I know several of the large railroads had their own steam locomotive erecting shops- Reading, N & W, and the PRR, but how many railroads built their own steam locomotives in their own shops?
What railroads did this and where were these shops located? Do examples of their product still exist and what types of steam power did they producce? It would also be interesting to see what became of the Baldwin, ALCO and Lima properties- then and now.
It may make for a great story subject for Classic Trains to pursue along with then and now photos of these properties and their products- it'd make a good ghost story for the Fall issue at least.
Thanks,
Road Fan
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I know the Southern RWY did , I am not sure what shops did , but I know there were a few built in Princeton , IN .
Also the L&N did in Lousiville ,KY. and the IC did at Paducha KY .
Cotton Belt built five L1 Northerns #810-814 at its Pine Bluff shops in 1937. When they could not get War Production Board approval for FT diesels they built another five L1s #815-819 at Pine Bluff in 1942-43. The #819 is preserved at the Arkansas Railroad Museum in Pine Bluff in the same shop that built it in 1943.
The answer depends on what you mean by "build"-- also on what you mean by "locomotive". Many RRs rebuilt old engines into shop goats-- does that count? As I recall the GN assembled some Mallets in their Spokane shops, with boilers purchased (ready-built?) from... ALCo?
In any case, a surprisingly large number of RRs could reasonably have been said to have "built" some of their own locomotives at one time or another. Probably the majority of the large RRs?
If I recall correctly, the CB&Q and the Milwaukee Road built locomotives in their shops, particularly in the pre-depression era.
Dan
The IC built many locomotives at its Paducah Shops as did the Frisco at Springfield and the T&P at Marshall, TX. I think the Rock Island also built engines at Silvis and the Santa Fe at Ft. Madison.
Mark
The SP built most of there 4-8-2 Mountains in there own Sacramento Shops.
Al - in - Stockton
passengerfan The SP built most of there 4-8-2 Mountains in there own Sacramento Shops. Al - in - Stockton
SP subsidary T&NO also built some engines at it's Algiers (New Orleans) shops.
Does anyone know if ACL built locos at the Emerson Shops in Rocky Mount?
The Norfolk & Western also built much of its motive power in the steam era.
Lehigh Valley. Sayre Pa
Cumberland & Pennsylvania , Mt Savage, Md
There is probably no real answer to the question. Many railroads, large and small, built some of their own steam locomotives; diesels, I have never heard of one. As to an assembled list of all raods, I kind of doubt one exists.
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CV built wood burners at St. Albans.
http://imagescn.technomuses.ca/railways/index_view.cfm?photoid=14067190&id=49
http://imagescn.technomuses.ca/railways/index_view.cfm?photoid=1011907384&id=49
http://imagescn.technomuses.ca/railways/index_view.cfm?photoid=1296827531&id=49
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CB&Q had a large loco shop at West Burlington Iowa where locos were erected.
Southern Pacific built IIIRC 12 class Mk-5 Mikados at its own shops, most at Algiers (New Orleans) and IIRC one at Houston. One of these locomotives, SP 745, not only exists, but it is operational (see www.LASTA.org). This happened 1919-1921. They all went to eastern SP subsidiaries. 745 started with the Galveston, Harrisburg, & San Antonio, then later was a Texas & New Orleans loco.
P.S.
My avatar is SP 745 running through Reserve, LA in 2006. The full picture is on railpictures.net, as are a few dozen other pictures of 745.
The Sacramento Shops also built locomotives for other railroads. A couple of the surviving Virginia and Truckee locos are Sacramento alumni - built new for V&T.
The Sacramento Shops are currently being rebuilt into a 'historical' shopping complex. The California Railroad Museum ended up with two of the larger buildings - and the transfer table between them.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Road Fan:
I regret to report to you that the Lima locomotives property sits vacant except for one of the smaller old buildings. There's nothing left to indicate what once was. When the property was bought from Clark Equipment, it was bought as development property. The new owner did put effort into trying to save some of the buildings for historic value if he could find a party that was interested in buying. Needless to say, nothing came forth and the buildings came down for land development.
Next to the Lima locomotive works set a office building and turntable/roundhouse for the Nickle Plate Road where my grandfather and great-grandfather worked. The roundhouse was taken out long before I could remember(I'm 49). Husky refinery owns the property that the turntable and roundhouse once set on. The turntable itself was just torn out by the refinery within the year as a safety issue.
I'll try to post some digital photos of the Lima loco works in the near future.
The following information is from Omar Lavallee's book "Canadian Pacific Steam Locomotives".
