Close-up photo of AT&SF RR #3009 on Sept.18,[1944] my error/ make that 1911.
.
http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/WINRR/WRSF8G.JPG
and this link, as well, multiple pictures from #3009's arrival in Winfield, Ks in 1911, http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/winrr/wrsfd8.htm
note: unusual 'whale back-style' or, to others, it was called a 'turtle-back' (?) tender.
These 'Santa Fe' Class engines were numbered 3000 to 3009 and built at Santa Fe Shops in Topeka, Kansas in 1911.
In today's terminology, you could say they were 'kit-bashed' using existing 2-10-2 locomotives, although thses engines were' decopod' style they were built on chassis that were 2-10-0 from the builder. [They had been built originally by Baldwin Locomotive Wrks. (nee: Burnham, Williams & Co) to be modified at the Santa Fe Shops with addition of 2 wheel trailing truck]. Baldwin supplying the 'low pressure units for the conversion.
Over their 'life' this class of some 87 #9000 numbered engines were 'reworked' ny shop forces to try and improve their persormance.
In the end, the 10 #3000 engines were unsuccessful, and were reworked in 20 engines of 2-10-2 wheel arrangement.
See link @ http://www.steamlocomotive.com/santafe/?page=atsf
and this link which has engineering details @ http://www.steamlocomotive.com/2-10-10-2/?page=atsf
How can those photographs have been taken in 1944 when the locomotives were rebuilt to 2-10-2s in the 1920's?
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
For those of you who are a fan of these poor misgotten creatures, there is ONE known source of video of the Santa Fe 2-10-10-2's- only one known to exist. Is was the star of Peril's of Pauline serial from 1915 and featured in the episode, The Leap From The Watertower. These were 10-15 minute episodes. A DVD of the episode is available. Enjoy!
carnej1 How can those photographs have been taken in 1944 when the locomotives were rebuilt to 2-10-2s in the 1920's?
samfp1943and this link, as well, multiple pictures from #3009's arrival in Winfield, Ks in 1944, http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/winrr/wrsfd8.htm
Sam, it's very clear both in the margin of one picture and in the sign depicted in another that it's 1911. If that didn't give it away, women did not dress that way in 1944.
Of course, scrolling down past the last of the pictures gives you a long, full discussion of the situation, including what happened after 1918. In that discussion is a link to a very good picture of 3751 taken in 1991, not 1955 -- it wasn't dated right either.
http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/winrr/wrsf3751.htm
BigJim carnej1 How can those photographs have been taken in 1944 when the locomotives were rebuilt to 2-10-2s in the 1920's? Photos on the web site clearly state 1911.
Photos on the web site clearly state 1911.
YEP! You Big Jim and the others are correct....MY Typo's .. Where is that Spel Czech when you need him???
Thank You.
NDG The Flexible Articulateds were something to behold.
Those were yet a different take on a 'sectional' boiler. The Jacobs-Shupert people were referring to the 'sections' of the firebox that were riveted together to resemble an old hot-water radiator.
Baldwin's sectional boiler, sometimes flexibly 'hinged' as NDG indicates, was another thing altogether. Here is the famed Catskill Archive Web version of the 1912 Baldwin explanation -- see the very detailed drawings:
http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/blwmal00.Html
The rear section was the 'boiler' proper: the part forward of the hinge had other functions, including feedwater heating. Baldwin had at least two ways of providing the 'hinge' between barrel sections (and all the associated steam and water piping).
Note that the actual contribution of radiant section (firebox and chamber) and of good circulation was greatly underestimated in these designs, as in Henderson's multiplex locomotives. Compare this with the contemporary designs for the PRR's K29 and K4 Pacifics and E6s Atlantic, and Woodard's large fireboxes and grate areas not too much later. Some of the basic idea of the Baldwin sectional was realized in the Franco-Crosti experimentals ... not much more successfully.
it also on youtube ,im watching it now lol
The 2-10-10-2's were one of the reasons that Santa Fe soured on articulateds and stuck to rigid-framed steam locomotives except for some N&W Y-3's in WW2.
