"MV Belpamela"

[NDG]

FWIW.

'MV Belpamela', the ship shown unloading the 'Coronation Scot' was sunk in 1947 when some of it's cargo of new 141 ( 2-8-2 ) locomotives for France from Montreal Locomotive Works broke loose while it was at sea.

http://www.warsailors.com/homefleetsingles/belpamela.html

http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?164171#

Thank You.

[Firelock76]

Interesting.  Foundered off Newfoundland?  Well, it's got plenty of company, there's supposed to be anywhere from five to ten thousand wrecks in Newfoundland waters.  A real "Graveyard of the Atlantic."

And thank YOU!

[ACY Tom]

So those 141R's are down there.  Wonder whether the location has been pinpointed.  Wonder how many engines, how deep, & whether any could be recovered.  Or what their condition might be.  I sure don't have the resources to go after them, but it's fun to dream.

Tom

[ACY Tom]

I see: 16 engines.

[wanswheel]

Article published April 14, 1947:

Seek Nine Crewmen Adrift In Life Rafts

NEW YORK (AP)—The Coast Guard messaged all Navy and commercial ships in the North Atlantic to be on the lookout today for nine crew members of the Norwegian ship Belpamela, who took to life rafts before the ship sank April 11. Eighteen other crew members, the Coast Guard said, were picked up at 5:15 p. m. (EST) yesterday by the S. S. John P. Mitchell. A message from the Mitchell said that "rolling cargo bursting out of the ship’s side” caused the sinking. The Coast Guard said the Belpamela sank 800 miles east of Norfolk, Va. The vessel left New York April 5 bound for Cherbourg, France. Maritime records list it as a 3,131-ton motor ship owned by the Belships Co. Ltd., with Oslo, Norway, as port of registry.

 

[Firelock76]

ACY

So those 141R's are down there.  Wonder whether the location has been pinpointed.  Wonder how many engines, how deep, & whether any could be recovered.  Or what their condition might be.  I sure don't have the resources to go after them, but it's fun to dream.

Tom

After nearly seventy years in salt water I wouldn't be too optimistic about their condition.

[steveiow]

These pics show the Coronation Scot coaches being unloaded,one of them has a banner on the ships side to that effect,and another shot shows one of the articulated dining car sets.

These cars stayed in America 'till after the war,the engine came back around 1942 I think,due to loco shortages,the cars never did fulfill their original role,and just went into general service express trains.

Nice photo's,never seen them before.

Steve

[NDG]

 

Thank You

[wanswheel]

Lubbock Morning Avalanche, November 15, 1939

European War Side Tracks Noted English Train In America

BALTIMORE, Nov. 14 (AP) — The European war appears to have sidetracked Britain's crack train, the "Coronation Scot," 3,000 miles from home. The luxurious train, which began a 3,100-mile tour here before going to the New York World's Fair, has returned to its starting point and may remain indefinitely. Shipping circles said the steamer Belpamela, which brought the “Scot" across the Atlantic, was busy elsewhere and expressed belief other locomotive-carrying vessels were too occupied with war duties for Great Britain to take the train home.

[steveiow]

Intresting article,and the funny thing about all this is that the only time this train ever ran as it was intended was in America on tour!

It never ran in this form here in England,when the cars came back from the states in 1946,no one here had the money for luxury train travel ( don't forget,we'd been at war since September 1939,our cities were half ruined by bombing and the country was near bankrupt-some basic food stuffs were still on ration,candy for instance until 1955,10 years after our supposed victory) and these cars were supplied for a specific purpose-The Coronation Scot,one daily departure from Euston to Glasgow and vice versa. Also due to the general state of the nation,all four private railway companies were about to become British Railways.

On looking closer at the photos they show the articulated brake end sets-this would equate to a coach and a combine,baggage/coach in the states.This shows one of the problems with this set has it has no end gangways or corridor connections,as we call them,this tended to limit their usefulness in every day service,however needs must and they all lasted out the 50's and early 60's.

One wonders what might have been if it was'ent fot that German chappie with the funny moustache......

