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Classic Train Questions Part Deux (50 Years or Older)

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Posted by wanswheel on Saturday, April 19, 2014 1:08 PM

Overmod, don't abandon your question unanswered. We got C&O, N&W, SR and ?

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, April 19, 2014 1:31 PM

The Southern Railway 'duplexes' don't count for our purposes; they were tender booster freight locomotives.  (There is a picture of a duplex in an Otto Kuhler scheme very close to that used for Southern... but a closer perusal reveals a different roadname!)

N&W had no particular use for duplexes on their passenger service, and they already had 'better' solutions for their freight in the A and Y classes.  Note that they did see some ways in which the T1 duplex could have been improved... but they certainly didn't bite, even with cheap 'insider' pricing...

I don't recall having seen an actual C&O duplex proposal.  They bought very different locomotives for their Chessie train -- very big Hudsons and positively enormous turbines.

Keep going; I haven't abandoned this question, just opening up the field for others to ask, too...

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Posted by wanswheel on Saturday, April 19, 2014 2:41 PM

Did Pennsy coax L&N and ACL to consider a duplex-drive Chicago-Miami train?

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, April 19, 2014 6:03 PM

wanswheel

Did Pennsy coax L&N and ACL to consider a duplex-drive Chicago-Miami train?

Interesting thought; I'd been considering the NY-to-Florida trains to be the ones deserving duplex-drives in the South.  L&N did not even get 4-8-4s before dieselizing (hence the M-1 'Big Emmas'). 

But Baldwin (not PRR at that stage, to my knowledge) was courting ACL, probably in part to make up for the R1 debacle, and for one brief shining moment in 1946 it was under consideration.  I don't particularly like the streamlining treatment (to me it looks like a Hooters girl crammed into a one-size-too-small version of Kuhler's Tennessean scheme) but there is little question that it would go, and go hard, right where ACL ran fast....

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Posted by daveklepper on Saturday, April 19, 2014 10:07 PM

So, so far, we have only B&O and ACL other than Pennsy.   AT&SF relied on Ripley, and probably would not consider a duplex, happy with dieselizaton and its 4-8-4's and Hudsons.   Possibly C&NW or Milwaukee?  I don't know of any IC 4-8-4's, and they kept steam on freigiht long after dieselizing main-line passenger, so they would be very logical for a proposal from Baldwin about the same time as the T-1.   CP may have thought of complimenting their 4-4-4's for light fast trains with a 4-4-4-4 for heavier fast trains, with the Selkirks in the mountains, and the 4-4-4-4's for the plains.  IC and CP seem logical.

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Posted by NorthWest on Saturday, April 19, 2014 10:24 PM

I'd have to say no to the CNW, as their E-4s  never even made it to their planned assignments before being replaced by diesels. 

Rock Island?

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Posted by Overmod on Saturday, April 19, 2014 11:16 PM

Ah, but ATSF DID consider a duplex, and a cab-forward oil-fired one at that!  (Diesels were better for them...)

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Posted by daveklepper on Sunday, April 20, 2014 2:23 AM

What about CP or IC?

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Posted by Overmod on Sunday, April 20, 2014 7:16 AM

IC would have been a natural for a duplex, perhaps, and was one of the railroads that would actually have run them regularly in the speed range required.  But they went to diesels instead -- I don't think Baldwin even approached them seriously.

I have heard rumors of CP using a duplex drive, but can't substantiate them in any way.  I'm not sure CP needed anything very large and very fast at the same time (there was no counterpart to the MILW F7 Hudson that would represent an incremental increase on the high-speed Jubilees for Montreal-Toronto, and it seems unlikely to me that single-train weight would increase so much as to require a 'double Jubilee' to make the time...

I'll spot you one:  New Haven (instead of what became the I-5) in January 1936 -- nominally rejected because of the long rigid wheelbase.

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Posted by rcdrye on Monday, April 21, 2014 6:11 AM

While not a true duplex, Delaware and Hudson's bizarre Leonor F. Loree had two cylinders on the fireman's side.

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Monday, April 21, 2014 10:06 AM

D&H 1403 was a triple-expansion design with all cylinders driving all four driving axles, not quite a duplex.

