If the Norfolk & Western had showed up with a J with 74 inch or 80 inch drivers. The Norfolk & Western had looked at 74 inch & 80 inch drivers and figured that for their railroad 70 inches made more at home. What would have Pennsylania railroad have done or maybe it would have no difference. Gary
As I understand it at the time they were looking at a N&W J for passenger service the Pennsy was also somewhat obsessed with 100 mph running in certain locations. A standard J could run at up to 100 mph but it really wasn't designed for that.
For PRR use a J would have needed a slight redesign for consistant 100 mph running, bigger drivers and a modification of the valve gear. N&W designers could have handled the changes but of course the PRR didn't go that way, preferring to stick with their home-grown design steam locomotive the T1. That's a whole 'nother story.
Why the Pennsy had the obsession with 100 mph running I don't know, I'm not aware that anyone else did at the time.
The Milwaukee railroad had on its Chicago to the Twin Cities run first the A model a 4-4-2 and then the F-7 4-6-4 locomotives that could and did run at over 100 MPH. Was the Pennsy trying to better them? Gary
Biggest thing about the Pennsy was anything had to be invented at Altoona to be considered good. Roanoke didn't cut the Pennsy mustard because Roanoke wasn't Altoona no matter how good a product Roanoke made.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
IA and easternWhat would the Pennsylvania Railroad have done...
Well, we have the assessment of the testing by the PRR motive-power department (it is preserved in the Hagley collection). The 'real' issue is that PRR had for several years adopted the divided-drive principle for new reciprocating passenger power, missing the advantages of using the Timken lightweight roller rodwork on a large 4-8-4, while the development efforts essentially leapfrogged recip steam entirely, to direct-drive turbines of two distinct types (either of which might have been refined into a 'more workable' design for PRR's stated purposes with a little more work and good fortune).
The class J was already too large in several key dimensions (as determined before and during the road testing) to be used in economically-meaningful Pittsburgh-to-Chicago through service, and attempting to provide it with larger drivers would only have compounded its comparative top-heaviness and vertical clearance issues in a greater range of potential PRR service areas. What I find interesting is that none of Voyce Glaze's developments in balancing seem to have been taken up by PRR directly, notably the idea of providing only enough overbalance in the main for the vertical component of piston thrust at high speed (which might arguably have made the T1 in particular less prone to high-speed breakaway) -- that is not to say that the PRR tribe looked with disdain at what N&W had achieved. What I suspect instead is that the late-'40s modified V1 would provide everything a high-speed passenger engine would need, with far more essentially-conjugated axles to spread both the starting TE and the high-speed adhesion. We can note with some interest how readily N&W itself took up the general idea, and then modified it in the next several years.
BaltACD Biggest thing about the Pennsy was anything had to be invented at Altoona to be considered good. Roanoke didn't cut the Pennsy mustard because Roanoke wasn't Altoona no matter how good a product Roanoke made.
I concur. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the folks in Altoona couldn't admit those "hillbillies" in Roanoke were better than they were at steam design.
Flintlock76I've said it before and I'll say it again, the folks in Altoona couldn't admit those "hillbillies" in Roanoke were better than they were at steam design.
Say it all you want; the actual surviving documents say something very different. The PRR folks had high regard for their 'compatriots' at N&W; they just thought their experience dictated a higher wheel and a few other details like fitting the railroad they inherited and hadn't fully rebuilt yet.
As noted, sort of, in one of the earlier numbers of Classic Trains, the revolution in lightweight running gear and advanced balancing made low-augment running generally more practicable by the late 1940s ... with some of the evil consequences only beginning to become observed when the whole issue of reciprocating steam research died an accelerated death. Perhaps this was clearest in the discussion of detail design of the ACE3000, which proposed using a 58" cast driver (!) with Withuhn conjugated duplexing to realize low-augment running. Unfortunately nobody ever quite got around to describing how to put roller bearings on the driver axles in the thing, or how to avoid certain types of frame cracking with the inside cranks and rods in the design as stated. Apparently no one on the development team had studied Golsdorf as a designer, either.
