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PRR Duplexes and Experimental Engines ( S1, S2, T1, Q1, V1 etc.)

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Posted by Miningman on Monday, December 10, 2018 6:16 PM

It's a very haunting picture. Something so important, so advanced and so permanent just vanished off the planet. Inglewoods railroad importance is gone now too, the platforms, all the PRR track. 

Why it all ended has been discussed in several different lights and ways but the fact remains this scene was all gone in short order. 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Wednesday, December 12, 2018 8:21 PM

After almost a week of an involuntary break due to some unknown technical difficulties, I can log in to the forum again with the help of Classic Trains' customer service! Now I can post in our lovely community again!

Thank you very much to Overmod, Miningman and Dave replied to my emails and helped me to kill some time during the break! I will reply to all of them in detail as soon as I am available! I want to say that I miss every single forum members of Classic Trains! Even though we might not agree with each other on some topics! 

I wish our regular forum members will be able to continually support our forum --- our lovely community in the future by posting and sharing ideas without encountering any troubles. I understand that many of our forum members are retired or semi-retired, they contributed a lot to the country and deserve to have a free railroad community. I believe the management of Classis Trains would agree with this point. I wish I still have the chance to exchange ideas with many regular members very soon!

Thank you very much!

 

Back to the topic of this post.

Here is some non-copyrighted photo of the PRR S2 #6200 6-8-6 6900hp direct-geared steam turbine locomotive from Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania online archive, enjoy!

Westinghouse 6900hp turbine(forward) 

(Touched up publicity shot)

2nd and 3rd Drivers (68 inches) with the gearbox.

Why a steam booster engine was not equipped? #6200 was a testbed, her 6-wheel trucks were big enough to house any steam booster engine. Even though Pennsy probably didn't want to use a steam booster engine of the never happened 4-8-4 steam turbine engine, it still worth a try especially when PRR had some spare booster engines removed from locos like T1 #6111 and some K4s. I heard that some mechanical engineer working for PRR asked the same question at the time. 

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, December 12, 2018 10:02 PM

It does appear that Jones1945 has gotten through to the 'new' Customer Service (Penny, I believe) and they have almost immediately resolved the login problem.  Others who have been unable to log in might want to confirm that things are copacetic.  A big THANK YOU to Penny and to whoever she contacted that has worked so well and so fast to restore access!

 

A common issue regarding the Franklin Booster/Bethlehem Auxiliary Locomotive sort of 'power adder' is that the practical value of its starting aid was not worth the additional capital and maintenance costs and special training to use effectively.  Perhaps the best discussion of this aspect I have seen is in Fryer's book on experimental steam, regarding the testing LNER conducted.  No one seems to have made a multiple-axle booster work very well at high speed (not unlike the various flavors of geared truck used on diesel-hydraulic road locomotives) and without that, applying a typical booster to one of the three axles on the S2 (almost certainly the one at extreme rear) would contribute little more than the expected "one driver axle equivalent" to low-speed TE ... I think that would help very little with the drafting issues due to turbine slip at the required power to start trains proportioned to what the S2 design was supposed to do.

 

My own opinion is that what should have been tried was a variable nozzle or baffle arrangement that would bypass some of the large exhaust plenum and hence draft induction in that four-stack arrangement.  Even blowing bypassed steam to atmosphere would be preferable to inducing stay bolt failure... which is really the Big Issue the PRR mechanical department had with the design over the critical years.

 

Better than a 'Franklin Booster' would be a Lewty booster running on that bypassed steam -- which would have no problem driving multiple axles right up to six off a suitably compound-expansion engine probably hydraulically.  But a nuclear lower-cost and probably better approach would be to provide either a magnetorheological clutch or Bowes drive somewhere in the reduction geartrain to allow the turbine to spin up at low road speeds, or provide some sort of torque multiplication at starting and low speeds.

