By 1964, most households in N. America had a well-used automobile at their disposal. That meant passenger rail, already in rapid disuse, was moribund by the time the Japanese thought to build their bullet trains.
Nobody is disparaging Jones, I'm attempting the mediator role with a little humor.
I'm wondering how long you would last at a Steampunk convention before they gave you the bum's rush whereas Jones would be still oohing and in awe and exclaimining 'wonderful'.
The best side of Capitalism is it's ability to have tremendous imagination and its following innovation. So the best of both worlds, both Jones and Overmod.
Yet it is stunning beyond belief that Japan came out with the Bullet Train in 1964 while we were wondering 'Who shot the Passenger Train'.
MiningmanThinking we should lighten the mood a bit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh0ess0Qzxk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh0ess0Qzxk
Actually, I prefer this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f6GHbe-mdU
(which if I recall correctly was actually the original A-side for the record that had "In The Still of the Night" on it -- and if you like Western-Swing-derived rock and roll as much as I do, you'll understand why.)
I want to discourage any disparagement of Jones; he's upset because he thought I was disagreeing with him, when little could be further from the truth.
"HSR" is "high-speed rail" (which I am using in the modern sense as meaning a line meant to run at greater than 125, and properly greater than 150 (now 160) mph.
There will probably always be a few threads that have more than the usual 'blab' content. I enjoy alternative history (and high-speed steam) so I like the sort of future Jones1945 proposes, fleshed out in detail. Is there much harm in that?
What the heck is an "HSR"?Sorry if I am lazy in asking, I just can't swim through all of the reams of blibbity-blab.
.
Thinking we should lighten the mood a bit.
In that case may I suggest a new thread for the Fantasy HSR Chicago- New York.
With the straight as an arrow, no grade CASO, the NYC has a big leg up. Only terrain difficulties would be making the tunnel Detroit/Windsor bigger ( no prob, I have crackerjack miners) and some kind of pre arraigned custom clearance so zip delays at the borders.
OvermodAh yes, but the fun is figuring out how it might have been made mechanically and economically practical within credible recent history. You went a long way toward doing that, but some of the details needed revision to make them work. In another place you said it was a 'rough draft' -- take this as some thoughts about a first revision of something that may be of considerable interest.
Overmod Now, I'd admit I wouldn't route the true-HSR line by way of Washington as it would involve some of the same compromise that Amtrak currently has with LD New York to Chicago traffic. It would be tempting to use the old South Penn 'artifacts' including the tunnels for the high-speed route from the Pittsburgh area east ... but there's a problem: the South Penn as designed and initially surveyed was not a high-speed route but a relatively low-grade one and has waaaaaay too many curves and hiccups in its routing to be very quick. Likewise, it might be fun to use Truesdale's Lackawanna Cutoff, but that has too many curves where it matters, although the construction and architecture sure have an attraction, and concrete is cheap to produce and place in northeastern Pennsylvania. (If it helps, routing through roughly the area of Sunbury produces what I think the likeliest orientation of what is essentially a high-speed bridge line with much construction on viaduct and large fill or in tunnels). That leads me to wonder if there is a sensible place for a 'new city' that is a junction point between several logical major depot or terminal points in the East and the high-speed mountain line, that could be served by regional and private trains as well as 'feeder' HSR.
OvermodThe 'there's your trouble' moment is that you seem to think I'm criticizing you when I edit one fantasy plan into another. The only really critical takeaway there is that you might not want to mock the dead, as you did the management of PRR, without having something alternative that reasonably does things better than they did ... which the fantasy plan, in some respects, manifestly would not.
Overmod…One question that might have come up in a 'government HSR network' would be the question of gauge. I don't know if anyone remembers 'the case for the double-track train' (amusing as it was to the professional engineers!) but it might have been possible to implement something of the kind for late-'40s ideas of high speed ... not that dissimilar from war-booty Breitspurbahn implementations (we did it with rockets, why not with trains? ). Who wouldn't love the ability to run three-level restaurants, real entertainment cinemas, cruise-ship suite amenities and parallel drive-off automobile carriers all in the same consist? (And taking a leaf from White Star, plenty of Trail Blazer coach-class "steerage" at high speed, too...) Now we should take up what the western side of the postwar passenger service might involve ... trains like the CZ prominently figuring into it, in my opinion, and perhaps a similar de-emphasis of pure speed on many of the nighttime stretches. Remains to be seen how you and others make this come out!
