The light bridges that restricted the E-4's and H/H-1's on the C&NW passenger line to Milwaukeee have only recently been replaced or upgraded as part of a Metra project.
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/nyc-steam.htm
Jack Delano just casually captured the tallest building in town.
Remember that steam engines weren't generally "off the shelf", more like "tailor maid". The railroads had their designers work with a builder to design an engine for a specific purpose, with factors such as grades, speed needed, type of coal used (or if it would be an oil-burner), tender size and capacity, cylinder size, pressure used, etc. Once the railroad had the design, they might have say Alco build a set of 10 engines, and later have 10 basically idential engines built by Baldwin or Lima if Alco couldn't fit in their later order.
As someone who worked for the New York Central pointed out in the book "Thoroughbreds", the Central's Hudsons were perfect for the NY-Chicago trains of the Central, and the Pennsy's K-4 Pacifics were perfect for their NY-Chicago line. If the railroads had swapped engines, they would have flopped.
About the K4s, perfect in the pre-WWOne erea when they were designed (1914), but hardly a real match for the Hudsons in the immediate pre-WWII era. The proof was frequent double-heading. The electrificatin of lines east of Harrisburg meant an immediate surplus of PRR steam power, so the reasonably successful K5 was never put into serial production, and it was a locmotive that more closely matched the J1.
And there were many cases of locomotives designed for one railroad finding a very good use and a good match for requirements on another. The C&O 2-6-6-6 was just fine for the Virginian, and the PRR J 2-10-4 was C&O's 2-10-4, in addition to PRR finding the AT&SFs also a good match for their requirements.
It would be interesting to see how Allleghenies would have worked on Union Pacific since they weren't designed as drag freight power.
CSSHEGEWISCHIt would be interesting to see how Allleghenies would have worked on Union Pacific since they weren't designed as drag freight power.
Superbly, BUT ... would the benefits have exceeded the same effective cylinder horsepower worth of big Challengers, given what Union Pacific used for solid fuel?
Aside from the question of UP 'accepting' a high-speed locomotive with a Bissel lead truck, which would probably take some convincing but could probably be done -- the benefits of a deep and wide firebox with high radiant flux in the chamber, which is the advantage of the Allegheny design over the general Alco long-firebox-over-the-rear-driver-pairs design, would have to be carefully justified. Whether the Allegheny could be economically and routinely used at typical UP speeds 'better' than the existing Challengers is a serious issue.
By the postwar era neither the Hudsons nor the K4s were serious power, except insofar as PRR needed a comparatively paid-down high-horsepower solution for long trains, and found it in the routine use of PAIRS of K4s, which made a dandy 12-coupled articulated. As of VE day, the dominant power for NYC was still the eight-coupled C1a (technically double four-coupled) with the 4-8-4 being a sort of Mohawk replacement that could pinch-hit on some passenger trains just as the 4-8-2s could. And we know how PRR leapfrogged both the 'better' 4-8-2 and any sort of 4-8-4 (including the turbine version) to get to the modern duplex revolution. It might be noted that according to Tuplin the Niagara was eminently suitable for part-load operation: it would reportedly do the work of a good H-class 2-8-0 very efficiently with about the same fuel and water rate, if run with reduced and sliding-pressure firing. But the maintenance and inertia would nickel-and-dime you to death.
Well lets see, we have Alleghenies in Wyoming on the UP ( can't hold to that name, lets call them Sherman's) and T1's on the CASO, ....how about we connect the gap and join the wires on the Milwaukee and have a fleet of GG1's out there. Put a real horn on them too.
'Meep meep'
You would have an interesting time running GG1s on 3000V DC. Not that the motors wouldn't run on DC, but that there would be no good way then to transvert the trolley voltage to something the motors' insulation could survive...
Even with the gap filled and the overhead converted to AC at some competitive modern voltage I don't think you could have made the PCE competitive in the ways it would have needed to be.
Well coming from you that is discouraging then. About the Pacific Coast Extension I mean. Even with the tremedous increase of traffic volume supplied by the Southern Pacific?
If existing today lets take 1/3 of BNSF West Coast overland traffic and 1/3 of UP overland traffic and add it to Milwaukee. Added bonus here is extra capacity on the BNSF and UP so more traffic, more growth. Win Win, No?
If it became all electric AC they are very competitive and a primo candidate for CPR. Now we are cooking with gas!
