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Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

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Posted by NP Eddie on Friday, July 10, 2015 7:06 PM

Rob and All:

In 1970, the first year of the BN merger, I was still single and rode on pass from Minneapolis to Vancouver, Washington on a passenger train. From Vancouver to Bieber I rode in the caboose or engine of a former SPS/OT/GN freight to Beiber. Quite an adventure. I will never forget crossing the Columbia River at Wishram. The former SPS Chief Dispatcher was grousing about the SPS ordered Geeps that arrived on the new property as BN 2072-2077 and they were used by the BN. At Klamath Falls, I rented a hotel room for a short sleep. The conductor thought I was a spy from the Portland General Office! Back at Wishram, I waited for the Portland section of a passenger train to take me back to Minneapolis via Pasco or Spokane.

Ed Burns

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, July 10, 2015 7:00 PM

This regional railroad carried interstate frieght only in interchange, even though it operated in two different states.

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Posted by NorthWest on Friday, July 10, 2015 10:10 AM

rcdrye
The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's line on the south side of the Columbia River was Northern Pacific's first route to the Pacific, completed before the Stampede Pass line to Tacoma. It was later acquired by Union Pacific. NP and GN built the Spokane, Portland and Seattle, on the north side of the Columbia.

You got it. Your question.

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, July 10, 2015 6:39 AM

The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's line on the south side of the Columbia River was Northern Pacific's first route to the Pacific, completed before the Stampede Pass line to Tacoma.  It was later acquired by Union Pacific.  NP and GN built the Spokane, Portland and Seattle, on the north side of the Columbia.

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Posted by NorthWest on Thursday, July 9, 2015 11:41 PM

Dave, the A&P was not what I was looking for, as it was not SP's first route to the West Coast (SP started in San Francisco and built east). You have the right time period, though; just look north a bit.

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, July 9, 2015 11:08 AM

The Atlantic and Pacific, originally connecting the Southern Pacific with the California Southern for a through route to San Diego and connections to LA, but bypassed by the SP's own construction and a long time part of the AT&SF, as it is today part of BNSF.

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Posted by NorthWest on Tuesday, July 7, 2015 12:50 PM

This railroad, which forms the route to the West Coast for a major Western carrier, was first the route to the West Coast for another major Western carrier that later helped build a parallel line to the railroad. What railroad is it?

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Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, July 7, 2015 6:29 AM

NorthWest has picked the correct answers.  The Chicago Terminal Transfer, briefly renamed the Chicago and Northern Pacific, built west from the CTT's Grand Central Station to meet the WC in Forest Park.  After NP's 1893 bankruptcy NP lost the C&NP, which passed eventually to the B&O (as the B&OCT), still part of today's CSX.  The WC operated independently until leased by the Soo Line in 1909.

C&NP bought a steam dummy line, the Chicago, Harlem and Batavia, which ran from a junction with the C&NP at Crawford Ave. (Today's Pulaski Rd.) north to Randolph St (today's West End Avenue) and west on Randolph to Forest Park and another junction with the C&NP and WC.  C.T. Yerkes' Suburban Railway leased  most of the CH&B to reach the WC's line to Thatcher Park, in what is now the forest preserve in River Forest.  All of the tracks involved were on ground level, not the embankments of today.

The Lake St. Elevated Railway (also CT Yerkes) used the Randolph St. trackage to meet franchise requirements, later building its own line two blocks north in South Boulevard, next to the (then ground level) C&NW, abandoning service on Randolph in 1902.  Lake Street later became the Chicago and Oak Park before being folded into Chicago Rapid Transit.

Some of the streets in Forest Park still curve to follow bits of the CTT and CH&B rights of way.

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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, July 7, 2015 1:48 AM

Or is this relative to the North Shore's entrance to Evanston, with the Elevated eventually the Northside "L" and later the Chicago Rapid Transit, and the major railroad the CMStP&P, the picnic park being Ravinia, much later the summer home of the CSO?

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Posted by NorthWest on Monday, July 6, 2015 8:55 PM

NP leased the orignal WC to reach Grand Central Station in Chicago, which was connected by the Chicago and Northern Pacific (later the B&OCT).