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Posted by Miningman on Thursday, December 13, 2018 11:28 AM

The PRR certainly supported the S2 and was very proud of it. Then suddenly turned its back on the whole project, not because it was hopeless and beyond successful modification but because steam/coal was over in every way with them. 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Thursday, December 13, 2018 11:38 AM

Overmod

It does appear that Jones1945 has gotten through to the 'new' Customer Service (Penny, I believe) and they have almost immediately resolved the login problem.  Others who have been unable to log in might want to confirm that things are copacetic.  A big THANK YOU to Penny and to whoever she contacted that has worked so well and so fast to restore access!

Absolutely agree! I also note that some forum members who can't access other forums under Trains could log in again since yesterday. I wish this is like a turning over a new leaf before 2019.

 

Overmod
Better than a 'Franklin Booster' would be a Lewty booster running on that bypassed steam -- which would have no problem driving multiple axles right up to six off a suitably compound-expansion engine probably hydraulically.  But a nuclear lower-cost and probably better approach would be to provide either a magnetorheological clutch or Bowes drive somewhere in the reduction geartrain to allow the turbine to spin up at low road speeds, or provide some sort of torque multiplication at starting and low speeds.

 

Interesting idea. The S2's massive tender, roomy space under the smoke box and boiler as well as both massive 6-wheel truck provided enough space to install a Lewty booster system( I am searching for a detail drawing of it ) or any modified booster engine.

I think any method which could have shortened the time for her to reach 30 mph or above for the economic reason was worth a try. If PRR didn't drop the project of S2 and V1, they might have to rebuild a whole new engine and all the things they learned from the S2. The new engine, probably the proposed but never fully built V1 might have answered all the questions regarding other disadvantages of S2.  But V1 was designed for freight service, wasn't it? 

A drawing showing the Lewty booster system:

https://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernsteam/ldp/usa1978/ga-large.html

 

LIFE (magazine)

PRR's rendering of V1

Tags: S2 , V1 , Lewty booster
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Posted by Jones1945 on Thursday, December 13, 2018 11:56 AM

Miningman

The PRR certainly supported the S2 and was very proud of it. Then suddenly turned its back on the whole project, not because it was hopeless and beyond successful modification but because steam/coal was over in every way with them. 

 

Nice poster! Miningman. Yes, there are quite a lot of Patent drawings specially made for the S2 project; different kinds of gears and devices were designed to fix her problems. But due to an unprecedentedly financial problem of Pennsy in 1947, they couldn't afford an experiment at such a scale and dropped it. The last publicity event the S2 attended was the Chicago Railroad Fair 1949.

Her name was not in the promotional flyer but there are some photographic evidences and a very short clip showing she was in the fair. 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Tuesday, December 18, 2018 11:32 PM

After some complaints (of me) about how difficult it is to find a "new old" pic of PRR S1 #6100, someone sent me a pic of S1 which I have never seen. (Thanks a lot) Probably taken not long after the first overhaul of S1 around 1942 in the early morning (5:33 am) if the train was not late. The de-skirted big engine was seen stopping at Lima, OH station, heading to Fort-Wayne.

Lima Station was the 13th station (westbound) of the Trail Blazer; judging from the skirted PB70ER lounge baggage (betterment) car behind her, S1 was hauling the Trail Blazer westbound in this photo, 60 miles away from Fort Wayne, 200 miles away from the Chicago. I believe a photo of the Lima Station in the early 1940s is rare as well.Smile

http://www.trainweb.org/usarail/lima.htm

Amtrak Lima Station (June 1978)

 Betterment car, the PB70ER lounge baggage and POC70R observation car specially built for the Trail Blazer. (https://digital.hagley.org/)

LIFE 1939

I wish I know the model of the Radio on PRR's Betterman cars... I want to search for one for my house's decoration!

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Posted by Jones1945 on Saturday, January 12, 2019 3:13 AM

Pennsylvania Railroad Class S1 (#6100) 6-4-4-6 "The Big Engine" in Trainz (Simulator)

This video showing the Pennsylvania Railroad S1 #6100 "The Big Engine" in TrainZ Simulator hauling The Trail Blazer (1360 tons) a deluxe all-coach train, inaugurated between New York and Chicago via Pittsburgh, PA. 