Fanatasy. I will leave it be as the great legendary and storied railroad it was on the Pacific Coast Extension, lets say 1948. All is well.
There is, I think, a bit of a parallel between the PCE and Vanderbilt's South Penn -- the railroad we thought they were building turns out not to be as magical as expected.
We have had very good threads over the years on the PCE, including some interesting discussion of why the gap was never closed. Now the 'first best use' of the extension was as a kind of bridge line, as of course it was designed to miss just about every city or traffic source extant then. Were I 'empire building' in the immediate pre-van-Sweringen period, I would start looking carefully at high-speed connections from the 'fifth system' (NKP connecting to DL&W) through the vast labyrintspel of granger crap to the PCE; you'd have something there that in conjunction with emergent large swap-body containerization would revolutionize land-bridge to the East Coast in ways that don't even exist today.
Problem is apparently that much of the PCE was shoestringed in ways that would have been highly difficult to rebuild a la Cassatt/Rea into the necessary high-speed main, even treating it (as I think we'd have to) as an extension of Nickel Plate CTC when the technology permitted. I think you'd need a whole funny-farm early retirement rest home system for dispatchers attempting to run the whole PCE like the wartime SSW on steroids. And perhaps a hospital and PT network comparable to the VA for all the trackworkers dealing with the curves and subgrading.
And then we get to the electrification, which ... well, is interesting as a study, I think, of expectations that kinda, sorta, didn't work as expected -- like the great premise that a super electric railroad from Boston to New York could avoid expenses by butt-ending into the subway system that so helpfully had extended north into what was then 'the country'. We got very capable double-trolley catenary -- strung with lopsided vertical alignment, and fixed tension, from what were essentially interurban-style wood poles. The premise seemed to be that the pans would be lightweight enough to 'follow the wire' at the speed the curves would permit, and perhaps that was so but it left no upgrade path MILW could ever afford, and that promised severe expense even if CPR or others with deep pockets stepped in to help. Personally I see no way you could get constant-tension to work well on timber poles going through inaccessible rugged country even with a system of freight helicopters to winch or drop supplies and equipment to a failure site. And the thought of eventually double-tracking the thing, perhaps even virtual four-tracking like ATSF in its heyday, is enough to send your accountants regularly to 30-day rehab at the dispatcher's happy valley.
This begs a significant question, which some in this forum could answer better than I can -- what if the PCE has been financed and built explicitly as a high-speed bridge from the beginning, as close to Truesdale's Lackawanna Cutoff standards as possible, and optimized to upgrade to that standard otherwise? That was clearly possible in that era; one of the great missed opportunities (in 20/20 hindsight) of the 20th Century is that we failed to produce a 'Hulcher' that would keep the forms for concrete viaducts, the early forms of TBM, the tracklaying trains we are just in the past several years being used here...
Now while we are dreaming, I have a project for you Canadians. Assuming we have proper Canadian buy-in -- e.g. if the Titanic had not sunk -- how do we get the CASO connection across Michigan to the bottleneck around the lake and then 'around or through' the mess of everyone else. I see this as being an interesting opportunity for accomplishing what that wacky 18-track Great Way Round proposal a couple of years ago purported to do -- essentially provide a high-speed conveyor belt, a bit like the High Line in Philadelphia, that any railroad with fast enough equipment could use on trackage rights if not terminating or trading in the area, or needing engine service there. Much of the knowledge from the 'el' constructions in NYC would still be remembered at places like Phoenix Bridge, with the steel construction being progressively upgraded to concrete in time.
Makes me wonder about digging out the map to see if the old Air Line ROW could have been incorporated here somewheres...
We might have a contest to see what the satellite real-estate developments at junction points to the other Western carriers ... with adjacent intermodal yards if appropriate kinds ... might have been if designed and built following PUD planning.
CSSHEGEWISCH It would be interesting to see how Allleghenies would have worked on Union Pacific since they weren't designed as drag freight power.
They probably would have worked very well, except for one thing, they couldn't match the top speed of a Big Boy or a Challenger, which is understandable as they weren't designed for that.
From what I've read, Big Boys and Challengers could hustle up to 70 miles an hour when needed, an Allegheny topped out at 50.
Different 'roads, different needs. Not right or wrong, just the way it was.
Believe you will find the peak of the Allegheny horsepower curve around 50mph. Do not make the mistake of thinking that means they can't go faster.