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Posted by rcdrye on Monday, July 6, 2015 5:02 PM

Here's an example of tangled ownership and leases:

A major system leased a regional line to connect to the terminal property it bought in a major city.  The terminal property bought a local steam dummy line, eventually leasing it to a street railway, which in turn leased it to an elevated railway.  The street railway operated past the end of the elevated's operation, eventually stringing trolley wire over the regional line for a couple of miles to reach a picnic park.

The whole thing fell apart in one of the business panics, with the major carrier going bankrupt and losing control of the regional line and the terminal property.  The Elevated line built its own line parallel to the leased former steam dummy line, operating both for a couple of years before abandoning the lease.  The street railway gave up operations on the street and the regional carrier, later becoming part of an important suburban system.

All I'm looking for are the major railroad and the regional carrier.  The terminal property would be a nice bonus under its former or later name.  ID-ing the elevated company and the street railway is not necessary, but gets applause.  The steam dummy line's name would be spectacular.

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Posted by rcdrye on Monday, July 6, 2015 8:07 AM

Google only finds the book reference under the KK1 class (which is how I found it...) I have found some other references to the MK1, but the photo has only surfaced in the book.

I should have a new question posted later today.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, July 6, 2015 6:32 AM

No deviation from the purpose seen here.  A very interesting question indeed.   Thanks!

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Posted by Wizlish on Sunday, July 5, 2015 10:18 PM

Close -- even after I gave it away, one detail is still off.

The modified version was class MK-1, not KK-1 (which was the original 2-6-6-2 class). 

If you Google using the 'right' class, you will be able to access the Google Books version of Parker Lamb's book and see a picture of the locomotive itself.  It's a bit muddy -- but where else will you see one!

I still think it's fun that the answers to both questions are the same odd wheel arrangement! 

(Now it can be told -- it turns out there was a question-and-answer on this locomotive a few years ago in the Trains forums, and Peter Clark (M636C) knew quite a bit about the MK-1.  I posted the question over in one of the Steam and Preservation threads again, just to spread the fun a bit ... but so far, no takers there.)

Take it away, rcdrye; the usual suspects will be glad to get their thread back for the purpose it was intended!

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Posted by rcdrye on Sunday, July 5, 2015 4:40 PM

B&O's KK1 class 4-4-6-2  7400 was modified from a 2-6-6-2 simple in 1932, from one of  a pair of experimental 2-6-6-2s built in 1930.  Equipped with 70" drivers (same as the AT&SF 4-4-6-2 mallets) the lead engine did not track well, and the water-tube firebox was not particulary successful, either.  It was rebuilt back to a fire-tube 2-6-6-2 in 1933.

From "Perfecting the American Steam Locomotive" by J. Parker Lamb.

Wow! This one required some digging!

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, July 5, 2015 2:03 AM

My guess is that it was a UP experiment, leading to the development of the Challengers, after they decided that the 9000s were a bit hard on the track structure and required more than their share of maintenance because of the inside valve gear for the third cylinder.

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Posted by Wizlish on Saturday, July 4, 2015 7:03 AM

Mr. Klepper said he was still very, very interested in answering, but was still not finding the answer.

I think if I asked this over in the 'Locomotive Quiz' in the Trains Magazine forum we would have an answer in minutes rather than hours.  It's been the subject of answers before.

Remember the question was "The wheel arrangement of the first Mallet with a four-wheel engine truck was 4-4-6-4.  What was the wheel arrangement of the first simple articulated with a four-wheel engine truck?"

The answer is highly amusing and more than a little ironic: it is the same. 

There have been arguments over the years about the usefulness and stability of a Bissel two-wheel engine truck on high-speed locomotives.  The LS&MS seems to have used them successfully on 2-6-2s, or at least some people think they did.  Wilgus put them on the early NYC electrics, and they had a serious wreck within two days of opening.  And so we come to the first approach to true high-speed Mallet-style articulation, necessarily (in the United States, at least) involving simple expansion, built by Baldwin in 1930.  I think of these as direct predecessors of the N&W A class, and they shared with that design the use of 70" drivers (not very far, in fact, off what ATSF had used on their 'high-speed' Mallets back in the previous question).  The wheel arrangement used was 2-6-6-2, and you'll have no trouble in identifying the classes and construction details involved.