Overmod You were the one who said you could do a better job than the 'fools' ... I'm just pointing out some objective problems with getting into that position.
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Jones1945 ... I firmly believe that my "900 miles fantasy HSR between NYC and Chi-town" is mechanically and economically impractical just a few days before I post it on the forum. Any person with a basic knowledge about HSR knows its limits.
Ah yes, but the fun is figuring out how it might have been made mechanically and economically practical within credible recent history. You went a long way toward doing that, but some of the details needed revision to make them work. In another place you said it was a 'rough draft' -- take this as some thoughts about a first revision of something that may be of considerable interest.
Now, I'd admit I wouldn't route the true-HSR line by way of Washington as it would involve some of the same compromise that Amtrak currently has with LD New York to Chicago traffic. It would be tempting to use the old South Penn 'artifacts' including the tunnels for the high-speed route from the Pittsburgh area east ... but there's a problem: the South Penn as designed and initially surveyed was not a high-speed route but a relatively low-grade one and has waaaaaay too many curves and hiccups in its routing to be very quick. Likewise it might be fun to use Truesdale's Lackawanna Cutoff, but that has too many curves where it matters, although the construction and architecture sure have an attraction, and concrete is cheap to produce and place in northeastern Pennsylvania. (If it helps, routing through roughly the area of Sunbury produces what I think the likeliest orientation of what is essentially a high-speed bridge line with much construction on viaduct and large fill or in tunnels). That leads me to wonder if there is a sensible place for a 'new city' that is a junction point between several logical major depot or terminal points in the East and the high-speed mountain line, that could be served by regional and private trains as well as 'feeder' HSR.
The 'there's your trouble' moment is that you seem to think I'm criticizing you when I edit one fantasy plan into another. The only really critical takeaway there is that you might not want to mock the dead, as you did the management of PRR, without having something alternative that reasonably does things better than they did ... which the fantasy plan, in some respects, manifestly would not.
Thing is, once you've gotten government buy-in on retaining passenger service, much of the remaining discussion becomes both 'facilitated' and potentially interesting ... as the designs for high-speed ground transportation did when the Johnson administration threw money at it in the '60s.
One question that might have come up in a 'government HSR network' would be the question of gauge. I don't know if anyone remembers 'the case for the double-track train' (amusing as it was to the professional engineers!) but it might have been possible to implement something of the kind for late-'40s ideas of high speed ... not that dissimilar from war-booty Breitspurbahn implementations (we did it with rockets, why not with trains? ). Who wouldn't love the ability to run three-level restaurants, real entertainment cinemas, cruise-ship suite amenities and parallel drive-off automobile carriers all in the same consist? (And taking a leaf from White Star, plenty of Trail Blazer coach-class "steerage" at high speed, too...)
Now we should take up what the western side of the postwar passenger service might involve ... trains like the CZ prominently figuring into it, in my opinion, and perhaps a similar de-emphasis of pure speed on many of the nighttime stretches. Remains to be seen how you and others make this come out!
If you really think I want to run the PRR, a dead company, like a monarch, I suggest you take a longer vacation or "sit back, relax and have a glass of something fine ..."
You were the one who said you could do a better job than the 'fools' ... I'm just pointing out some objective problems with getting into that position.