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, April 21, 2014 11:11 AM

CSSHEGEWISCH

D&H 1403 was a triple-expansion design with all cylinders driving all four driving axles, not quite a duplex.

Perhaps even more to the point, with all cylinders working on ONE driving axle, the antithesis of a duplex, which splits driving and rod loads between sets of axles in a rigid-wheelbase engine...

It does bear noting that the French 'duplex' we are leaving out of the present discussion (because it was not built for achieving reliable high speed) was a compound-expansion locomotive that used the duplex principle to reduce the effects of rod thrust and allow smaller cylinders for clearance.  As pointed out in 1959 and then again in the Withuhn context in the mid-Seventies, there were internal conjugating rods that kept the two engines in strict alignment.  If the D&H had wanted a ten-coupled engine with triple expansion, they could very probably have adopted the French layout to reduce thrust and inertial augment.

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, April 21, 2014 2:43 PM

My face should be red for not thinking of the NYNH&H.   PRR got the T-1 to do the work of GG-1's in non-electrified territory, and their EP-4 was only very slightly inferior to the GG-1.   (The wartime EF-3 was actually a better locomotive than the GG-1, but that came later.)  So their interest in a duplex was a logical runnon.  After all, the GG-1 was based on Pennsy trials with their EP-3.

Well, if the NYNH&H thought of it, perhaps so did the B&M for Heavy Boston - Porland trains.

What about the Reading, both B&O influence and to compete with PRR?

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Posted by NP Eddie on Monday, April 21, 2014 5:43 PM

Dave:

First of all, I hope you had a blessed Passover!

Although my question is not a "Classic" question, I must ask if electric locomotives are still used by the CSX or NS on their former PRR lines? I wish I could have seen the GG1's, etc. in action.

I still have memories of a 10 below night seeing an eastbound SOO freight working its way up from the west side of the Mississippi in north Minneapolis to the top of the over the NP Northtown Yards. Lots of noise and smoke!! The CP still uses that route and can be visualized on a Twin Cities Terminal ATCS layout.

Ed Burns

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, April 21, 2014 8:44 PM

NP Eddie
Although my question is not a "Classic" question, I must ask if electric locomotives are still used by the CSX or NS on their former PRR lines? I wish I could have seen the GG1's, etc. in action.

They are not.  Conrail ceased electric operation long before the NS/CSX split -- although for one brief, shining moment they reconsidered, with a locomotive numbered 4453.

There is even very little freight left on the old PRR main through New Jersey, hard as that may be to imagine for those of us watching in the 1970s or earlier.  Expect even less if the FRA adopts more lenient crash standards for high-speed rail equipment...

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Posted by daveklepper on Monday, April 21, 2014 9:16 PM

 My understanding is that the NEC freight south of New York is limited only by local frieghts to serve on-line shippers and receivers and industrial branches not otherwise accessable.  All CSX through freight goes by the former B&O-Reading-CNJ route, and NS via Harrisberg and its former Reading and Lehigh Valley route, both to Conrail Joint Assets.

North of New York, much the same situation, except that Providence and Worcester does use part of the NEC as an important main line in its operations, all the way from Fresh Pond Junction in Long Island to Providence, with CSX having rights north of there.  But CSX "owns" the freight track over the H. G. Bridge, with CP and P&W having trackage rights.  I use the term owns loosely here, because actual ownership may be with Amtrak, but CSX responsible for maintenance.

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Posted by rcdrye on Tuesday, April 22, 2014 6:19 AM

Trains has had several articles on freight operations in and around the corridor.  Conrail looked at electrifying portions of the ex-Reading line it uses now, as well as some parts of the ex-PRR line over the Alleghenies.  The expected return on investment was good, but the capital required dwarfed anything else Conrail was looking at doing.  With so much to clean up putting that much money on one project wasn't going to happen.  Voltage and frequency changes would have made for strange operations.

P&W has the same problem NYNH&H had, having to slot trains between passenger trains, and timing even those movements to hit the movable bridges when they're down for passenger trains.  A fair number of P&W freights operate with a locomotive on each end to make them as nimble as possible.

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Posted by daveklepper on Tuesday, April 22, 2014 8:12 AM

And to spot to and pull cars from sidings with facing-point switches!