The 3D model itself was created as freeware by a railfan from quite a long time ago and the original config file of the engine was borrowed from an SP GS-4, if you are interested, you could download it on the download station for free. After various updates from different parties in the last few years, it has a new engine file now and I updated it, as well as the skin of it in 2018.

Since there is no suitable US route for the test, the Settle-Carlisle Railway was chosen. Please note the gradient changes. After editing the engine config file of it with historically correct data, the engine is capable of reaching 100mph within 14 mins with 1300 tons passenger stock behind her on the Settle-Carlisle Railway northbound, starting from Skipton station.

This video is an attempt to pushing the engine to the limit and to find out how fast the PRR S1 #6100 can go on a real route, therefore all speed limits were ignored. The Train in this video is running on "realistic mode" with functions like "auto fireman" activated and "derailment" deactivated. 

After editing the config file of it with historically correct data, the engine showed wheel slipping when starting at full gear and full throttle. I keep an open mind on these suspected bugs or glitches. If you have any question or tips about how to improve the realism of the train, please feel free to leave your comment, thanks for watching!

Tags: PRR S1 , simulation
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Posted by Jones1945 on Friday, January 18, 2019 8:29 AM

Oh hi CoffeeSmile, Wink & Grin... I have been struggling and fighting with the annoying flu virus for almost a week. Finally, I feel like I am 95% recovered. If only there was a heavy train can run over all those ugly fluffy little virus and their ugly dirty protein spike thing or let me throw them all into the firebox!!

Anyway, I found this "Transitioning of the design of PRR Q1" pic when I managing the railroad folders on my computer. A lazy Photoshopped pic for this mysterious experimental engine. 

Set one:

  


Set two: The Q1 itself. 

I believe all of these drafts and drawings came from PRR. If you know their background and source, please kindly let us know. All of them have missing details.

The top one showing a 4-6-4-6, probably made in the early 1940s. The streamlining shared some common characteristics with PRR S1 like the decoration around the headlight and the S1-style one-piece huge front end nose and the bow shape neck between the bullet nose and the front end as well as the air deflector around the smokestack. 

The middle one is another 4-6-4-6 drawing. Compare to the drawing on the top, the front end design was changed where the headlight was placed above the smokebox door. it had a higher smokestack, a S1-style skyline of the boiler, the teardrop-shaped marker light was replaced with square shape number board. The shape of the cab window is almost identical to the four streamlined K4s of 1940 and 1941.

The last one is a 4-6-4-4 scaled down from the 4-6-4-6 design. At least 3 ft shorter than the 4-6-4-6 version, we can see even more redesigning on the front end, the skyline as well as the size trailing truck. Some of the detail of the streamlining doesn't match the final product. None of them have the dog house on the tender. 

It seems that the firebox was also scaled down from the 4-6-4-6 version. But I don't have, and probably could never find more detail about all the design changes and the reason behind it of this project. 

Q1, together with S1,T1s and Q2s were Pennsy's epic answers to the concept of the superpower and Northern 4-8-4s. But Q1 was born in wrong times and didn't become the successor of PRR M1s. She was outperformed by some much simpler and trouble-free 4-8-4s duel-service engines like N&W Class J.

 

Tags: 4-6-4-4 , 4-6-4-6 , PRR Q1
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Posted by selector on Friday, January 18, 2019 12:42 PM

Middle one is really a 4-6-4-4.

Edit: Did you mean the middle loco in the first set?  If so, you are correct.  I failed to see that there are only two images.

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Posted by Jones1945 on Friday, January 18, 2019 10:19 PM

selector

Middle one is really a 4-6-4-4.

Edit: Did you mean the middle loco in the first set?  If so, you are correct.  I failed to see that there are only two images.