Note carefully why I suggested that the 'first' alternate-history change had to be how the Government separated the HSR project from anything the PRR would be doing with either its own money (as with the New Main Line just before the Depression started) or with RFC 'pump priming' (as with expansion of the electrification from Philadelphia to Washington and Harrisburg/Enola). Now I would expect that one thing that would be well under way under 'federal control' by VE Day would be the formal PRR electrification to Pittsburgh, including in all probability great progress on the tunnels, and none of that would apply to the HSR route that would have to be used. So we have a 'privatized' PRR proceeding in the late '40s to an optimized freight-driven future (with some optimized-profitable passenger, probably a mix of regional and Trail-Blazer-like coach trains in large part) with much of the 'postwar streamliner push' being either stopgap up to the opening of the true fast passenger lines, or (as some have claimed for our Avelia Liberty trains) built to full high speed standards (or easily retrucked to accommodate them) and operated "as fast as possible" in some fun places like west of Fort Wayne or between AY tower and Elida for a few interesting years...
One thing that bears examination: We know the 1943 proposal involved locomotives with quill drive and 428A motors (along the lines of what was used in the DD2) in several different sizes. Presumably some, but not all, of these would have been built by the end of the War; a question of some technical interest might be what the subsequent history of motor (electric locomotive) design might have been (1) during the years when PRR actually tried modernizing to feeble success, and (2) in the 1960s when expedience gave us the E44s (and Metroliners) and perhaps the cautionary tale of the Jet EP5s as too much in too frail a box...
All this of course being colored more than a little by the 'joint standards' developed as a kind of more modern version of the USRA locomotive committee for the HSR network. That all by itself is a promising, interesting subject.
Miningman Give Jonsey a break... he was likely thinking of ' spread her wings' meaning to let run free. My native students say 'Skoden' to which the response is 'Kayden' ( lets go.. ok then)
Give Jonsey a break... he was likely thinking of ' spread her wings' meaning to let run free.
My native students say 'Skoden' to which the response is 'Kayden'
( lets go.. ok then)
Thank you for the kind words Miningman. But I blame you and your silly dumpster fire. gif! I was trying to please everyone but once again it didn't work, the trick of legs spreading never work neither for obvious reason. Now your dumpster fire is being put out by Overmod with his essay; worth reading but I hope people keep in mind that who was the person or company treated the duplexes like a dumpster fire.
Overmod PRR: Management was chaotic since WWII, better let me take over, asap ...the suggestions you made in the other thread on postwar passenger service -- you'd have thrown the balance sheet in the toilet far faster and probably far more irremediably than any potential PRR management team would, let alone could have done.
PRR: Management was chaotic since WWII, better let me take over, asap
...the suggestions you made in the other thread on postwar passenger service -- you'd have thrown the balance sheet in the toilet far faster and probably far more irremediably than any potential PRR management team would, let alone could have done.
Post it here one last time for the record.
"No Please. No need to spend your precious time writing a 1400-word essay to analyze how my fantasy is divorced from reality, how historically inaccurate it is etc. Especially when I told you clearly in the message I sent you that I firmly believe that my "900 miles fantasy HSR between NYC and Chi-town" is mechanically and economically impractical just a few days before I post it on the forum. Any person with a basic knowledge about HSR knows its limits.
I am going to ride a train which is pulled by Bee birds to the moon with one compass and two oranges in my pocket. Yes right now.
Thanks to everyone who contributed to the theme. "
https://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/article/benmauro
Earlier this year, the term 'Skoden' was painted on the water tower in Sudbury. Police say a 31-year-old man has been arrested and charged in connection with the incident. (Waubgeshig Rice/CBC)
MiningmanMy native students say 'Skoden' to which the response is 'Kayden'
Sounds like the Swedish in this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1TlAd6M-xU
I could buy 'spread the rails', as the duplexes were wont to do in places, but....spread their legs?
Naaaaaaaawww.
Jones1945Yes, I think dumpster fire is an appropriate word to describe all of them.
None of them (with the possible exception of the Q1) really qualifies as either a 'dumpster fire' or the military use of cluster as half a word. That is properly reserved for something like the N&W K-3, the wrong answer to a question nobody asked and nobody tried to fix. These are more like railroading's answer to the steamship Great Eastern, or 'not realizing the definition of insanity is not trying more and harder with the same non-working approach' (which PRR and NYC did with first-generation diesels just as with steam). Let me take up some of these in your order:
S1: Powerful and fast enough but designed only for the World's Fair, too large and troublesome for revenue service. Perfect engine for a HSR which never happened.
