synonyms.

As I am probably better aware than you .  "Possible" means it can exist; "feasible" means it can be built; the arguments regarding fast submarines are in neither category, involving tactical utility, cost-effectiveness, and a certain amount -- sometimes a considerable amount, as the Russians found out -- of safety concern.

[BN7150]

In addition, a Russian handmade model was put up for sale on a Japanese auction site. The Russian Railways CCCP DR1-08 DMU is said to cost $ 1,500.

Another Moscow subway EM-type kits have also appeared as $450 buy-it-now.

[dknelson]

It would appear - from more than one example I have seen -- that the Soviets/Russians were well aware of and closely following what the Milwaukee Road's shops and deigners were thinking of and doing in the 1930s/40s with horizontal ribs as a way to give structural strength without adding bulk and weight. 

Dave Nelson