I know the railroads of the West only operated Northerns and Mallets but no Berkshires or Hudsons. Eastern locomotives are not welcomed there.
Huh? What?? You better start some searches and reading because you are waaaaaayyyy off!
Canadian Pacific operated Hudsons in the West, and Canadian National operated Northerns in the East.
Or is Canada just considered the North?
Santa Fe, Burlington, Milwaukee and Northwestern all had Hudsons, and ATSF & CNW had some Berkshires too, although they were few.
I could go on...
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
Speaking of CN 4-8-4s , Did Canadian National ran the 160 Northerns systemwide, or restricted to only Ontario and Quebec because of their size and weight.
SPer I know the railroads of the West only operated Northerns and Mallets but no Berkshires or Hudsons. Eastern locomotives are not welcomed there.
What do you mean by "West"?
Milwaukee road had 4-6-4s very early, ordered before the appearance of NYC 5200 which they called "Baltics".
Milwaukee and C&NW had very large 4-6-4s, both with 84" drivers.
Santa Fe had the 4100 class 2-8-4s, and they and SP both purchased former B&M 2-8-4s.
Santa Fe had the 3450 and 3460 class 4-6-4s including 3460 itself which was streamlined and painted blue and is pretty well known...
Peter
Except for the Santa Fe who didn't have any use for articulateds after a bad experience with some early ones I can't say any railroad anywhere had a prejudice against any particular locomotive wheel arrangement. Remember, these 'roads were run by very practical men, and if a certain locomotive type looked like it would fill a need they'd certainly take a good hard look at it.
SPer Speaking of CN 4-8-4s , Did Canadian National ran the 160 Northerns systemwide, or restricted to only Ontario and Quebec because of their size and weight.
While the Northerns were more common in the east they would also be found out west, and CN's 2-10-2s and 4-8-2s (commonly found in the western provinces) were nearly as heavy as a 4-8-4.
I do not believe there were weight restrictions on the 4-8-4s, as CN had inherited a number of main routes with lighter-duty track they ordered locomotives that could run on them.
I may be mistaken, but I have the impression that the Northern Pacific used Northerns--and that they were so-called because the NP used them.
Of course, the Dixie Line used Dixies.
Johnny
You're not mistaken Johnny, the Northern Pacific was the first to use the "Northern" type, the name and the wheel arrangement found each other and stuck fast.
Of course, you and I know there was no way those proud southern railroads were going to call their 4-8-4's "Northerns", especially with the "Late Unpleasantness" only 60 years in the past! Hence the name "Dixies", "Greenbriers" on the C&O, Class J's on the N&W, "Governors, Generals, and Statesmen" on the RF&P, and there were more than likely others who's names elude me at the moment.
Wow. The thought just hit me. There was less time between the end of the Civil War and the first Northerns than there is between our time and the end of World War Two! Scary.
Wayne
Yes, I did not recall the other names for the 4-8-4's
While on the subtopic of alternate names, remember that the Central of Georgia and one other road operated MacArthurs (were they Big Macs?) during WWII.
Back to western roads and their engines.
Oh yes, when World War Two began some folks considered the name "Mikado" inappropriate since we were fighting the Japanese, so the name "MacArthur" was subsituted. I don't think it ever really caught on though, however some did call the 2-8-2 types "MacMikes."
I understood that ATSF changed out hudsons for northerns at LaJunta. Did many hudsons operate west of the front range?
MidlandMikeDid many Hudson's operate west of the Front Range?
A curious artifact of the 'balancing revolution' was the idea that six-coupled (or fewer) drivers were needed to make high speed, hence ATSF using the 3460 class for fast running on the prairies and handing over to 4-8-4a on grades. Hudsons could and did run through -- you may remember an early high-mileage test using one -- but something funny happened in the meantime: ATSF discovered fast 4-8-4s. By the time of the 3776 class ATSF had 4-8-4s that had a measurable speed advantage over the 3460s as well as being more tractable at high speed.
Meanwhile consider the vast difference between the Milwaukee F7, a proven and effective high-speed locomotive, and the nominally similar C&NW E-4 that could not even get to 100mph with the AAR test train. The 3460s had appalling valve tracting and while they could apparently make it up to 102 or so the bottom fell out promptly and about the highest verifiable speed, downgrade with a tailwind, was somewhere around 105. And all this with 84" drivers and supposedly good balancing.
Remember too that the Niagara was an unexpectedly late development out of what as late as 1945 was expected to be little more impressive than a 75"-delivered clone of CRI&p/D&H size locomotive. Very few "Western" engines had the performance of what Alco produced with lightweight motion work and good detail design even with some of the more ridiculous Eastern clearances. No Western engine produced the speed of the N&W J in direct test even with much larger drivers. It would have been highly interesting to see what Kiefer or Glaze might have produced with ATSF clearances ... or for that matter what a slightly less wack oil-fired duplex might have done ... but even as early as the Thirties most of the West belonged to diesels even on roads with the best approaches to big steam express power.