This actually wasn't done for the World's Fair; the timeframe doesn't fit. The Fair was the ideal place to show off the world's most magnificent passenger engine for two years, though: the point should be noted that the whole rigmarole needed to get the locomotive out to Long Island and back was repeated twice during that period and the engine presumably run in testing during the 'off season'.
As you note, there was really no place in the United States other than Wisconsin that actually used an 84" wheel to anywhere near its potential. That the situation in running wasn't viewed as utterly intolerable can be seen from the (frankly rather obvious in hindsight) refusal of PRR to retrofit four pairs of 80" drivers and revise the equalization and frame fits of the lead and trailing trucks to test the engine with a less wild running gear. And revise the front end to something with better gas entrainment at low back pressure (with or without Kiesel nozzles) -- perhaps something with vanes of appropriate contour and a lower position on a blast stand than what we see in the pictures.
The trick (as noted in part in the other thread) was to find some service that actually used the high-speed capability more gainfully. Or to install something like a Lewty booster to enhance the low-speed acceleration without compromising high-speed running (this puts the 'engine' of the booster on the frame of the locomotive, and minimizes both the unsprung mass and the high-speed motor efficiency of anything on the driven axles...)
T1: Top tier world class dumpster fire ...
As far as I know, nothing about this design was major-league unfixable, including the aspects of Franklin gear that were carried over into B-2 use. We know two things now: that reducing the stroke of the oscillating cams wasn't the answer for broken valves (although it certainly compromised performance, for reasons either the English commentator or I don't seem to have quite recognized) and some combination of changed valve-spring strength/variable rate and research by 1948 had definitively solved the breakage issue in PRR's mechanical-department opinion, going forward. The engines were demoted to second-tier service without making the recommended changes (whether or not the 'fix was in' by then to make them out to be dogs, I don't know, of course) and after that the whole don't-care momentum was on, for all big steam -- that's not a dumpster fire as much as a 'perfect storm' of changing costs and priorities. Would you blame Boeing for the unworkability of the 2707 because the aircraft world evolved differently?
,
... firebox grate area was too small; the whole project was building upon a misinterpretation of the test of PRR#5399, hated by some PRR high-ranking officials. Failed to challenge any EMD product after 1945
Firebox grate area could have been bigger. Feed it the fire expected when designed and you'd have no trouble in service. Put Snyder preheaters on it and you might just have solved some of the issue, too. Yes, I would have tried using a Baldwin-recommended grate size (as NYC clearly did in the same war years with the C1a) and indeed that was an assumption at the T1 Trust ESC until Dave Griner worked out how many changes would be needed to provide it. On the other hand, even a quick computation of the weight increase involved in a 100-104' grate with all the bell-and-whistle circulators, plus an external Cunningham circulator and the aforementioned Snyders, gets you dangerously into Lima-style six-wheel-trailer territory. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you: just that in a world that turns as quickly and definitively to diesels even in the presence of near-perfected conventional steam, that would have constituted even worse overkill than the small grate provided.
Although I have not made the claims here, I am not at all a subscriber to the 'sine-wave superheater was the only improvement on 5399' theory. There were reasons PRR did not go wholesale to these, or to Houlet-type elements in general, and you can easily work out what some of them would be (igniting any piston-valve lubricants at high horsepower being among them). Remember again that Cover et al. were not fools, no matter how their work may have misfired at times, and sometimes what was not built does not mean a demonstration of what was not tried. I am reserving many of my comments on the four-valve Franklin system until more of the practical simulation and construction of the arrangement for 5550 has been conducted, as I think there is far more to poppets even of this type than has been proven so far.