SANTA FE AND THE ARTICULATED LOCOMOTIVE
Alfred Bruce, Director of Steam Locomotive Engineering at American Locomotive Company ALCO comments that the first Mallet compound articulated engines were constructed in the United States in 1903 and 1904 by ALCO for the Baltimore & Ohio. This was 16 years after the European railroads which developed and used the Mallet compounds in considerable quantity.
Baldwin Locomotive Company built its first Mallet compound in 1906 as a 2-6-6-2 for the Great Northern Railway as a road engine. The 2-6-6-2 was by far the most built articulated engine in American railroad history. So popular that it was built until the end of steam locomotive construction in 1949 when C&O 1304 was constructed new by Baldwin. C&O 1304 is currently under restoration by Western Maryland Senic Railroad today.
Baldwin followed this design with the 2-8-8-2 for the Southern Pacific in 1909. This was also to prove to be another extremely popular locomotive wheel type. Not to be outdone with these successes and the articulated compound Mallet craze, Baldwin built for the Erie Railroad in 1914 several triplex engines. The infamous 2-8-8-8-2 type 6 cylinder tank locomotives of which only 3 were ever built.
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In the midst of this Mallet compound craze in America the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe jumped in with both feet in 1909 with the construction of "Prairie Mallets" from Baldwin of which were two 4-4-6-2 passenger compounds and two 2-8-8-2 helper compounds. Santa Fe touted the long rigid boiler, 73 inch drivered speedsters as the "largest and most powerful passenger locomotives in existance." First numbered ATSF 1300-1301 this was later changed to ATSF 1398-1399.
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Santa Fe followed these engines with another unique passenger engine in 1911. These were 2-6-6-2 articulated locomotives that according to Alfred Bruce did not feature low and high pressure cylinders. Other sources record them as all Mallet compounds. It is certain that of the 65 engines constructed a total of 7 locomotives featured a hinged boiler. Santa Fe ordered these passenger articulated speesters with 69 inch drivers.
Alfred Bruce considers these flexable boilered Santa Fe 2-6-6-2 as unique because (1) the first use of an outside bearing trailer truck to support a fully wide firebox mounted behind the drivers. (2) the use of the "hinged boiler" in two sections with each section bolted to an articulating frame over which it rode. A flexable "hinged boiler" bellows joined the two units that sealed only firebox flue gas. (3) the actual steam producing boiler was only the 19 foot flue section over the rear engine unit. The front boiler section was instead a large flue gas feedwater heater unit which was built to the full diameter of the rear pressure boiler. This was variously described as "Baldwin feedwater heater and Santa Fe design reheater and superheater" or 'Jacobs superheater" or "combustion chamber - reheater/superheater"
This "flexable accordion" boiler section joining the front and rear units did not contain steam pressure - it merely sealed firebox flue gas to the locomotive stack. As such it burst regularly owing to the buildup of cinders which when compressed popped the rivits. A ball socket joint connection was developed and tried.
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If all this was not enough, Santa Fe also constructed in their own shops another series of ten articulated Mallet compounds of the 2-10-10-2 wheel type using the railroads existing 2-10-2 locomotives for the high pressure units. Added to these were new Baldwin built 2-10-0 forward frame constructions as the front low pressure locomotive sections. These home built engines were numbered ATSF 1300-1310.
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Finally Santa Fe tempted fate one more time, by considering an over the top construction of a 2-8-8-8-8-2 locomotive. This plan got as far as requesting Baldwin Locomotive Works to draw up plans for the "greatest Mallet of all time" - the QUADRAPLEX DOUBLE COMPOUND! This engine was to feature two cabs one for the fireman and one for the front of the locomotive engineer location.
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After 1915 Santa Fe became a "rigid frame" steam locomotive railroad and their designs moved forward to what would eventually be the SANTA FE BIG THREE - passenger ATSF 3460 "Hudson" 4-8-4 type - passenger ATSF 2900 "Northern" 4-8-4 type - and freight ATSF 5011 "Texas" 2-10-4 type. Locomotives of superlative quality and construction unequaled throughout the world!
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Gone would be the days of the "Prairie Mallet" and of the whimsical engineering of the past - in the vast steel wheel turning wild wild west!
Doc
I believe that George Henderson actually did apply for patents on the quadruplex and quintuplex locomotive designs. I would surmise that they would have run out of steam before they could move much further than their own length.
Also note that Santa Fe's Big 3 all fell to the FT and its successors.
Not directly relevant to this thread, but potentially interesting: Bruce goes on (in The Steam Locomotive in America) to describe the 'revolution' in articulated design that started at Baldwin in the very early Thirties -- the use of the simple articulated as a high-speed locomotive. A very small amount of this made it into Wiener -- which is one reason we need a 'second edition' of Articulated Locomotives so badly -- and Bruce takes credit for one very important development in this (the control of the movement of the forward engine so that vertical accommodation is in the equalization and not via vertical motion at the 'hinge'). This came as something of a surprise to the N&W designers who had implicitly included this in the A several years earlier ... but it is certainly true that it was a critical reason for the success of Challengers in so many places.
Note that the use of many of the early six-coupled high-speed articulateds followed the premise of minimizing augment. Here was ATSF with a locomotive only marginally smaller than a 2-6-6-4 but with higher drivers than such a locomotive could practically use, and by the time it became clear that high-speed balancing of eight-coupled locomotives had arrived, the need for 'fast articulated power' had shifted to diesel-electric units.
Brasher also mentions something I had not realized before -- Arizona had a 70-car train limit through the period we are considering, so any train pulled by a large articulated would have to be broken and hauled by appropriate numbers of 'rightsized' power anyway. With Raton being largely passenger- and grain- only after 1907, much of the rationale for sustained high power out of a single engine that, say, made the SP cab-forwards so necessary was not as prominent.
OvermodArizona had a 70-car train limit through the period we are considering, so any train pulled by a large articulated would have to be broken and hauled by appropriate numbers of 'rightsized' power anyway.
Overmod the 'revolution' in articulated design that started at Baldwin in the very early Thirties -- the use of the simple articulated as a high-speed locomotive.
Perhaps the Arizona 70 car train length limit partially explains why the three cylinder 4-10-2 Southern Pacific type supposedly found a home on the Sunset Route after proving a bit hard on the curvature of the Donner Pass route and after development of the Cab Forward (though they also were used in the San Joaquin Valley to some degree also).
Holy cow,
...check out that LFM main driver replacement! Note the very light and open 'spoke' structure, combined with so large an external counterweight. I'd like to see a balance book or hear a detailed explanation of how SP rebalanced these engines in the 'modern age'...
BigJimI sometimes wonder about Baldwin and their direction concerning articulated compound locomotives. Their solution to providing steam to all four cylinders when starting was far inferior to the one ALCO developed. Did Baldwin decide that they weren't going to pay to use the ALCO system and just drop out of the "Mallet" game? Or, did they (along with most other RR's) not want to spend the money and time to develop the breed and went the cheaper route with the "Simple" articulated? Which brings us right back to the car limit theory.
I snipped the reference to the Y7, but to me the most important and intriguing point is that, after the Federal union-kissup train-length boondoggle was dead, the N&W never built so much as a prototype of the Y7, even though subsequently dropping a great deal on fairly unworkable turbine experimentation. Part of this is something only N&W did with compound Mallets, that imho could have been taken further with little additional difficulty.
I don't think the effectiveness of a starting simpling system is of much practical importance in the economic advantage of simple over compound in high-speed service. Baldwin's system was -- I think -- supposed to give better control over producing proportional effort from LP and HP when the intercepting valve was open -- no one just feeds steam indiscriminately to all four cylinders at starting and 'hopes for the best' that the more lightly loaded forward LP engine isn't going to slip like crazy. I suspect you are correct in surmising that Baldwin either was restricted from using Alco's patents or didn't want to pay Alco's royalties (as they subsequently would for the Slidguide devices) but in any case that argument wouldn't apply when the devices came out of patent protection, which they long since would have when the high-speed articulated came under development after 1930.
Note the arguments in Wiener (and elsewhere) for the practical improvement of four-cylinder simple over 'ordinary' Mallet compound, on C&O and elsewhere. (And be sure to compare the effective performance of the C&O T-1 vs the H-7...) Those are very different from the high-speed development, and even Baldwin's first 2-6-6-4 was more a 'conventional' first-generation Berk-and-a-half than a specialized high-speed freight engine. On the other hand, it was pretty clear that the thermodynamic advantages as well as construction of four relatively small cylinders and forward-engine piping far outweighed the operational difficulties of making flexible high-pressure pipe joints reasonably steamtight...
... up until N&W started experimenting with the booster valve. Now, my understanding of the device 'as originally conceived' was far more as a functional reheater (to get ghastly wall and nucleate condensation losses down) than as a pressure-equalizing device. But it would not have taken much more work to elaborate the device to be fully pressure-maintaining at the receiver, which (given reasonable balancing improvements on locomotives, compound or otherwise, for higher rotational speed) would have increased the practical power-producing speed range of a Y-class locomotive into a speed range typical of much N&W freight ... in fact, most PRR freight (which had a hard limit of 50mph for almost all trains).
The first 'casualty' of such a device would be a simple 2-8-8-2. Anything it could accomplish -- practically -- in actual fast freight would be far more easily done with, say, a good 2-6-6-4 with Timken rods, which is just what N&W came up with. (It would have been possible to 'improve' the Y7 design further, and get some of the reputed bugs in the design out, but it remains to be seen what N&W would have used it for in preference to improved-compounds on the one hand and much, much faster six-coupled articulateds on the other.)
DYNAMIC BALANCE AND SOUTHERN PACIFIC 5021
The 4-10-2 "Southern Pacific" Type was reportedly built first for the Union Pacific as the "Overland" type - but it was the SP order that gave the name to the type that stuck - go figure! Union Pacific did get its own named type with the 4-12-2.
I saw the SP 5021 when it was in the Southern Pacific freight yard back in 1967 and appeared to be fairly close to operational. Oddly it was given to the local railway historical chapter who kept it "out of the way" in the SP rail yard. To my young eyes it looked very operational - albeit with a beautifully chrome plated throttle lever which seemed very loving of whoever took the time to chrome it.
Since then like most park engines the outdoor storage has taken its toll on SP 5021 - the last survivor.
----------------
Regarding the LFM - UNIVERSAL center driver, it would appear as an attempt to deal with the inherent trouble with 5 coupled axle designs and 63 inch drive wheels common to the Texas & Pacific 600 2-10-4. The balance issues of these small wheels were manifold. Alfred Bruce has the photo of SP 5000 the prototype engine showing a spoked center driver with a truely massive half circle counterweight.
It would be easy to assume the LFM - UNIVERSAL driver is an addition in an effort to increase the low operational speed designed into SP 5021 or was it rather really just a drive wheel structural problem.
The SP 5000 engines were three cylinder locomotives so the addition of the UNIVERSAL drive setup with three rods would not have been to "dynamicly balance" the engine - three cylinder drive was already fairly well balanced.
The 2-10-4 "Texas"designs were two cylinder and the 4-10-2 "Southern Pacific" types were all three cylinder. As I said Union Pacific added to the three cylinder rigid frame thinking with the 4-12-2.
None of these early 5 coupled drives were high speed engines despite the long effort to tame them. It would be for C&O and Santa Fe with the large drivered 69-74 inch "Texas" type engines to really take the rigid frame 5 coupled power to the glory it was capable of
I believe the ATSF 5011 class was to prove the ultimate development of what a large high speed rigid frame freight power steam locomotive could become.
Union Pacific dreamed of it with the 63 inch drivered 4-10-2 and the 67 inch drivered 4-12-2 "Union Pacific" designs but eventually had to resort to the 68 inch drivered 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" but it was Santa Fe that finally accomplished it with its 74 inch drivered ATSF 5011 2-10-4 "Texas" design.
The true high speed high horsepower massive rigid frame freight locomotive had come to pass! and Ain't she a beauty!
-----------------------------
Sure would be nice to see one of the ATSF 5011 class run again. Considering its years of indoor storage I wonder how bad off ATSF 5023 is?
Union Pacific "Overland" 4-10-2 in three cylinder configuration - third cylinder can be seen below flattened lower edge of smokebox - 63 inch drivers equal to the UP TTT 2-10-2 class...
Union Pacifice "Overland" 4-10-2 after conversion to two cylinders - enormous cylinders and cylinder casings...
Union Pacific "TTT" 2-10-2 for comparison purposes...
Union Pacific "Overland" 4-10-2 builder's photo...
My pair of sixes beats your pair of fives - Union Pacific "Union Pacific" 4-12-2 aka a "Nine" - a big notch up from the "Overland" 4-10-2...
Overmod, Dr D, et al, I learn a lot from your posts and always enjoy them. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Dr DRegarding the LFM - UNIVERSAL center driver, it would appear as an attempt to deal with the inherent trouble with 5 coupled axle designs and 63 inch drive wheels common to the Texas & Pacific 600 2-10-4. The balance issues of these small wheels were manifold. Alfred Bruce has the photo of SP 5000 the prototype engine showing a spoked center driver with a truely massive half circle counterweight. It would be easy to assume the LFM - UNIVERSAL driver is an addition in an effort to increase the low operational speed designed into SP 5021 or was it rather really just a drive wheel structural problem. The SP 5000 engines were three cylinder locomotives so the addition of the UNIVERSAL drive setup with three rods would not have been to "dynamically balance" the engine - three cylinder drive was already fairly well balanced.
Thereupon hangs the tale. The 5000s had divided drive, with the inside cylinder angled down so the main would clear the first axle and driving on a cranked second axle using lower stroke (28" vs 32") So there is less need for rotating or recip balance in the outside mains ... but it and cross balance will be at weird angles. So I suspect that the large outside counterweights are more large cored areas in the driver castings, with some of the internal space not actually weighted. It's the rod inertia, not the 'balancing', that causes most of the pin and bushing problems.
Bruce said (p 301) "... the use of three cylinders permitted the power to be delivered directly to two driving axles with good balancing conditions in the 63-in driving wheels. The outside piston and main rods were unusually long but produced no ill effects".
We should keep in mind here that this is with 25" cylinders vs the 27" for the Nines,with comparatively low pressure (225#) so the weight of the longer rods was unlikely to be "that much" of an issue. If anything it would give better rod angularity.
"... the engines performed well at operating speeds of from 30 to 35 miles per hour with the 63-in drivers ... Long continuous operation at higher speeds ... increased the maintenance, as might be expected with the heavy middle-engine moving parts."
I am not entirely sure why the middle-engine parts were particularly 'heavy' especially at the reduced stroke and presumably shorter main length, but we do learn that there were problems with the 'floating bushings' in the center big ends ... perhaps in part due to the same sort of issues with Gresley gear that produced big-end trouble in the LNER A4s. Apparently when the center gear started to get out of tram the result was 'breaking crockery' in lineside houses... probably greatly magnified at the higher rotational speed necessitated by the 63" drivers. The Nines had only 4" more but it's right in the critical range for effective balancing. (As Bruce also points out p.302 the UP Nines were intended as a 35mph engine, but the characteristics of the long wheelbase and three-cylinder drive allowed them to run considerably faster in practice -- sensibly or not!)