Steve

[daveklepper]

OR IF GREAT BRITAIN AND FRANCE HAD ACTED THE MOMENT THAT HE WITH THE MOUSTACHE CLEARLY VIOLATED THE VERSAILLES TREATY? 

[wanswheel]

Harrisburgh Evening News, August 23, 1939

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 23. The task of loading fifteen locomotives reconditioned by the Pennsylvania Railroad for sale to Japan aboard a steamer was underway at a Delaware River pier today. The locomotives will be carried to Manchoukuo [Manchuria] by the Norwegian freighter Belpamela. The Japanese, shipping men said, are making a drive to purchase and ship heavy materials before abrogation of her trade treaty with the United States.

Altoona Tribune, August 23, 1939

Fifteen reconditioned locomotives are being loaded aboard a ship in the Delaware River at Philadelphia for Manchoukuo. They were owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad and are of a type no longer used by the company. They were reconditioned at the Pennsylvania's Altoona shops and sent to Philadelphia to await the Norwegian steamer Belpamela, which arrived Monday from Antwerp. The steamer is especially built for transporting locomotives. It will take several days to stow the 15 aboard. This is the second shipment of locomotives to Japanese-controlled territory. The steamer Belray took ten to Darien last May. It is understood more are to follow. The price paid for the engines was not disclosed at the Pennsylvania railroad offices.

http://www.belships.com/this-is-belships/development/

[steveiow]

Ah,but we did,we sent Neville Chamberlain............

Steve

[daveklepper]

and meanwhile, Billy Mitchell was doing his best to aid China.

[daveklepper]

Great Britain's people should know there is a boulevard named Winston Churchill in Jerusalem on Mount Scopus  The well-cared British war cemetery, which does have a few Stars of David as well as many Crosses, is next to it, and the Mt. Scopus Hebrew U. campus is at its end.  No Chamberlin street, however.

Downtown Jerusalem has its King George Street, a major shopping and bus transit street.  Most Israelis think it honors the King at the time of the Balfour Declaration, but its name predates that and possibly even honors the King defeated by George Washington.

[M636C]

wanswheel

Harrisburgh Evening News, August 23, 1939

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 23. The task of loading fifteen locomotives reconditioned by the Pennsylvania Railroad for sale to Japan aboard a steamer was underway at a Delaware River pier today. The locomotives will be carried to Manchoukuo [Manchuria] by the Norwegian freighter Belpamela. The Japanese, shipping men said, are making a drive to purchase and ship heavy materials before abrogation of her trade treaty with the United States.

Altoona Tribune, August 23, 1939

Fifteen reconditioned locomotives are being loaded aboard a ship in the Delaware River at Philadelphia for Manchoukuo. They were owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad and are of a type no longer used by the company. They were reconditioned at the Pennsylvania's Altoona shops and sent to Philadelphia to await the Norwegian steamer Belpamela, which arrived Monday from Antwerp. The steamer is especially built for transporting locomotives. It will take several days to stow the 15 aboard. This is the second shipment of locomotives to Japanese-controlled territory. The steamer Belray took ten to Darien last May. It is understood more are to follow. The price paid for the engines was not disclosed at the Pennsylvania railroad offices.

http://www.belships.com/this-is-belships/development/

I am most pleased to find this information.

I was aware that these locomotives were transferred to Manchuria but I was unaware of the dates or the total numbers sent..

The locomotives were (as the illustration shows) all the Consolidation type, PRR class H6sb. The photo clearly shows the piston valve cylinders that came with the superheating of the original class H6.

In the early 1950s renumbering, these locomotives became Chinese class KD10  with numbers 791 to 810, suggesting that between ten and twenty locomotives survived World War II from the (at least) 25 shipped.

I guess it is worth asking if anyone knows the actual PRR road numbers sent to Manchuria in 1939. I know this is quite difficult for PRR locomotives - I understand that PRR #1 was at one time an H6sb, but that one didn't go to China.

