Home
»
Trains Magazine
»
Forums
»
General Discussion
»
Fastest Steam engine ever in revenue service?

Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
In the absence of precise timing, no American speed record will ever top that of the Mallard. The Milwaukee Road's A 4-4-2s and F7 4-6-4s with their 84" drivers had speedometers that registered to 120 MPH, and recording tapes have shown that the engines pegged the needles at 120 MPH and a flat line was recorded at that level. But nobody knows how much faster than 120 the engines went. And nobody knows how accurate the speedometers were at that speed; the readings could be effected by variations in wheel diameters, etc. Same with the Pennsy T1. Nobody ever took a modern steam locomotive into the backshop, tuned it within an inch of its life, and put it out on the road with precision speed indicating equipment to find out just how fast it would go. Claims that the T1 was faster than the Milwaukee Road's Hudsons or vice versa are just that - claims. Lore has it that one of the Milwaukee Hudsons was shipped to the railroad from Alco via Altoona and was put on the PRR test plant, and turned up in the neighborhood of 560 driving-wheel RPM, certainly within the bounds of reason for drivers that tall. This figures out to around 140 MPH. But whether this test actually took place has not been verified, nor has the claim of 560 RPM. So there we are again. The record set by the Pennsy back in 19 ought 2 or whenever by the E2 Atlantic was claimed when the train passed two block towers three miles apart in one minute, 27 seconds. But were the towers exactly three miles apart? And were the towers' clocks precisely reading the same times? And did the operators look at them at the precise times the train's rear end passed? The answer to all these questions is that nobody knows. Therefore, the actual speed is still open to question, but the claim of 127 MPH makes for a fun bit of lore. - Old Timer
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag