An almost duplicate of a CLASSIC TRAINS posting:
I am inspired by the truly great Rose painting "Walking across Texas." But why two beautiful Ripley 4-8-4's?
Granted the early AT&SF experiments with huge Mallets with bending (jointed) boilers weren't successful, but could they not benefit from approximating their neighbors' Challengers, Yellowstones, and Articulated Consolidations? Why was their Texas-type their largest modern freight power?
Or was the kind of scene dipicted in the picture a rare phenomenon?
There was an article in "Classic Trains Steam Glory 3" by a former Santa Fe fireman turned engineer named Jack Elwood. In a nutshell he said that after the Santa Fe's initial and unsuccessful experiments with articulated steam the whole thing left a bad taste in the railroads mouth. That and the additional maintanance involved with articulateds caused them not to pursue it further.
Mr. Elwood said he knew some of the older engineers with first-hand experience of the Santa Fe articulateds but sadly never thought to ask those men about it.
At any rate, Santa Fe's later steamers were more than capable of handling any assignment given to them.
so the double-heading was an exception?
Apparantly so Dave, more the exception than the rule. Not to say it NEVER happened obviously, but again the Santa Fe didn't consider double-heading enough of a hassle to consider going the articulated route.
I am familiar with what happened on the Pennsy. Double-heading with K4's became quite normal on the Broadway, and so we had the T1.
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