 

Thank you very much for pointing it out. Extra info is added to improve the typesetting. : -)

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Posted by rrlineman on Saturday, January 19, 2019 2:02 PM

With all discussion on what could have been or why the PRR did this or that, I remember some years back in the PRR Keystone someone did a similar study. One of the things this person did was to create the R2. A steam engine that used the S2's boiler with either a expanded M1a chassis or a drivetrain from one of the Santa Fe's big 4-8-4's. He even had a painting to show what it would have looked like along with his proposed Specs of speed, HP-TF etc. Does anyone remeber this article??

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Posted by Jones1945 on Sunday, January 20, 2019 10:45 AM

rrlineman

With all discussion on what could have been or why the PRR did this or that, I remember some years back in the PRR Keystone someone did a similar study. One of the things this person did was to create the R2. A steam engine that used the S2's boiler with either an expanded M1a chassis or a drivetrain from one of the Santa Fe's big 4-8-4's. He even had a painting to show what it would have looked like along with his proposed Specs of speed, HP-TF etc. Does anyone remember this article??

Thanks for the useful information, rrlineman. I remember there is at least one, probably only one article on Keystone Magzine about Q1 (but not even one about S1). I wish more railroading document and historical material will come out of the surface (Not only Pennsy) before they were forgotten or storing in different universities for another three hundred years. 

By the way, do you mean using the Q2's boiler on a M1a chassis? We have some very intensive discussions no long ago about why PRR "skipped" the development of Hudsons and Northern. The M1s were so powerful and reliable that this class could have been the only Mountain class which is epic enough to fit into the "Super Power" category. If Pennsy wanted to make 4-8-4s their prime power, there would have been no difficulties for them to build one or a fleet of it.

I think I can call it a consensus that PRR was so ambitious to make something more than any RRs can imagine. But turn out all these new prime steam power development plans had a lot of set back and didn't go according to plan.

I believe Q1 was designed base on the concept of CN/Grand Trunk Western 4-8-4s of 1938, but Pennsy wanted to make it a lot more powerful than it and let it become the successor of M1s. Coffee Both class using 77" drivers, streamlined and was a dual-service engine.

 

locomotive.wikia.com

 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Saturday, January 26, 2019 12:40 PM

30 years earlier before the arrival of PRR T1 prototype (#6110, #6111), we had PRR E6sa #1092 using an experiential rotary valve designed by O. W. Young. According to Wiki, It was actuated by regular Walschaerts gear (?) and was not a completely unsuccessful experiment.

 

PRR #1092 in 1912:

PRR #1092 in 1937: 

Source: HAGLEY DIGITAL ARCHIVES

 

 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Sunday, February 3, 2019 3:10 AM

Liberty Limited powered by the PRR S1 #6100 in April 1941 (78 years ago). Meanwhile, B&O is winning the game with their diesel-powered Royal Blue and Capitol Limited in the Washington D.C - New York and Chicago market.


The Train of Tomorrow vs The Train of PRR's Tomorrow! 3600hp vs 7200hp! It was a good game well for all railfans anyway!


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Posted by Jones1945 on Thursday, February 7, 2019 1:10 PM

This new video is from my family's hobby YouTube channel. I think I found the answer regarding the capability of PRR S1. CoffeeHmm

 

= 138 mph = PRR Class S1 Duplex Steam Locomotive

"We heard about a lot of tales and rumors about how fast the 7200hp PRR S1 could go in the past. I think It is the right time to show the whole world about her power, her top speed, and her capability to break any speed record created by any other steam locomotive in the world at any time. 

- 100 mph (06:42)

- 120 mph (10:58)

- 130 mph (12:26)

- 138 mph (16:45)

Pennsylvania Railroad was a responsible railroad, they encouraged safety driving and paid attention to the comfort level of their premier train. Therefore, The PRR, as well as many other great railroads in the States like MILW and NYCentral never claimed any speed record during and after World War II. 