Firelock76 There was less time between the end of the Civil War and the first Northerns than there is between our time and the end of World War Two! Scary.
There's a much scarier way to put it: less time between the end of the Civil War and the first high-speed Northerns than from the time most of the Eastern high-speed steam was scrapped to now.
I am still not quite sure why the rebuilt H-class C&NW Zeppelins aren't far more famous than they are. THAT was a large dual-service engine with acquired grace.
Oh great, as if I don't feel enough like yesterdays man!
The C&NW Zeppelins, after the brilliant and outstanding rebuild post WWII are definitely in my top 5. They are underrated and somewhat overlooked. Their appearance went downhill a few years after that may have been a contributing factor, and they had a short time in the big show really after the rebuild, but then so did most everything else.
A beautiful and outstanding locomotive.
I suppose they got the name "Zeppelins" when the old "Graf" was making its world-renowned flights and long before the "Hindenburg" disaster.
Eckener made the around-the-world flight the year these were introduced. Then came the Century of Progress exhibition and the famous stamps. This came from there:
Ah, Herr Doktor Hugo Eckener and his wonderful "Graf Zeppelin!"
How'd you all like to go for a ride with the "Old Man" and his amazing airship?
OK, here 'ya go...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG_wnJeH0fk
Overmod said:
Meanwhile consider the vast difference between the Milwaukee F7, a proven and effective high-speed locomotive, and the nominally similar C&NW E-4 that could not even get to 100mph with the AAR test train.
I mentioned these two in my post on Standardisation in Argentina.
How did this happen?
They were built by Alco in the same year to the same general specification.
It is like someone bought a Chevrolet painted cream and orange, and found that it ran better than his neighbour's Chevrolet built at the same time but painted dark green...
The F-7 had cylinders 597 x 762, the E-4 had cylinders 643 x 757
The F-7 had two thermic siphons in line, the E-4 had one large one.
The F-7's boiler was marginally shorter between tubeplates (less than 2 inches)
I don't have the tube pattern for the F-7 but the E-4 had 196 flues and eight tubes.
There is no apparent reason, looking at the drawings, for one to be a sucess and the other a failure.
To me, this suggests that design was still "hit or miss" as late as 1938.
Perhaps all those minor differences all add up to a certain optimum.
Also we know steam locomotive construction was dependent on craftsman, a very certain bias to a way of doing something. A specific way of doing things would have applied somewhat differently through these seperate orders.
Perhaps coal grade and water management played a role as well.
MiningmanPerhaps all those minor differences all add up to a certain optimum.
In my opinion that would not explain it. Angus Sinclair addressed the question in his discussion of the Falcon in 'Development of the Locomotive Engine'; the problem there was not the detail construction but a ghastly mistake in erection. Conversely had there been remedial boo-boos during construction (as Farrington reported for the 3460 class) they would have been fixed. The inexplicable thing is that C&NW, which not once but twice did extensive rebuilding of the H engines, never seemed to go after the problems with the E-4s. This might have come about because the road had no need for high speed out of Hudsons (or perhaps any steam power by the postwar era) or could get all the speed they needed, just as ATSF did, out of their 4-8-4s with less potential slipperiness and so forth.
Personally, I would suspect the problem to be either in the valve arrangements or the front end, which is the definitive identified cause of the low speed of the 3460s. But it should also be recalled that one of the early 'bouncing driver' augment movies came from one of these engines, which might incriminate the rod design or the snubbing (or relative lack of same) especially at resonance frequencies in the suspension. I would find it difficult to see Alco in 1938 not fully aware of the issues with the ACL R1s, so overbalance misassessment shouldn't be a true cause, and I would expect both inertial and thrust yaw augment to be very similar at around 40% cutoff at high rotational speed for the F7 and E-4.
But it should also be recalled that one of the early 'bouncing driver' augment movies came from one of these engines, which might incriminate the rod design or the snubbing (or relative lack of same) especially at resonance frequencies in the suspension.
I was unaware of that...
The Swiss book I am using as a reference reproduces the GA drawings to the same scale on adjacent (but not facing) pages. One thing that is clear is that the cylinders are further forward relative to the driving axle on the F-7 compared to the E-4. This can be seen in the greater distance between the leading driver and the trailing axle of the lead truck on the F-7. I wondered if this was enough to increase the angularity of the main rods and cause greater vertical forces at the driving axle. Certainly, that isn't something you can change with a cast bed.