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Posted by rfpjohn on Tuesday, April 22, 2014 7:34 PM

NS operates some pretty heavy trains on the corridor north and south of Perryville, MD. Coal, intermodal and general freight run south to Baltimore, General freight, auto racks, aggregate,  coal and chicken feed for the eastern shore run north to Newark and Wilmington DE as well as the new oil traffic. I think they have some pretty rigid time curfews, as often I will see them waiting on the south end of the Port Road branch ( the line down the Susquehanna from Enola to Perryville) in the morning, having apparently missed their slot. CSX Coal trains for the Popes Creek secondary out of Bowie, MD use the corridor from Landover to Bowie.

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Posted by rfpjohn on Tuesday, April 22, 2014 9:20 PM

Perhaps close to topic, unlike my last post, I seem to remember reading the Seaboard Air Line considered Duplex power. Thinking about it, they did buy Baldwin Centipedes, so considering Duplexes doesn't seem a stretch, plus they did have those single expansion 2-6-6-4s. 

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 7:54 AM

I go along with rfp .    And if ACL considered them, would not Seabord also?  Maybe even RF&P and FEC?

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 10:26 AM

FEC indeed is one.  (Very early on, in late 1935)

To my knowledge, Seaboard is not, although they were perhaps the likeliest of all railroads to make good use of a long-rigid-wheelbase high-speed engine...  of course, if anyone has even a shred of documentary evidence (such as a Kuhler drawing!), bring it on!

I think RF&P was getting fine service out of their 77"-drivered 4-8-4s, the most beautiful of that wheel arrangement in America and, in my opinion, at least the equal of the J-1 Hudsons for the most beautiful of all.  (DPM and his little Pacifics, pretty as their paint may have been and immaculate their maintenance, has to take a back seat here...)

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 4:07 PM

Have not we covered them all, the PRR T-1.the B&O Emerson, ACL, FEC, NYNH&H?

Or was the B&O 4-4-4-4 the Lord Baltimore, with the 4-4-4 the Lady Baltimore?  Possibly the Emerson was a differrent B&O experimental, possibly three-cyllindered.

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 4:49 PM

OH NO, you're still missing one of the very most interesting -- a railroad I would NEVER have expected to buy a Duplex, let alone one with extravagant streamlining.

Hint: they bought E7s instead.  Rather fancy E7s.

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 9:09 PM

The Central, New York Central, with their lightning-striped E-7's, even with successful Hudsons and Niagras?

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, April 23, 2014 10:36 PM

Well, you happen to have found another one -- two, if you count class C1 and class C1a differently.  These would probably have looked very much like long Niagaras, right down to the smoke deflectors on the C1a.

Duplexes were a 'natural' for the Water Level Route -- and it needs to be remembered that the Niagaras were experiencing a fairly severe problem with main-pin breakages, main-rod buckling at speed, and other things born of the forced compromise that is Timken lightweight rods subjected to high piston thrust.  The duplex design inherently solves all that tsurris.

But, oddly enough, the Central is NOT the railroad I meant.  (And yes, that railroad's E7s were fancier than NYC's in lightning stripe...)

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, April 24, 2014 1:54 AM

Well, the Frisco had some very fancy E-7's and never had a streamlined steamer as far as I remember.  It handled some fairly heavy and fast passenger trains.  Possibly they were considered briefly for hte Meteor.  They could also have been used on the KC-Florida Special.

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Posted by rcdrye on Thursday, April 24, 2014 6:29 AM

The Frisco did have a couple of streamlined pacifics.

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Posted by daveklepper on Thursday, April 24, 2014 6:47 AM

Well, then I have to find a railroad less likely, how about the Missouri Pacific/Texas Pacific

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Thursday, April 24, 2014 9:59 AM

daveklepper

Have not we covered them all, the PRR T-1.the B&O Emerson, ACL, FEC, NYNH&H?

Or was the B&O 4-4-4-4 the Lord Baltimore, with the 4-4-4 the Lady Baltimore?  Possibly the Emerson was a differrent B&O experimental, possibly three-cyllindered.

The B&O duplex-drive was "George Emerson", the "Lord Baltimore" was a 4-6-4 and the "Lady Baltimore" was a 4-4-4.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul

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