But with the help of computer simulation, like Trainz, we could show you which steam engine was supposed to be the fastest steam engine ever made in human history! In this video, PRR S1 is hauling a historically accurate 1939 standard 8-car consist of the "Broadway Limited". I added one 13 double bedroom Pullman sleeper (re-skinned from a sleeper made by  K&L Trainz) on it for heavier loading. The engine's config file has been carefully tuned for historical accuracy. 

Just like other speed test video, the train won't obey any speed limit on the route and the "derailment" function is off. The feature of "Auto Fireman" is activated, so maybe you can make the PRR S1 run even faster with better fireman skill! Do you wanna try? :P

Thank you for watching!"

 

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Posted by Jones1945 on Sunday, February 10, 2019 9:09 AM

The is PRR form 109-J 1948 provided by Charles Crawford, the official spec of Q1, Q2, S1, S2.



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Posted by Jones1945 on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 6:19 AM

 

"!HEAD TO HEAD! - PRR S1 vs PRR T1"

The "Big Engine" PRR S1 6-4-4-6 Duplex, a locomotive built for the 1939-40 World's Fair to show off all the cutting edge technologies of America at the time, racing head to head with the "practical version" of her, The PRR T1 #5500, the production version of PRR's last steam locomotive; she was the answer of PRR to the concept of "superpower" "Northern 4-8-4s" from the 1930s. 

*The T1 in this simulator is using the default engine config file by the game developer. *S1's engine config file is adjusted base on the real S1's spec, figures like the boiler size, cylinder's volume, firebox size, total heating surface area, fire temperature and the number of cylinders etc with the help of many nice people from Classic Trains Magzine Forum. ( http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/740/t/2727... )

==If you are good at computer programming and computer simulation and willing to provide a more accurate engine config file to us, we are more than willing to do another race with different kinds of trains by using your engine config file for an even better result==

At the end of the video, it is also the end of the map, so I stopped recording once we know who is the winner. 

In this video, the T1 and S1 was hauling the historically accurate consist of 1943 The Admiral and The Trail Blazer, so you can see the Admiral is a typical American style mixed consist with old and new cars in the video: )

Suggestion and advice are always welcomed! Thank you for watching! :D

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Posted by BigJim on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 7:32 AM

That's cute how the T1 blows bubbles out of the cylinders! Wink

.

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Posted by Flintlock76 on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 7:47 AM

Wow.  The T1 WAS blowing bubbles out of the cylinders!

"OK, who's the wise guy who put Ivory soap in the boiler water?"

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Posted by Jones1945 on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 9:38 AM

The T1 engine in Trainz is a payware DLC which user cannot adjust, modify or upgrade its setting. The silly bubbles thing can be removed if some pc guru willing to share the trick to modify this 7 years old official content. Or maybe they tried to render the leaking in the Franklin poppet valve gear in a funny way. Wink

The estimated completion date of T1 5550 (without bubble blowing) will be 2030 which is only 11 years later, let's wait for it and see the real T1 running without bubbles blowing CoffeeAngel

By the way, if the bubbles can make you happy, I have at least one more video to show you :-P 

 

Shy

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Posted by Jones1945 on Thursday, February 28, 2019 4:28 AM

Redwards

Some years ago Feltonhill had recommended the following article on the S1:

 
"The S1's history was covered in a 7-page article by the late Charlie Meyer in the Jan 1992 (Vo.10, N0.1) issue of Milepost, a magazine published by Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. I believe they're still in existance, maybe out of Strasburg, and this is available as a back issue. It's well worth trying to get. It's probably the only detailed account written at this point."
 
I managed to find a copy on eBay and as he states, it's the most detailed account I've seen on the S1. 
 
--Reed 

 

Dear all,

I extremely regret to let you guys know that after a half year of eBay hunting, I cannot find a hard copy of Reed's suggestion: Charlie Meyer, Jan 1992 (Vo.10, N0.1) issue of Milepost, published by Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

If you have this issue and willing to "share" with me in any form, please kindly let me know! I would appreciate it greatly if you could help me to find this last piece of the puzzle of my dream engine PRR S1!