Of course, the E-4 never ran in competition with the F-7 since it was too heavy for some bridges on the "400" route and was used on Omaha trains. As such any technical failings at high speed were less critical. The arrival of EMD E-3s around 1940 meant that high speed duties went to the diesels anyway.
I mentioned these two classes in reference to standardisation in the Steam and Preservation thread. The big problem with standardisation is that you might standardise on an E-4 rather than an F-7 at the design stage, an never know what went wrong...
What if Southern Pacific buy the Berkshires of their own based on say C&O or NKP designs rather than buying Boston and Maine Berks. SP would have a fleet of C&O style or NKP style Berks
An update on the F-7 and E-4 dimensions:
The cylinders were 11 inches closer to the driving axle on the E-4 compared to the F-7. I should expand on the book:
The book is Dampflokomotiven in den USA 1825-1950, Band II (1921-1950) by the well named Heinrich Buchmann, published by Birkhauser.
I picked that up in a bookshop in Amsterdam in 1991 being heavily remaindered.
It consists largely of builder's photos of most locomotives built during that period, and has a reasonable technical summary preceding the photo section, and a selection of steam locomotive rosters (not including C&NW).
I was looking at the Shorpy site recently and found one of Jack Delano's photos from 1942 showing an E-4 in shops with much of the streamlining removed. I noted that all wheels and trucks had been removed and it was on shop trucks. It was described as a "400" locomotive, which isn't the case. They were numbered from 4000, so I assume that was confused with the train name.
Railroad prejudices against certain types? AT&SF's against articulateds after initial bad experiences with jointed-boiler Mallets was mentioned here already. But then Southern never owned anything in steam with a four-wheel trailing truck, and neither did PRR until WWII or (just before) with the J's, Q-1, Q-2, and T-1. Reading had frieght 4-8-4's but stuck with Pacifics, rather than Hudsons, after WWII. And B&M's last passenger steamers were Pacifics, even though the were the second railroad to buy 2-8-4's in quantity.
SPer What if Southern Pacific buy the Berkshires of their own based on say C&O or NKP designs rather than buying Boston and Maine Berks. SP would have a fleet of C&O style or NKP style Berks
M636C I was looking at the Shorpy site recently and found one of Jack Delano's photos from 1942 showing an E-4 in shops with much of the streamlining removed. I noted that all wheels and trucks had been removed and it was on shop trucks. It was described as a "400" locomotive, which isn't the case. They were numbered from 4000, so I assume that was confused with the train name.
Jack Delano wrote it was one of the 400s in his description of it, and the Library of Congress made that the official title of the photo.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017841229/
Or, to put it differently, would buy something like improved GS6 engines instead of Berks, as the advantages of the modern 2-8-4 over an already-standard 4-8-4 would be marginal. The ones they got were 'unimproved' drag-style engines; they were cheap, did the job, and then were gone...
Backshop SPer What if Southern Pacific buy the Berkshires of their own based on say C&O or NKP designs rather than buying Boston and Maine Berks. SP would have a fleet of C&O style or NKP style Berks Why would they do that? They needed cheap power and they needed it NOW.
Why would they do that? They needed cheap power and they needed it NOW.
What might have been interesting would have been for SP to do a full overhaul on the B&M Berkshires and bring them up to SP standards. Santa Fe who had a few B&M 2-8-4s rebuilt one with standard ATSF features (4197?) and it could easily have been taken to be a Santa Fe locomotive as built new.
But I'd agree with Overmod that SP would have bought more GS-6s or similar if the war had continued.
wanswheel M636C I was looking at the Shorpy site recently and found one of Jack Delano's photos from 1942 showing an E-4 in shops with much of the streamlining removed. I noted that all wheels and trucks had been removed and it was on shop trucks. It was described as a "400" locomotive, which isn't the case. They were numbered from 4000, so I assume that was confused with the train name. Jack Delano wrote it was one of the 400s in his description of it, and the Library of Congress made that the official title of the photo. http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017841229/
My knowledge of the whole area of Chicago-Milwaukee trains is pretty much confined to Jim Scribbins' books on the Hiawathas and 400s. I flew over Milwaukee in a window seat on an American Airlines flight to London England in 2013...
Delano's photographs are a great resource and there are a number taken in the C&NW workshops, as well as his trip to California on the Santa Fe, from which I assume the attached shot comes.
I believe it was the original intention to run the 4000s to Milwaukee, or at least some of them. They may have turned out heavier than intended, or for some reason track upgrading was delayed, but I understand that the 4000s never did run a 400 since the EMD E-3s turned up before the track was upgraded and the requirement went away. The 4000s were capable of useful work on the heavy trains to Omaha and back, but much of this could have been done by the 3000 class 4-8-4s.
I mentioned the Delano photo partly beause the wheels were removed, given that balancing and track force problems had been mentioned.
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