To return to the Coronation Scot, the train that toured the USA was the only Coronation Scot train painted red with gold stripes, although all the later streamlined Pacifics were painted red and gold (until the last few emerged painted black due to WWII).

The first five Pacifics and the 1937 Coronation Scot trains were painted mid blue, one of the official colours associated with the Coronation of King George VI. The LMS by 1939 wanted to return to their corporate colours of Crimson Lake and Gold, but the service Coronation Scot trains remained blue until withdrawn due to the war in September 1939. Two full trains were under construction, including the cars sent to the USA, but the other cars were not completed until 1946-7 and were painted plain Crimson Lake, as were the cars returned from the USA when they entered service.

M636C

[NDG]

 

 

Thank You.

 

[aricat]

Dave Keppler: the German Army was under strict orders to withdraw from the Rhineland if the French Army was mobilized or the Royal Navy began a naval blockade of Germany; neither happened and the rest is history.

There were American locomotives shipped to the UK during World War II which were of a much higher priority than returning an express passenger locomotive back to Britain. They were usually shipped unassembled and assembled in the UK in British locomotive shops either by the US Army Transportation Corps or the British Railway who owned the shop. Many of these locomotives found their way to the Continent after the invasion of Normandy. Among these locomotives were US designed 0-6-0  tank switchers(shunters) purchased by Britain's Southern Railway in 1946 from the US Army. They worked the Southampton Docks well into the 1960's with British Railways Southern Region.

[steveiow]

One of the 0-6-0 tanks has been preserved,the whole class of 14 could have worked for years longer,but the docks were dieselised and then came containerisation.....same old story all over.

There was a large class of USTC 2-8-0 freight locos that came here during the war;most were put into storage for onward shipment to the continent after D-Day,but a few were used domestically.One with tragic results,due to unfamiliarisation,one of them suffered a catastrophic boiler explosion,just outside Sudbury Hill tunnel in noth west London,both driver and fireman were killed.The story goes they found the fireman about 40' away,up the embankment outside the tunnel.

Steve

P.S- I think one of the 2-8-0's might have been bought back here for preservation,I'm not sure.

[wanswheel]

Chester Times, November 17, 1934

Baldwin Plant Shipping Huge Cargo for Chile

The largest shipment of locomotives and passenger coaches from the United States since 1929 was ushered off with ceremony from the Baldwin Locomotive Works yesterday at Eddystone.

This shipment of ten locomotives and tenders and fifteen first-class coaches for the Chilean State Railways is regarded as the first step in a great revival of railroad trade with South America.  Baldwin and Bethlehem Steel were the manufacturers. South American dignitaries including Don Manuel Trucco, Chilean ambassador to the United States, and several Latin American consuls watched with interest the loading of one engine and tender yesterday afternoon.

Samuel M. Vauclain, chairman of the board of Baldwin, followed each step in the loading [until the last]100-ton engine and tender were swung aloft by the giant steel hoist and dropped into the yawning hold beside the nine which had preceded it.

The Norwegian motor vessel Belpamela will take the trains to Valparaiso, Chile. They are completely erected and ready to go into service upon arrival.

The locomotives were built by Baldwin at Eddystone. They are the 2-8-2, or Mikado type, suitable for passenger and freight service, having an overall length of 63 feet.

The passenger coaches were built by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation at its Harlan plant near Wilmington.  Made in world’s record time, the builders included electrical machinery from England and linoleum in solid pieces from Belgium and finished the entire order within three months.

Seven days are required to pick up the thousand tons of locomotives and the 750 tons of cars and lower them into the hold of the Belpamela, fitting them side-by-side so tightly that rough seas will not dislodge them. Supervised by J. E. Fawcett of the Chester Stevedoring Company, the delicate work is being handled by only six of the local longshoremen and six of the ship’s crew.

The 150-ton hoist aboard the vessel lifts with ease and accuracy each load and swings it slowly overhead until directly over the hatchway. Greased skids are laid under the descending steel monster, which is then forced by man power alone into its proper place in the hold. The Belpamela is one of the “bell-type” ships which are specially built for locomotive shipping.  There are no bulkheads except to divide the engine room from the cargo hold, the ship literally being a huge shell held together only by the deck overhead. The Christen Smith ships are the only ones in the world designed with such heavy lift and great cargo capacity.