Thank you for your attention!  Thumbs Up

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Posted by Jones1945 on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 6:13 AM

Old News:

I believe many Pennsy fans already knew this for years but in model railroading world, this information is always omitted, which cost them a lower sale due to lack of Raymond Loewy's fame.

According to Keystone magazine vol. 26, number 3, Autumn 1993, an interview of John W. Epstein, Special Projects Manager and vice president, Raymond Loewy & AssoC., he mentioned that not only K4s 3768 and PRR S1 which both were displayed in 1939-40 World Fair, the four K4s streamlined for the Jeffersonian and South Wind, the streamlining of PRR R2, Q1, Q2, V1 as well as T1s were all designed by Raymond Loewy & AssoC., (with involvement of Clement). But I believe that due to WWII, there was no publicity about it, let alone some of the original design was altered according to President Clement's idea. 

In 1939, PRR requested Raymond Loewy to design the proposed streamlined E6s, it didn't happen but the similar design was applied to the South Wind and Jeffersonian Scheme. President Clement involved in Q1's design including the appearance of the front end which he wanted the headlight placed above the smokebox center and the Keystone plate should be placed right under the headlight, it is like a tradition of the "Pennsy look".

Streamlining of R2 4-8-4 steam turbine due cancelation and S2 was proposed to be streamlined by Loewy, but PRR made a smart choice to not streamlining it like Q1.

Before:

After: 

 

The proposed streamlined PRR E6s, note the similarity of the placement of Keystone plate and headlight compared to Q1's design.

Copyright: THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD, RAYMOND LOEWY's STUDIO.  Coffee

Speaking of Q1, accord to another issue of the Keystone magazine, this dual service duplex's front engine seldom have wheel slipping problem, but the rear engine's drivers constantly slip. The performance of her was above average which the engine NEVER received a complaint from the crew and management after accumulating 165,000 miles of service. Coffee Thank you for your attention. Wink

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Posted by Jones1945 on Sunday, June 9, 2019 3:01 PM

(For the record) I never heard about this but I just found out that the S1 once hauled a 90-car freight consist and hit 73mph during a test outing, according to the Keystone Magazine Vol.27, No.2, summer 1994. I don't think we discussed such testing of S1 before but the T1s towing freight train for testing was mentioned in several posts. 

If that road test was conducted during the break of the World Fair, the result of it might affect the design of Q1 later in 1940. Many say that the 77" drivers on Q1 were too large for a freight engine (It was a dual service engine actually) but the result of S1 towing the 3600 tons (presuming all cars were loaded, 40-ton* 90) freight train probably encouraged Pennsy to not using the smaller driver on the Q1.

I still believe that Q1 was one of the most ambitious plans of Pennsy during the transitional era. If the Q1, as the successor of the M1s 4-8-2, was good enough to be mass produced, the PRR didn't even have to cooperate with Baldwin or other steam engine manufacturer anymore. Pennsy could have built their own duplex and set the price of the new engine independently, that means Baldwin would have lost their largest client.

If Pennsy really had such intention, once Pennsy obtained all the data of the S2 turbine, as well as the T1s, they would have ditched Baldwin afterward. How Baldwin would have had reacted to such a situation? the plot thickens...... Movie Coffee

Designed and built by PRR.

^The supposed to be the new Pennsy face, designed by Raymond Loewy and altered on Clement's request.  

Fast, strong, flexible and stylish. 

Not as slippy as the T1s,

not as oversized as the S1,

dual services ready,

built by Pennsy's own shop,

the mother of the Q2s,

long forgotten outside this forum......

 

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Posted by Miningman on Sunday, June 9, 2019 4:48 PM

Very short lived and under utilized (165,000 miles). Do you remember 2015? Of course, seems like yesterday almost.. from then until now that's how long it lasted. 

Q2's fantastic performance and as Overmod calls them " win the war now locomotives" also ridiculously short lives. 

Followed of course by rows and rows and rows of unreliable super high cost Diesels that didn't last much longer than the Q1 and Q2's. 