One reason PRR plotted its train performance as drawbar pull at speed is that you can derive a figure for 'top speed' directly by overlaying train resistance (rising with speed) over the performance curve(s) to get a balancing speed.
Even the N&W As without Timken rods were good for over 70mph, and the Allegheny came from the AMC with a host of experience from high-speed Berks (it's basically what 'a-Berk-and-a-half' with divided drive would be). I see no particular reason why one could not be run as quickly as, say, a NKP S-class -- and some of the reports of high speed on excursions might not be just foamer BS...
OK...How about extending the St. Clair branch to Sarnia, a short hop, or thinking big, construct a tunnel from the end of the branch at Courtwright to Stateside ( forget ferries). Then straight up Michigan to the top, build the Mackinaw bridge, ( forget ferries), across the Michigan Upper Pennisula to Wisconsin ( hello DSS&A!) into Minnesota and away we go.
The St. Clair branch was fairly new back then, straight and built like the rest of the CASO, although you would have to beef it up a bit. Terminus for the whole thing would be at St. Thomas, shops and all, joining the mainline, for the worlds largest branch line going all the way to the West Coast. CPR could feed into the system at Sault Ste Marie and various points in Southern Ontario, Grand Trunk at Sarnia, Chicago Roads in a big big interchange well to the North of Chicago.
West Coast to New York/Philly/Boston, the South, New England all by passing Chicago, only a substantial branch going down to that big interchange.
You will chuckle when I tell you that YESTERDAY I was plotting routes from Sarnia across to the Straits and thence across the Upper Peninsula with an eye toward doing more or less just what you propose (except to both Canadian lines, not just CP). Floating bridge with dynamic stabilizers for crossing the Straits - we'll discuss ice or a higher-level solution later - I was a kid when they built the first floating retractable bridge in the PNW and have remained fascinated by the possibilities since.
Wow. Terrific. I was expecting a serious critique on how batty that route was but now I feel much better.
There may be others (rcdrye?) that have even better insight into this route than myself.
Can you imagine the exalted status the DSS&A would have become. Not to mention the original big thinking reason for the St. Clair branch, which ended up being a quaint rural struggling nothing with it's 2 NYC 4-6-0's 1290 and 1291.
Wonder how close this actually came to be. Was Charles Melville Hayes dreaming and scheming of Portland East to Portland West?
Double track AC wire all the way? Why not...is that doable with floating retractable bridges?
MiningmanDouble track AC wire all the way? Why not...is that doable with floating retractable bridges?
Probably easier to do than conventional lift or swing bridges as the gap between the fixed and 'mobile' cat sections is oblique and hence can overlap when the bridge is extended.
There are several interesting ways a floating bridge can be 'moved' to open other than with pockets. A certain amount of care needs to go into making the thing weather-tolerant, low freeboard or otherwise. This IS where the gales of November come early...
You mean build a Railroad Mackinaw bridge? I can't help but think that such a project might end up like the FEC connection to Key West.
Not so long ago under "Fallen Flags", CT featured the DSS & A. It mentioned that the completion of the Mackinaw bridge spelled the end of DSS&A passenger service.
Speaking of Upper Michigan, the first time my son and I drove up there in 1995, there was still this railroad overpass running through downtown Marquette. I had seen pictures of it in some old issue of Trains or Railroad. Later, when I travelled up there, it had been removed. What line was that?
That would be the Lake Superior and Ishpeming RR.
A railroad Mackinaw bridge would be just fine...no hurricanes there, just the previously mentioned gales of November. The road bridge is just fine as would be a railroad bridge.
The expression 'Holy Mackinaaw' would have been uttered much sooner.
The problem with a railroad connection in that location is the combination of deck height and clear span. Even for road service with a suspension bridge that took until the '50s to do economically; I doubt there's an economic justification even to try it with a cantilever and verrrrrrrrrry long approach spans a la Huey Long Bridge when there are already ways to run trains all the way in the Lower 48, with less severe weather effects, or all-Canadian via the north shore of Erie and the expensive line around Superior, etc.
I had given some thought to making the movable extensions essentially submerged, with a minimum of supports exposed in the ice zone and the actual superstructure bearing the rails above 100-year peak wave action. It's an interesting design situation.
So you are thinking a low level bridge.
There is plenty of "time and distance' to have a steady grade upward and downward allowing shipping to pass through a wide area in the central zone. Or is that just not a doable thing. Cover it with some solid sides and a roof so the cat is unaffected by wind and the elements.