It seems nominally sensible to me that if the initial T&P 2-10-4s, with abbreviated frame and no effective lateral chassis control at the rear from the truck, and only two cylinders, were stable at 45mph after getting better balancing in 1938, the situation on a three-cylinder locomotive with a four-wheel lead truck could only be better. Provided, that is, that all the weird science involved with keeping the engine's inside valve set and the inside rod maintained was properly conducted... there may be relevance in the fact that UP rebuilt its 4-10-2s (with great effort!) into 2-cylinder locomotives of doubtful balance effectiveness, despite having a large dollop of distinctive competence in care and feeding of three-cylinder power via the Nines, but SP kept theirs 'three barrels of steam' to the end.
Something else I do not know is whether the same mindset, or people, involved in getting the 600s rebalanced so carefully would have been applied to an engine from a different builder, with nominally smoother drive but heavier maintenance requirements. I find it more than likely that someone did some thinking at both SP and LFM -- the latter proud enough of their careful engineering of driver casting holes to match anticipated stresses that they mentioned the point in their advertising in the '47 Cyc -- and that a little forensics at Pomona compared with build specs might tell us more about the changes that were made, and whether the result would be as comfortable at higher speed as the T&P engine was ... comfortable, that is, until accumulated play began to show its effects...
Meanwhile as confusedly quoted on the Web
they were too rigid for the curves snaking through the Donner Pass, where they were first tried. After relocation to the Sunset Route east of Los Angeles, the 4-10-2s ran until the mid-1950s. It is there - between Roseville and Summit, Calif on a 2 1/2%, 80-mile grade -- Bruce says, "...the engines were remarkably successful because the operating condtions prevented excessive speeds and the even torque of the three cylinders prevented undue stalling at low speeds."
This was evidently written by somebody unfamiliar with Southern Pacific or Southern California, or who had some unrecognized trouble with drag 'n drop text editing. Bruce was writing about the initial use of the 4-10-2s on Donner, and it is not he but George Drury who noted that the 4-10-2s were more successful in the South (they ran well into the '50s, and 5021 went to the Fairgrounds under her own steam). I have actually read Boynton's Three Barrels of Steam but a long time ago, and don't remember seeing the point of rebuilding or even faster operation being discussed at all (the book dates from 1973 and is not really geared to tech-heads).
We're straying too far from the original thread premise ("too many legs and not enough steam" via do-it-yourself kits) and should probably start a separate topic on 10-coupled non-articulated engines if we want to keep going with this particular sort of bone in our teeth.
Overmod,
I agree with you wholeheartedly! The SP 5021 4-10-2 when I saw it was in the SP yard like Ron Ziel said in his Twilight of Steam glad to hear it found a home at the fair grounds.
Regarding the Southern Pacific 5021 4-10-2, - that both it and Union Pacific 9000 4-12-2 constitute a remarkable historic pair of locomotives. Unlike any other American mainline freight engines. Truely titans of their age that served long and noble histories in the West, and unlike many more modern steam power. These three cylinder giants went a good 30 years. These were titans of steam power!
And to think both reside in Southern California "land of fruits and nuts." Why I have only to travel from Pamona and to the Fairgrounds to visit the greatest and to regard the entire rail history we have been so heroicly discussing.
I did also hear, that Union Pacific put so many years of successful maintaince into the UP 9000 4-12-2s that they worked out an "anti friction" bearing set up for the Gresley Congegated Valve Gear that worked the center cylinders - thus much improving the speed and performance of the large six drivered engines. Apparently they also had "lateral control" on the first and sixth axle that allowed over 2" of deflection of the drive wheel sets "side to side" for going thru curves and yard switches - which is in itself remarkable when you think of those massive drive rods deflecting across that length. So also is the 60mph speeds Union Pacific regularly achieved in manafest freight operation with an entire fleet of UP 9000s - of over 90 engines. UP ran them enthusiastically for a 30 years.
I would say the UP had a winner and it would be nice to see the railroad restore the remaining UP 9000. Sometimes the oldest operable steam engine - 80 years old - is the most remarkable as well as the largest or the longest running. Which would be UP 9000, UP 4014 and UP 844.