When the engines and tenders are stowed below, the decks are covered with great timbers extending fifteen feet over each side of the vessel. As the weight of the engines in the holds has laden the ship down below the level of the dock, pontoons will be pushed in between dock and ship. Then the carriages, each marked Primera Chile Ferrocarriles del Estado, will be lashed on deck and the trip to Chile started.

Following a motor trip through the shops at Eddystone, led by Mr. Vauclain, about fifty persons gathered at the Racquet Club in Philadelphia for dinner. Besides Don Trucco, the Latin American notables included the commercial attache to the Chilean embassy, the Philadelphia consul of Chile, the New York Chilean consul, the inspector of the Chilean State Railways, and consuls of Argentina, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela, El Savador, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.  Captain M. Mortensen of the M. V. Belpamela was present, together with Gustav C. Dahl of Eddystone, technical representative of Captain Christen Smith, owner of the line.

Among the American business men of prominence were Mr. Vauclain, J. C .Frederick of the Bethlehem Steel Export Corporation, who spoke in Spanish for Mr. Vauclain, and S. M. Bash, vice-president of the Bethlehem Steel Export Corporation, who told the diners that today has dramaticized the fact that sales from the United States to South America are on the increase.

The principal speaker of the evening brought the greetings of the Baldwin and Bethlehem companies to the South American representatives, telling of the greater strength and efficiency of the American locomotive for South American use.

He is H. S. Binkerd, vice-president of Baldwin, and the man responsible for obtaining the Chilean order for the local plant. He described the two types of locomotives, the Continental and the American, the former designed for short light hauls over level or rolling country in the thickly populated districts of Europe and the latter built for long heavy hauls over great distances and over mountains, deserts and rivers. 

The similarity between North and South American terrain he described as one good reason why the existing trade relations between North American locomotive builders and South American buyers should continue. 

Don Manuel Trucco eased the minds of all present by stating that his country is in a financial position to pay for the trains and more of them in the future.

Mr. Vauclain referred to the “so-called speeds of the various Zephyrs floating around the country” as nothing to be concerned about, as the sturdier and stronger steam locomotives now being built will soon equal or pass the streamlined moderns, he said.

Here's a link to a short silent newsreel of the event...

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675028716_locomotive-engine_Chilean-Railways_Christen-Smith_Delaware-County

Also here's a link to video of sister ship Belnor in 1938...

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675056258_engines_Baldwin-Locomotive-Company_on-freighter_crane-loads

[NDG]

 

Thank You.

 

[steveiow]

This has been a very interesting post.

The second of these new photo's shows a ship in a floating dry-dock and what appears to be an empty one behind it.

Steve

[NDG]

The drydock and freighters are at the site of Canadian Vickers, a shipbuilding firm.

Later the Vickers plant was used to build railway rolling stock such as CPR Commuter Bilevels.

Google Canadian Vickers.

 

MLW built subway cars for Toronto's TTC.

http://transit.toronto.on.ca/subway/5502.shtml

The 1947 Photos were from this site.

http://donnees.ville.montreal.qc.ca/dataset/vues-aeriennes-archives

 

Thank You.

 

[NDG]

Thanks

[NDG]

Another film clip.

Locomotives from Lima arrive in France.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Hp-lNBFsE

 

Thank You.

[NDG]

Sister ship ' MV Belpareil' loads locomotives for China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKDNC2S35S8

http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/belpareil.html

Thank You.

[BaltACD]

NDG

Sister ship ' MV Belpareil' loads locomotives for China.

http://www.warsailors.com/singleships/belpareil.html

Thank You.

Built 1926 and broken up in 1984 (maybe 85).  A very long life for a commercial vessel, especially one that plied it's trade during WW II.

[NDG]

 Thank You.

 

[NDG]

Thank You.

[NDG]

Thank You.