PRR had considerable misfortune in being precisely in the wrong place at the wrong time, with too much money, at several consecutive 'tipping points' in practical locomotive design. Had, for example, the first rebuilding of the C&NW H class locomotives come about around the time PRR was developing their 'next-generation mixed-traffic engine' I think it is highly likely they might have seen the light, as 76" is right at the sweet spot (somewhat circumstantially, I grant you) for late steam power that has a 'large enough' boiler but that still fits typical contemporary loading gage.
Roanoke was really only interrested in getting a bit more horsepower for the passenger runs than the K's had.
Experiments that apparently failed in the K3:
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Pennsy was a Baldwin customer. They should have tested one of these and then asked Baldwin to tack on the fancy cab with round windows like on the J1. They would have had their 100 MPH cruiser.
Don't give Baldwin too much credit. They also built a fair number of I1's and K4's, neither of which was a particularly advanced design. Besides, Santa Fe was blessed with generous clearances and a Santa Fe-designed 4-8-4 might have had too many clearance and weight restrictions on PRR to be useful.
Overmod ...PRR had considerable misfortune in being precisely in the wrong place at the wrong time, with too much money, at several consecutive 'tipping points' in practical locomotive design. Had, for example, the first rebuilding of the C&NW H class locomotives come about around the time PRR was developing their 'next-generation mixed-traffic engine' I think it is highly likely they might have seen the light, as 76" is right at the sweet spot (somewhat circumstantially, I grant you) for late steam power that has a 'large enough' boiler but that still fits typical contemporary loading gage.
...PRR had considerable misfortune in being precisely in the wrong place at the wrong time, with too much money, at several consecutive 'tipping points' in practical locomotive design. Had, for example, the first rebuilding of the C&NW H class locomotives come about around the time PRR was developing their 'next-generation mixed-traffic engine' I think it is highly likely they might have seen the light, as 76" is right at the sweet spot (somewhat circumstantially, I grant you) for late steam power that has a 'large enough' boiler but that still fits typical contemporary loading gage.
I can't agree more. The N&W Class J undoubtedly provided another practical and easy option for PRR to choose their next-gen prime steam power. But before the Class J became the focus of the management, we must not forget that Q1 #6130, Pennsy's first duplex engine design, was supposed to be the answer (together with Duplex T1, Baldwin's design) to the concept of "Superpower", "Northern" 4-8-4s.
As Overmod stated in another post Q1, " it was intended as the 'modern' follow-on to the M1 (the 'performance envelope' specifically chosen to be 5/4 greater in capacity and in speed according to records preserved at the Hagley in Delaware) in the presumed higher-speed world of future Pennsylvania."
A dual service engine like Q1 which was capable to hauling 8000 tons to 10000 tons at 40 mph at 40% cut off for almost a month for testing and was able to reduce dynamic argument by 60% compared to the PRR J class 2-10-4 above 70mph (without using lightweight Timken rods), I won't call it a total failure.
I respect different opinions; regarding the Q1 4-6-4-4, I strongly suggest our reader read the article in Keystone magazine Vo.39 #2 if you want to study this topic in-depth. I think Q1 had more potential than any 4-8-4s available in early-1940s; she just needed more time for improvement, "debug" and finalize her design but she didn't have the chance due to the outbreak of WWII. Pennsy needed something faster and more powerful than the Texas type to handle wartime traffic, so the development of Q1 was dropped, her design became the reference of Q2 which was the most successful and powerful duplex engine designed for wartime traffic.
Besides N&W Class J and T1, Pennsy was supposed to have another choice: a PRR- design streamlined engine which had a streamlining designed by Raymond Lowey (Yes, it was him) which had a TE of 93,043 lbf, 77'' driver for (fast) passenger service and could have worked like the U-4-b of the Grand Trunk Railway as a dual service engine. But this option, an engine type designed since the early 1940s, was ruled out due to WWII. Anyway, no matter which engine was chosen by PRR, it was not easy to challenge the flexibility of diesel engine, let alone the manipulated demise of America's LD passenger service under the post-war Transportation Policy of America.
I like the de-streamlined version better, just want to show the streamlined one for comparison. Note it was the President of PRR Mr. Martin Clement who requested Raymond Loewy to put the Keystone plate under the headlight.