I have seen videos of incredibly long railroad bridges in Asia that do exactly that. Of course that was not a hundred years ago but the right guys and engineering back then could build just about anything.
They were building nations back then and had the right stuff.
I'm sure even back then they had some methods to mitigate against the ice around the chosen supporting structures.
Back to the Alleghenies, and by the way has anyone here ever seen one up-close-and-personal? Good Lord, what a monster! The sight of the one at the B&O museum took my breath away!
Anyway, I'm not saying an Allegheny couldn't hustle, they could, especially with a WW2 troop train tied to their tails, or even just in keeping up with the flow of wartime traffic, what I AM saying is high-speed running really wasn't their purpose, while the Challengers and Big Boys were built for high speed in moving those coast-to-coast perishable trains, among other things.
Anyway you look at it though, those geniuses at Lima built one helluva machine!
N&W's A's were meant to be flyers as well, no surprises there, especially since I've spoken to some old-timers here in Virginia who chased them along Route 460 and were left in their dust!
They didn't want to even think about all the speeding tickets they got in those speed-trap towns down that way, which are still there and just as greedy. If you're ever traveling 460 between Petersburg and Norfolk, watch yourself!
Overmod You would have an interesting time running GG1s on 3000V DC.
You would have an interesting time running GG1s on 3000V DC.
The Paulista had a few 3000VDC equivalents of the NH EP-4's, which would have made for a reasonable good somewhat high speed locomotive (topping out 90 - 100mph). The twin trolley on the PCE probably could be pushed to 100MPH operation, as the twin trolley did not have any hard spots.
I've seen one at the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, in Dearborn,MI. Thanks for modifying your language, btw. I owe you an Irish Whisky or single malt should you ever stop in the Pittsburgh area.
We could start a whole thread about Henry Ford and his railroad with the electrification and all. He also had some interests in Upper Michigan.
Hey Firelock, not bad!, you got 2 invitations in one day, one to a fish fry and now one for a whiskey. Pretty good.
Posted this over in the 'Chatterbox' in the Trains Forum but not sure many saw it..got buried fast with all the 'code' talk that goes on over there.
Well I don't have to worry about the Chinese magic bus space station crashng through my roof as we up here in Canada have been declared exempt by the 'get to the point' aptly named Centre for Orbital and Re-Entry Debris Studies ( glad I don't have to answer that phone).
Those of you, say in Memphis or San Diego, well, good luck. Look up once in while.
Just to point out that there is no free lunch and karma is alive and well, it is brutally cold with a horrendous wind chill touching -40 up here today. Went out for some hot cross buns and lotto tickets and was wondering if I would make it back, instead found frozen solid clutching hot cross buns in one hand and the lotto in the other.
Update- It warmed up to -30C last night. Not the wind chill temp, the actual air temp. Wind is 50kph and it is brutal out there. Some Easter.
Miningman That would be the Lake Superior and Ishpeming RR.
Well thank you for that. Could well be. I was going by memory, I should check it out. I'm a DSS&A fan, need to get this right!
https://youtu.be/a1WDFngQrNQ
This one is still very much intact. The overpass/bridge in question has been reported as removed. You are likely correct then.
Yes, that's the Presque Isle ore dock north of town. The LS&I used to be really friendly to railfans. You could stop in the office on Washington St in downtown Marquette, sign a waiver and get issued a bright orange adhesive nametag. You could go about anywhere except out on the dock or into the main shop building in Eagle Mills. Employees could see from a distance that you were "okay", due to the nametag, and just wave to you. I miss the good old days...
Yeah those days are gone for good. I miss them too. CPR was very friendly to railfans for a long time. No more. Used to go all over the USA with 3 modules and cases of trainsets for NTrak meets but that got kiboshed as well. Not so easy anymore. That world no longer exists.
erikemThe Paulista had a few 3000VDC equivalents of the NH EP-4's, which would have made for a reasonable good somewhat high speed locomotive (topping out 90 - 100mph).
The V8s were some of the greatest locomotives built; one ran over 100mph as late as May 1989. Since they had fabricated frames it might be comparatively easy to adapt them to standard gauge and they could be had cheap for the asking at one point...
Yes, the trestle leading up to the DSS&A ore dock has been removed, leaving the big concrete ore dock looking rather lost.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marquette_ore_dock_side.jpg
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