Wonder if someone was hauled on the carpet for this unbelievable folly.

Don't think so, they were all in on it, and couldn't rid themselves of their steam fast enough. Blink and you missed it all. 

Nothing new here that hasn't been stated previously but the whole thing S1 thru to T1's was a darn shame. When Pennsy turned its back on its best moment and then destroyed it all what can you say besides ridiculous.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 10, 2019 9:24 AM

Jones1945
Pennsy could have built their own duplex and set the price of the new engine independently, that means Baldwin would have lost their largest client. If Pennsy really had such intention, once Pennsy obtained all the data of the S2 turbine, as well as the T1s, they would have ditched Baldwin afterward. How Baldwin would have had reacted to such a situation? the plot thickens...

To paraphrase the sense of the Easter service, 'thickens indeed'!

Baldwin was a principal player in the 'intellectual property' development of the duplex idea (perhaps overly so) -- this being one of the key post-Eksergian efforts to eliminate the evil effects of augment.  How much the railroad world was pawing around in the half-dark is evidenced by the infamous R1 story; how clearly they got a good answer is not much later (in the 'refit kits' on, for example, the T&P 2-10-4s, the rebuilt 3751 class; the double rebuilding of the Hs into world-class glory matched (imho) only by the Niagaras).  But in the world of the Q1, anything larger than -- say -- the M1a was going to be hopeless at dual-service speed, and so...

There's an old riddle about 'what's a camel?'  The answer to which is 'a horse designed by a committee'.  Here's PRR designing a 5/4 M1 but deciding to get more and more carried away with the fun, evidently forgetting Leonor Loree's lesson about practical technology on the way.  

Part of the 'key' here is to note why the driver size was ramped up all the way to 77" instead of using disc centers and better balancing at 72". -- it's highly likely lower water rate a la Golsdorf was not part of that design decision, considering the priorities in the Q2 and V1 designs.  Instead, as in the B&O locomotive (and I suspect the putative ATSF 6-4-4-4) you have conventional drive on normal wheels which now can have smaller balance weights and overbalance consequences.

PRR was, according to some of the notes at the Hagley, proud of the way it handled the steam'pipe and snifting valve arrangements at the rear of the Q1 to avoid the kinds of problems B&O had on their locomotive.  If you look at it from pure engineering, they did a pretty good job.  Just that nobody told the steam, and the dirt, and the things in casual collision with items located near the limits of the loading gage, about how to respect products of superior intellect ... as it were.

End result is interesting precisely because the design didn't try to do what the Q2 did, produce very high horsepower at elevated speed, so you wound up with a super locomotive hobbled by just the wrong constraints to realize the promise of the 'good bits'.  Most of the issues of backpedaling drive were not particularly difficult to address (ahem, cough, cough, cab-forwards?) probably including the issue of crap rammed into the multiple-bearing crosshead surfaces, so you may be looking at T1-failure-duplicitous levels of railfan-led-by-the-nose mythology there.  On the other hand, limiting the locomotive to M&E as its prospective 'dual service' (in a world where PRR freight never topped 50mph) can be seen without particular reference to accurate hindsight as a relative waste of time and money.

Nobody seems to have thought very carefully that a locomotive that required the same cylinder care and maintenance as two M1s had better be capable of doing more things better than two M1s as possible (particularly if it cost more than three M1s to build, but I digress).  We see the same issue repeated for the Q2s as soon as no one needed 150-car trains pulled at meteoric speed over wartime-maintenance track: in a normal PRR world, the J1a (no slouch of a design itself, particularly with the upsized driver diameter) did about everything a Q2 could do on any particular practical train but with Ferrari-level maintenance for Ferrari performance the job no longer called for.

MEANWHILE ... back to the Baldwin story.