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Pennsy sticking a Pennsy cab on a Santa Fe 4-8-4 was just metaphorically speaking - of course Pennsy would have had to adjust the Santa Fe design to fit in its clearances, by which time they would have claimed it as a Pennsy design. It is a moot point as it never happened - I just threw that out there as a light-hearted "log on the discussion campfire". Thanks!
There you go Mr. Jones, a great "what if..."
I look at it this way, by the late '30s the PRR needed something new in the way of passenger power, both as good business and for the "PR - Public Perception" angle.
Consider...
You're a business traveler in the late '30s, and you're a passenger on the "Broadway Limited." Up on the head-end are TWO K4's, since the PRR has to double-head just to maintain schedules, and those K4's aren't any different from what you rode behind when you were a young Doughboy going off to war in 1918.
THEN at Englewood station you happen to look out the window and see the "Twentieth Century" pulled by a spanking-new Super Hudson, and probably a streamlined one at that, which BEATS the "Broadway" in the race that both 'roads denied they were having. Next time you take a train trip who's going to be most likely to get your business?
Sometimes perception isn't everything, it's the only thing, and it's powerful.
If you're the "Big Cheese" at the PRR you know you've got problem on you're hands, and what are you going to do about it? Bad enough the "Broadway's" always playing second-fiddle to the "Century," and now THIS!
Well, there's two choices. You could go for something available "off-the-shelf" and available now, with appropriate modifications if need be, or you could ask your design team and the folks at Baldwin (who the PRR had a symbiotic relationship with anyway) for something new and exciting.
The problem is, who knows what the lead time's going to be on that "something new?"
I know what I'd do. I'd go to Baldwin and ask "What have you got I can use?" Or even ask the N&W (who the PRR does own a big chunk of) what they've got in the works.
The plain fact of the matter is the PRR stuck with the K4's longer than they should have. Why? I've heard it said that they wanted to extend electrification clear out to Pittsburgh, and possibly beyond, but just never got around to it. Who knows?
Anyway, like Mr. Jones says it's a moot point. The PRR did get their T1's, and they were good, but the "diesel assassins" as Miningman calls them came along and that was the end of PRR passenger steam.
Now if the PRR had started development of a K4 replacement ten years earlier...
Anyway, discussions like this can have us winding up like medieval monks arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. What Lady Firestorm wants to know is WHEN are they going to bring back something REALLY important, like THIS...
www.streamlinermemories.info/?p=3700
Flintlock76The plain fact of the matter is the PRR stuck with the K4's longer than they should have. Why?
One reason that immediately suggests itself is the number of Benjamins, in equipment trust or otherwise, represented by 475 locomotives of a relatively common class, parts inventory, and servicing experience.
Complicating this is the Depression (which I suspect held many trains within comfortable K4 operating parameters). By the time streamliner/coach trains became recognized as winners (the three Florida trains we were discussing, the Trail Blazer, etc.) the state of the art had developed right to the point the ACL R1 debacle was being resolved, and Baldwin et al. were taking up divided-drive. Remember that the particular goodness of the Niagara wasn't even on the distant horizon at that point in time; it only really developed after the 'test article' was given the 79" drivers (the C1a being the high-speed girl up to at least April 1945).
Another reason (borne out in history) is that they were rightsized for less intensive service, but still capable and relatively easy to keep running; they certainly outlasted even the shiniest of the 20th Century Hudsons even after steam streamlining no longer mattered to the patrons.
It might be added that there wasn't much of a potential train on PRR (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter) that a brace of K4s couldn't take up to the effective speed limit of the balance and valves ... about 92 to 94mph. Probably without approaching the grate limit of a single locomotive with the required firebox and chamber dimensions. Prior to the late '40s you could probably buy plenty of engine crew hours with just the debt service on the development and construction costs of a putative 4-8-4 replacement, even in the darkest years of the '30s.
I've heard it said that they wanted to extend electrification clear out to Pittsburgh, and possibly beyond, but just never got around to it. Who knows?
They'd certainly have gotten around to it if the diesel-electric, particularly the F unit, hadn't been evolved. Remember that the plan was laid out in 1943, and little new engineering from G&H beyond what was already done by 1938 would be involved.