"Almost one-third of the steam locomotives owned by Canadian Pacific Railway Company were constructed in their own shops. Production of 1,056 locomotives was carried on over the period of sixty-one years betyween 1883 and 1944 in two facilities situated in the city of Montreal.'
The "New Shops" (1883 to 1904) constructed 377 steam locomotives.
The "Angus Shops" (1904 to 1944) constructed 679 steam locomotives.
skcawa
The 819 was built in 1942, was put in service on around Feb 7, 1943.
The fact of the matter on this locomotive is that its construction likely started in late 1942 but it was not completed until February 7, 1943. Joe Strapac in his book Cotton Belt Locomotives uses a February 8, 1943 date as the in service date. And it would not have been built at all if the War Production Board had allowed Cotton Belt to get the FT locomotives it wanted. The Cotton Belt L1s #815-816 were built in 1942 and the #817-819 followed in 1943. The builder quantities are documented in Cotton Belt Locomotives and in the book A Centennial Remembrance by Richard Steinbrenner on page 198. Steinbrenner's book has a table for domestic steam locomotives built in 1943. The St. Louis Southwestern is shown as building three steam locomotives in 1943. Those would be the L1s #817-819.
The other three railroads building steam locomotives in 1943 are the Illinois Central with 15, the Norfolk & Western with 21 and the Pennsylvania built 101.
cbrhs819dc The 819 was built in 1942, was put in service on around Feb 7, 1943.
I'm new to this site so before I submit locomotive information I will send this test message.
This may not be the place to discus locomotive construction but I want to anyway. Construction is not what most people think. I worked in the Cotton Belt Backshop and tried to make mental notes of the activities. At any rate all home built engines would have been assembled the same way.
These fabrications were basically kits as there is more to bulding an engine than having boring bars, quartering machines, lathes, wheel lathes and boring mills In the case of the 800's "the last ten" General Casting Foundry near Chicago poured the engine beds "frames", trailer frames, engine truck frame, tender beds and other components. Many of the US Army's Sherman Tank hulls were cast by them also!!!!! Engine beds are cast in pit molds, this is a large concrete pit in the foundry floor below flush, they were used to hold the copes, drags and cores in place when the steel was poured. The frames are cast steel not iron. They also go thru a stress releaving process "heat treat" after the casting cooled. The beds were shipped to shops like Baldwin for machining, Baldin also built the boilers.
The appliances and remaining components were purchased from their respective vendors: Westinghouse air pumps and brakes, American Throttle Company so on. The driver wheel centers are cast iron by General Castings, small vendors supplies the axle and tire blanks. The axles, bull rings and valve sleeves are spun cast, cylinder heads are from Balwins flange shop.
Bearings by Timkin and thanks to a dutchman named Heit who worked for Timkin. He put the older Cotton Belt locos along with countless other railroads off of friction bearings and onto roller bearings.
BACK TO THE STORY,all parts were shipped to the backshop on flat car for final fitting and assembly. The boiler set onto the bed where it is only solidly attached at the smoke box to cylinder saddle area, as the boiler streches it slips over the three middle saddles and in the four firebox slides. Then the bed is places onto the wheels. The tender bed has the walls and bulkheads welded and riveted on. The cabs were cut out by torch and the main and side rods were forged from blocks in teh Cotton Belt Blacksmith shop.
i have left out much and most is forgotton. The first nine engines purchased from Baldwin were the first from the new engine bed patterns and as a result there were problems like the cylinder exhaust ports blowing out from being cast too thin.
Does anyone know of the 813 wreck? It killed Bill Hugan the engineer, I knew the fireman, he was hurt badly by being sqirtted out of the side window by the mud as the engine slid along on its side in the muddy ditch. The frame was bent and twisted along with much other damage, it was totaled but with the war going on the company was forced to put it back together. Much like a wrecked car it never was the same.
If someone has more questions they think I can answer please let me know.
Quartering Machine: Thanks for the information on the construction of locomotives at Pine Bluff. I found an account of the L1 #813 accident on the DOT website. The accident occured on April 8, 1944 at Kent, AR north of Camden. An unattended K1 consolidation #569 drifted away north from Camden and was met headon by Extra 813 South at Kent. The accident report said there were three killed and one injured in the wreck. The cause of the wreck was the failure of the Camden Yard Crew to block the wheels of their engine when it was unattended. The #813 was sold to the Southern Pacific as its GS-8 #4488 in 1956.