I do not know enough about their detail design to know whether the engine truck as designed had some high-speed instability problem.  Evidently, however, the owning road had enough of a problem to rebuild one of them with a four-wheel engine truck as a test.  Now, fitting a four-wheel truck at the forward end of a Mallet-style chassis  is going to lengthen the hinged chassis length ... and probably involve substantial redesign of the arrangement with the steam pipes, etc.  So what was done instead was to use two driver axles in the front unit instead of three, to provide 'room' for the trailing axle of the engine truck without changing the length from the 'hinge' forward to the cylinder block... and voila!

NOW who has the answer?

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, July 3, 2015 3:28 PM

So tell us the answer!  I don't know about the other guys, but I don't mind being stumped every once in a while.  I looked in a lot of places and couldn't find anything. Then ask us another!

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Posted by Wizlish on Wednesday, July 1, 2015 5:39 AM

Looks to me like I killed one of the better threads on this forum.

As a hint:  The answer to this question is more than a little ironic when compared with rcdrye's previous question (which inspired it).  That's part of why I thought it was 'fun'... 

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Posted by Wizlish on Sunday, June 28, 2015 9:16 PM

No.  It is exactly what the question asked: a simple articulated -- what Juniatha would call a single-expansion Mallet.

And it is not from an 'off-brand' railroad, either.  One might even say 'as American as they come'...

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, June 28, 2015 1:26 PM

Are you referring to an overseas, non-North American locomotive?   Possibly the British (L&NE, I think) Atlantic that was converted into a 4-4-8-0, with the eight driving wheel group partly under the firebox, partly under the cab, and partly under the tender.   Or a 4-8-8-4 Beyer-Garrett.

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Posted by Wizlish on Sunday, June 28, 2015 4:49 AM

No.  Indeed it would not.

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, June 28, 2015 12:53 AM

Would it not be the very first UP 4-6-6-4 Challenger? 

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Posted by Wizlish on Saturday, June 27, 2015 10:01 PM

Let's have some fun -- what was the wheel arrangement of the first simple articulated with a four-wheel leading truck (that was not a cab-forward)?

(When I say 'first' I mean going by the original build date of the locomotive itself)

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Posted by rcdrye on Saturday, June 27, 2015 6:53 AM

Wizlish has found AT&SF's 1909-built 1300 class 4-4-6-2 passenger mallets.  The pair of them were considered failures, with the 38x38 low-pressure cylinders on the front drivers doing little more than causing them to spin.  As with almost all of AT&SF's 1908-1912 mallet experiments, the boiler was too small anyway.  They were rebuilt into pacifics within a few years at Topeka, lasting until the early 1950s.

You're up, Wizlish!

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Posted by Wizlish on Friday, June 26, 2015 5:38 PM

oh, for heavens's sake, it's the ATSF 4-4-6-2s.  Unless I'm missing something even more esoteric...

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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, June 26, 2015 12:03 PM

SP's were the second group, leaving out the question of what really is the leading and trailing truck on cab-forward...  This pair belonged to a different railroad.

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Posted by daveklepper on Friday, June 26, 2015 8:43 AM

Was it not AM-1? In any case one of the two original Baldwin cab-forwards for the SP,  one a 2-8-8-2 Mallet, the original AC-cab-forward. and the other the 4-6-6-2 Mallet that you are requesting.  Later ACs were not truly Mallets, although many SP people called them Mallets.  And there was just one series of ACs that were coal-burning originally and were not cab-forwards and were 2-8-8-4s.  I think most were converted to oil.  I do not think the 4-6-6-2 was replicated in any quantity.  Since AC stands for "articulated consolidation," I assume AM stand for "articulated mogul."

No problem in giving FF the opportunity to ask the next question.

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Posted by FlyingCrow on Friday, June 26, 2015 8:35 AM

Southern Pacific's AM-2's?

AB Dean Jacksonville,FL
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Posted by rcdrye on Friday, June 26, 2015 8:04 AM

You are correct.  AT&SF's 3000 class 2-10-10-2s were under-boilered for their large cylinders.  The earlier tandem compound 2-10-2's they were rebuilt from were nearly as powerful.  All were rebuilt back to 2-10-2s (Santa Fe type 3010 class, of course) during the late teens.  VGN's larger AE class 2-10-10-2s were fairly successful in coal service, and performed adequately in drag freight service east of Roanoke in later years.  Final replacement by FM H-16-44 and H-24-66 diesels.

New question (now that DS-4-4-1000 isn't around...) Looking for the wheel arrangement of the first mallets with a four wheel lead truck.

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