As a peripheral note: I recall the tunnel under Horse Shoe being of the order of 9400'. You wouldn't work that with diesels at the necessary headway, even today, no matter how good the forced ventilation arrangements you found cost-effective. At the very least, you'd have an effective case for bi-mode development...
They'd have come up with ... almost exactly what they did.
There is a very small window between the three-cylinder, super-high-pressure craze and the low-augment rebuild/design era. In this we squarely encounter the K5 (retaining hand firing!) and the tinkering with the idea that became the Q1. Meanwhile the driving necessities for a "4-8-4" -- the lengthening of consists with more amenities, and the increased power required both to space-condition and light them -- wasn't happening early in the evolution of the FoM; by the time it did, the PRR was also in the throes of 'real' high-speed design with duplex Atlantics. I think we can all agree that, splendid as it would have been, the modernized equivalent of a couple of K4s ... a deep-firebox articulated 4-6-6-4 at that point ... was overkill for most folks paying the bills in Philly.
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To take that in another direction: Santa Fe Power on the PRR !
In the Spring, Summer and Fall of 1956, the Santa Fe loaned the PRR 12, 2-10-4's in Class of 5011 for service, they primarily, worked coal traffic from Columbus,Oh. to Sandusky,Oh. They were favored, somewhat by the PRR crews, because they were oil burning rather than coal fired.
See linked video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5zOCNNw6t0
The were on PRR property, stored in Chillicothe, Oh until they were returned to AT&SF in 1959 to be scrapped in KC area.
In July 1945, just prior to the end of WWII, 3 PRR L-1, Class 2-8-2, Mikados in 882 series, were sent to the Santa Fe. At the end of WWII the Belpaire equipped engines suddenly became surplus. The lasted about two years on the AT&SF, with much time in storage(?) before being returned to PRR.
Overmod ...Another reason (borne out in history) is that they were rightsized for less intensive service, but still capable and relatively easy to keep running; they certainly outlasted even the shiniest of the 20th Century Hudsons even after steam streamlining no longer mattered to the patrons. It might be added that there wasn't much of a potential train on PRR (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter) that a brace of K4s couldn't take up to the effective speed limit of the balance and valves ... about 92 to 94mph. Probably without approaching the grate limit of a single locomotive with the required firebox and chamber dimensions. Prior to the late '40s you could probably buy plenty of engine crew hours with just the debt service on the development and construction costs of a putative 4-8-4 replacement, even in the darkest years of the '30s.
...Another reason (borne out in history) is that they were rightsized for less intensive service, but still capable and relatively easy to keep running; they certainly outlasted even the shiniest of the 20th Century Hudsons even after steam streamlining no longer mattered to the patrons.
"they certainly outlasted even the shiniest of the 20th Century Hudsons even after steam streamlining no longer mattered to the patrons." Very true.
There are tons of good reasons why the good old K4s is recognized as the State Steam Locomotive of Pennsylvania since Dec 1987. From K5 of 1929, The Great Depression, to the introduction of the idea of Duplex of Baldwin in the mid-1930s, there was a few years gap for recovery and Pennsy chose to skip developing Hudson type and Northern type for something belongs to the future of Pennsy's network since the late-1930.
Penny was not very good at imaging or PR things. They gave considerable money to Raymond Loewy to beautify their fleet but there was a big room for improvement on how to attract patrons with the new F.o.M image by at least keeping the fleet clean and sharp. But the old PRR probably knew that patrons would change their heart to newer gimmicks from other railroads so easily, so they only streamlined total 5 K4s on the west for the FoM trains. When the war was over, the Dreyfuss Hudsons and K-5 were de-streamlined while PRR started beautification on their K4s.
After the drop of extra fare in 1943, the ridership of the Broadway was recovered and running with sections with the General which was still powered by double-headed K4s when S1 was not available; on the other hand, the Trail Blazer kept leading the NYC-Chicago all-coach overnight train market.
The Great Depression, the WWII wartime traffic, the innovative idea of Baldwin, the ambition of Franklin, the developing of the diesel engine, the blind optimism of the railroad industry etc., all these factors led to a 4-8-4s free PRR network.
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