Bill Bailey told a group of us at the Cotton Belt in Commerce Symposium of how Cotton Belt sent a group of shop employees to Paducah, KY to observe how Illinois Central built steam locomotives. This must have been prior to the first group of L1s #810-814 that were built in Pine Bluff in 1937. Bailey said the second group #815-819 built in Pine Bluff were more modern in that they had numbered and interchangeable parts to ease maintenance.
Ed in Kentucky
Thanks for the pics, 813 was the problem child of the group with respect to bad luck but I did not know the details of the other wreck and had not seen thr pictures. It's amazing the engine was kept in service as long as it was. I don't know if you have looked at the cylinder saddle of the 819 it is basically the same of 813. They are massive but hollow boxed structures, on top is the smoke box, bottom the truck bolster and sides are the cylinders in front is the air pump supports and pilot beam. Evidently there is enough material to take severe blows.
My interest was always the machining and casting and as a mechcanical engineer I do this exact type of work. I was the understudy to John Ham the lead machinist on the last 5, 815 to 819. 811 was probably next as far as getting into trouble.
I have not seen Bill Baily in a long time but I always thought much of him. The world needs more like Bill. He always wondered how the air reservoir was castinto the engine bed of the late 800's. This was a hollow split core system with the cores held in place by chaplets. In other words when you look at the 819 you will see the heat exchanger pipes from the air pumps but you won't see any air tanks. That is because the these are part of the engine bed.
The beds in most large engines are cast inverted so the pedistals can act as the risers however when John Ham was sent to General Castings to see a cab forward bed poured, it was poured up right. There are not any specific rules on the pouring orientation of odd shaped parts like beds. Ham was sent to the foundry before the last five engines were built.
There is a question on crossheads in another area of this forum, I'll go there for other comments. My intent is to not be a smart person but to provide poeple with full scale information as I remember it.
I would venture to say that in the 19th Century more railroads built at least some of thier own power than did not. I know that on the Lehigh Valley up intil the 1890s just about all of the roundhouses built locomotives. These were done to the designs of the local master mechanic and often no two were alike. Delano engine house was especially acitve in locomotive construction.
As for diesels I know of two US railroads who built thier own. The Pennsy planned a series but ended up building ONE!!!!. It was a four wheel boxcab switcher that looked like a baby P5 electric. Doing things the way that PRR did they ended up with several completed carbodies before they found out that the diesel engine they selected left a lot to be desired. So the remaining were completed as gas electrics. Some time later the original diesel, and the gas engines, were replaced with more modern diesel engines.
The Tex-Mex railroad built several diesel locomotives for themselves that were fairly successful.
Does anyone know of other home built diesels?
If your're in the Paterson, NJ area. You can see the remains of Rogers and Danforth Cooke Locomotive Companies. Rogers, rather what's left is part of the Gretat Falls Historic District. As for Danforth Cooke, the one structure I haveseen still has the monogrammed D in it's chimneys. I believe they became components of ALCO in the early 1900's and closed shortly after.
That's something I've always wondered about- how the manufactures tested their new designs. It'd seem that many designs were most likely written in someones blood.
Today we have 3-D CAD-CAE systems that can design, assembly and test a prototype on the computer screen before the part is manufactured and someones life is snuffed out because if an unexpected design flaw.
I remember seeing an old publication that had photographs of a newly cast, single piece locomotive engine bed fresh out of the casting sand. As a design professional who has worked on large scale (U.S. Navy), ink on linen drawings, it was truely the most beautiful piece of American industrial skill and design I had ever seen...a true masterpiece, I would have loved to have seen the mechanical drawings used to produce it and the skilled craftsmen who knew how to cast it....in one piece
Does America still have the ability to cast such massive, intricate pieces of metal today?
Road Fan That's something I've always wondered about- how the manufactures tested their new designs. It'd seem that many designs were most likely written in someones blood. Today we have 3-D CAD-CAE systems that can design, assembly and test a prototype on the computer screen before the part is manufactured and someones life is snuffed out because if an unexpected design flaw. I remember seeing an old publication that had photographs of a newly cast, single piece locomotive engine bed fresh out of the casting sand. As a design professional who has worked on large scale (U.S. Navy), ink on linen drawings, it was truely the most beautiful piece of American industrial skill and design I had ever seen...a true masterpiece, I would have loved to have seen the mechanical drawings used to produce it and the skilled craftsmen who knew how to cast it....in one piece Does America still have the ability to cast such massive, intricate pieces of metal today? Thanks, Road Fan
That is what they did: test them. First they worked from theory and design. Then there were actual physical test performed on the item to prove or disprove the theory and design. When it came to boilers, there was a water test firs, I believe, then and air test, then the steam test.. But before computers, yes, there were actual tests.
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