You will remember how the order for the T1s was split, half to Baldwin and half to Altoona, with the expensive valve-gear and technological bits outsourced (so Baldwin had no technological 'lock' on the market as they would have, via their controlling Westinghouse connection, on steam turbines).  Behind the scenes, here comes the future! as Steins et al. duke it out with Loewy over the 'triplex' plan and then develop the magic solution that would replace reciprocating steam with a three-box configuration that didn't involve Baldwin Locomotive Works.  (Although it did involve Westinghouse, about which more anon).

Baldwin, seeing its own future more than a little closely aligned with that of Steins et al., decides to implement its own 'hush-hush' design effort to end-run around the Steins patents ... the result of which comedy was (as no one I suspect will be surprised to learn) the C&O M-1 turbines.  (In case you were wondering why there were three, and so little testing was done to debug the first one...)  This essentially threw down the gauntlet to PRR Motive Power in a way that makes it potentially easier to see why no further direct-turbine work was undertaken at that critical time that turbine steam power was the wave of the future... and the compound-expansion answer to the whole double-maintenance problem of the duplexes at a stroke.

In my opinion, had there been no turbines we might have seen some attempt to de-sow's-ear the Q1, probably involving a switch to smaller drivers and perhaps some rebushing of the cylinders to adjust the cyclic water rate upward to suit (and perhaps some application of RC poppet gear in a reverse T1a change to three-valve Franklin type C as on ATSF 3752, but I doubt it).  At this point I am tempted to speculate a bit and note 'what if we put a welded boiler and better firebox on the chassis, and geared in a couple of smaller V1-style turbines with the full-proportional version of the Q2 slip control' which still wouldn't have solved the lethal water-rate problem but would give us a highly interesting testbed... just don't expect Baldwin to build the pieces. 

 I suspect much of the correspondence over the design options here would make interesting reading

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Posted by Jones1945 on Monday, June 10, 2019 9:56 AM

Miningman

Very short lived and under utilized (165,000 miles). Do you remember 2015? Of course, seems like yesterday almost.. from then until now that's how long it lasted. 

Q2's fantastic performance and as Overmod calls them " win the war now locomotives" also ridiculously short lives. 

Definitely, Miningman. The Q2 and T1 actually participated in two global conflicts, at least. The Korean War somewhat extended Q2 and many steam engines' service life of different railroads. 

I do remember many details happened in my private life as well as my civil service in 2015, but there is one thing I almost can't remember its existence, which is justice. 

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Monday, June 10, 2019 10:19 AM

Miningman

Followed of course by rows and rows and rows of unreliable super high cost Diesels that didn't last much longer than the Q1 and Q2's. 

Wonder if someone was hauled on the carpet for this unbelievable folly.

What folly??  Sticking with an overdesigned steam locomotive in an attempt to make up for lost time caused by ignoring improvements not originated by PRR?

Most PRR diesels lasted until they were fully depreciated (15 years) or even longer.  Except of course for such disasters like Baldwin's Centipede.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 10, 2019 10:34 AM

Jones1945
The Q2 and T1 actually participated in two global conflicts, at least. The Korean War somewhat extended Q2 and many steam engines' service life of different railroads.

I suspect the major contribution of the Q2s to the Korean War (which started in 1950) was the alloy steel and other metals in their composition.  Were any even seriously running at that point?

It would be highly interesting to see where the T1s were used, and how useful they were (even in the sense of allowing other steam or diesels to work more strategic services).  Again, though, this was probably into the equipment-trust-saving part of the T1 retention effort, so I wouldn't expect much voluntary reactivation of stored power for main trains or other explicit wartime traffic.

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Posted by Jones1945 on Monday, June 10, 2019 11:10 AM

Oh my! Thank you for your amazing response, Overmod. I will need some time to write a thorough response to your awesome post.

Using Q1 or even S1 as a test bed to further the steam engine development is one of my fantasy. On the other hand, I am still trying to figure it out what really happened between the PRR, Baldwin (& Westinghouse), Loewy, GM, etc. Even though we already know the official stories. 

When critical information is inaccessible on my side, imagination mixing with logical reasoning might bring me closer to the truth. 

Coffee

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