Regarding this subject and this post - in reality the ATSF 2-10-10-2 was the company precurser to the ATSF 2-10-4. Everything they desired to achieve in a "Prairie Mallet" they did achieve in the ATSF 5011 "Texas" and more! That there is not "Prairie Mallet" so display - so that ATSF 5023 really needs to go to Southern California to reside with SP 5021 and UP 9000. That would make for a heroic "Three Giants collection! Titans of the rails!" - You hear that Pamona?
Just Thinking Large Here,
KGBW, Doc, sam, et al.: great pictures!! Thanks!
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The SP 4-10-2's were not hangar queens, but they were maintenance intensive, even by steam standards. There is a well-known tale about the SP mechanic who was kept on the payroll despite numerous Rule G violations since he knew how to set the valve events on three-cylinder 4-10-2's.
Restore a 4-12-2?? It isn't going to happen, where would you get the money and where could you run it.
An SP mechanical officer described maintenance costs for the three cylinder engines "is like having an expensive mistress at every Division point."
Broadside view of ATSF 2-10-10-2...
Virginian 2-10-10-2 for comparison - these had much longer lives than the ATSF units...
Virginian 2-10-10-2 on freight - while all compound articulateds had large front cylinders, these seem to be even larger than on something like the N&W Y6b...
A pair of 2-10-10-2s in helper service...
A grainy shot that shows the large front cylinders...
N&W Y6a for comparison...
Y6b...
Y5 in the company notch...
Regarding the size of the low-pressure cylinders on the VGN 2-10-10-2's: they were so large that they had to be loaded on separate flat cars when the locomotives were shipped for the builder since they would otherwise exceed clearances on the various connecting roads.
CSSHEGEWISCHRegarding the size of the low-pressure cylinders on the VGN 2-10-10-2's: they were so large that they had to be loaded on separate flat cars when the locomotives were shipped from the builder since they would otherwise exceed clearances on the various connecting roads.
Description and some good pictures of the Virginian locomotives are available here (starting on p.166); the book is available as a 'free download' in the United States from Google Books if you want a copy. Note the head-on picture that shows the cylinder diameter to particular advantage -- shades of unitary machinery support!
Those tenders look so tiny, especially on the Virginian.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Just a minor clarification about SP 5021 as I was involved with its acquisition and placement in the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in 1956. The Southern California Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society realizing that it was the last of the three-cylinder 4-10-2s, put in a request to the Southern Pacific for the opportunity to preserve 5021. SP management knew we already had three small locomotives and Santa Fe 4-6-4 3450 in our exhibit, so they agreed to donate the 5021. It was at that time in service on the Portland division, and shortly before its flues were to expire, SP ran it as a light engine move to Los Angeles in December 1955. It was stored at Taylor roundhouse for a short period before going into Los Angeles General Shops where it was given a first class cleaning and painting, with chrome in many areas not normally seen. The locomotive was moved dead over the SP to Bassett and then a Pacific Electric spur into the fairgrounds to the exhibit. A presentation ceremony was made in the spring of 1956. Thousands of fairgoers come through the Chapter exhibit, and Union Paciific 4-12-2 was added in May of 1956. The truly amazing thing about the UP 9000 is, that through the efforts of the late Allen Krieg, Chapter Director and UP Public Relations Manager, The 9000, a coal burner, came from Cheyenne to Los Angeles under is own power!
Today you can visit this exhibit at FAIRPLEX and see two of the only remaining three-cylinder, rigid frame steam locomotives in the United States.
MrATSF Today you can visit this exhibit at FAIRPLEX and see two of the only remaining three-cylinder, rigid frame steam locomotives in the United States.
Great information and stories, thanks! But those two are not the only US-built 3-cylinder locomotives left. Two more survived, the A&S 0-8-0 in St. Louis and the 4-10-2 Baldwin demonstrator in the Franklin Institute.
MrATSF, thank you, thank you, thank you for your efforts! In a past life living in Southern CA I had the opportunity to visit the Fairplex and see 5021 and 9000, and they were both great examples of "bigger, better, faster" and the "can do" American spirit. Just great locomotives!
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