Pennsy's unorthodox numbering system

[M636C]

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ACY has the correct answer.  I also had (sold it) Edson's book and remember his explanation as being the same.  It was all about which subsidiary the locomotive was assigned to and nothing about the total number of locomotives.

 

It isn't a matter of one explanation being correct and the other incorrect.

Clearly the locomotives were numbered in groups by assignment, much as the New York Central did with its Hudsons operated by subsidiaries.

In addition to the groups of numbers, the backfilling of vacant numbers and the use of a duplicate stock register are a clear indication of the accounting system being tied to the road number.

So the numbers were both allocated by operating division, and managed so that the totals by division reflected the number of locomotives.

Peter

[ACY Tom]

Am I the only one who is very, very tired of this?

Tom

[RME]

Miningman

The link you provide goes right back to the original picture and not a page of Renovo pictures.

Went back and fixed it. 

No, I'm not tired of learning new details about unorthodox numbering, including details when people might be mistaken.  How else would I learn about things I don't know ... or think I know, but really don't?

There's no police action forcing anyone to read threads, or keep commenting on them when they've lost interest.  Just don't make me have to agree with quitting.

[Miningman]

RME- Terrific slideshow, especially on a leisurely Sunday afternoon. 

Photo 41 identifies the extra tender as used for the "Red Bank service" if anyone knows what that was. That would explain things.

Is the Bald Eagle branch still in existence? 

Really had no idea that Pennsy had that much steam in service that late in the game (mid 1957)

"Thats not a tender...THIS is a tender" ...(say in Australian accent a-la Crocodile Dundee)

One pic lots of Alco's on adjacent tracks ...even PA's...they didn't survive much longer than the steam they usurped. 

Can you imagine living in Renovo 1937-1957...say just before, during the war and through to the end of steam? 

I must get back to working on that time machine.

We all lost a lot and quickly but my American cousins lost so much. Just about a decade after these photos even the Pennsy was gone. Hard to believe.

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ACY

Am I the only one who is very, very tired of this?

Tom

 

Some people just can't admit that they might not know everything...

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

PRR's diesel roster appears equally complex.  Although there was more group numbering, a given model could be numbered in three different blocks.

[rcdrye]

CSSHEGEWISCH

PRR's diesel roster appears equally complex.  Although there was more group numbering, a given model could be numbered in three different blocks.

 

Pennsy wasn't the only railroad that had trouble getting their diesel numbers organised.  Soo Line had F7s and FA1s ("Road Freight") mixed into several blocks depending on delivery order and ownership (MStPSSM  200 or WC 2200).  SP's GP9s had some blocks of RS11s mixed in (and some in T&NO's 3-digit numbers) before the system-wide 1964 renumbering.

[M636C]

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ACY

Am I the only one who is very, very tired of this?

Tom 

 

 

Some people just can't admit that they might not know everything...

 

I'm more than happy to admit that I know very little.

However, what made the PRR numbering "Unorthodox"?

It wasn't that the locomotives were numbered in groups by region. The New York Central did that, as documented in Edson and Vail's two volume roster.

What made the PRR system unorthodox was the backfilling of vacant numbers.

It was this aspect that Staufer tried to explain (and has been repeated in other publications) by suggesting that the re-use of numbers was due to the need to fit the large number of locomotives into the range 1-9999.

However, that explanation has been discounted in this thread.

The problem with the "four digits" explanation was that the backfilling of numbers occurred when there were many available gaps in the numbering, particularly between Eastern and Western rosters.

My view is that it was related to the accounting for locomotives, and capital and revenue funding. This system was very common in the UK. This isn't viewed as correct by others on this thread.

But so far in this thread, nobody has provided an explanation for why the PRR, alone amongst the big Class 1 roads, carried out this form of numbering when other roads, like the NYC with similar geographically diverse fleets, did not.

I find locomotive numbering interesting for itself, not just as a reference to the locomotives themselves.

The abandoned 1943 renumbering of the English LNER had a much more logical numbering of the Pacific type, and the final numbering in 1946 lacked any logic as far as the age of the Pacific locomotives was concerned

The preliminary renumbering scheme of the Deutsche Reichsbahn was interesting in that it reflected very much the existing situation and it gave in some ways a more realistic distribution of numbers among the existing types.

However, the final scheme as adopted made much more provision for future expansion, even if major types such as the Prussian P8 and G12 received numbers that looked like an afterthought in the system, with quite minor types taking precedence.

Were the similarities between the renumbering of the Japanese National and the Deutsche Reichsbahn coincidence, or were these two organisations talking to eachother?

Peter