Note also by implication that if the Niagara was superior to E7s, the C1a would have been 'more superior' to them (as the prospective water rate was lower and the unrefuelled range was sufficient to make the full distance from Harmon to Chicago without a stop at Sidney and 'fast enough' refuelling as with Milwaukee-style 'coal shoots' to increase the necessary tender content of fines, which would have resulted in that many absolute minutes of schedule reduction or available padding...). By 1948 practical magnetorheological conjugation becomes practical (and the knowledge mainstreamed through a wide range of industry) so even if high-speed slip turned out to be a real problem in that design, full solutions were available short of automating the independent brakes by engine for control.
But as you readily understand from 'reading between the lines' in NYC practice, there was as much or more animosity to steam in place of 'more diesels' at NYC after 1948 than there could have been objection to high-speed passenger steam from a large fixed-by-then investment. "Dieseliners" became a major marketing pitch ... years before the whole Young/Perlman era wiped big steam out definitively in all contexts.
Q1: Abandoned by the management before built due to better performance available from PRR Class J1, PRR wasted her potential as a dual function engine. Racked up only 65,000 miles in total
The real problem here is that the locomotive was the wrong approach to a 'lab rat', perhaps by having to fill the wrong set of shoes with the wrong combination of acquired wisdom and technology at just the wrong era.
What you had was the same sort of approach that had worked so well for the AMC on C&O: scaling up a successful 8-coupled approach by 5/4 to get something nominally synergistically better. (Ignoring the subsequent advantage of de-scaling the result to 4/5 with some of the 'lessons learned' to produce some of the best Berks in the world, but note how this for good or ill became 'rolled' into the T1 project... throwing out dual-service effectiveness in the bargain...)
As we've discussed, the right answer to what PRR was actually asking involved little more than applying Voyce Glaze's theories on balancing to a slightly glorified M1. Even without going to a two-axle trailer (which might have been needed to steer the chassis effectively, as on the N&W J, with the required stiff compliance for low overbalance correction, even without accommodation of better radiant-section uptake means) this could have been done to great and useful effect.
Instead, PRR used the 'backward' configuration that up to then was the agreed 'standard version' of duplex drive in the design world (even the ATSF duplex design used it, so you have to conclude it was canon or there was something in the Depression-era water). That combined with the decision to have no less and no more than 5 driver axles was really 'it' as far as practical advantages other than reduced augment were concerned -- for some first-principle and some emergent reasons. As one example: PRR pretty well solved the issue of where to hang the rear cylinders without compromising maintenance access to them, something B&O either couldn't or didn't do ... but at the cost of radically reducing the ability to cure issues of inertial augment by having the mains for the rear engine so far outboard. Steam circuit couldn't possible produce 'automatic action' across even the useful running "powerband" of a locomotive with 77" drivers even if its 'dual service' freight service was in M&E or (later) container service not subject to the arbitrary 50mph freight restriction. It was unfortunate in the extreme that the development work fell precisely into the 'donut hole' between the imperative toward reducing reciprocating inertial mass and the adoption of the logical follow-ons from Eksergian and the retrofit 'kits' of the mid-Thirties that worked so well for roads like T&P and C&NW.
Q2: The most successful duplex, very powerful and fast for freight service but overall operating cost is too high, the rate of water and coal consumption is very high.
Built as war babies, and while wartime traffic incentives were 'on' meaning it could run long distances around its practical horsepower peak, there was likely no better engine that didn't have worse effect on the track. (At least not one that wasn't articulated and very, very, very expensively (in union terms) heavy... neither of which PRR management would care for.
Much of the maintenance problem with the locomotives would likely have been fixed with two comparatively simple things: better materials to increase the service interval on the cylinders and valves, and development of a proportional activation for the otherwise-excellently-conceived antislip system. We could further presume that by the time significant boiler replacement was required, mainstream adoption of welded boiler shells would have been available (not just to Alco) and this would in turn have handled the issue with leaks at the waist. Had these things survived to the TrucTrain era where they could actually have used high horsepower with restricted hours at low speed and command more premium coaling policies, history might have a very different conclusion. But the locomotives surely don't qualify as failures in the sense they have been condemned in 'railfan history', if anything deserve it less than the T1 which we have increasingly seen to be propaganda at best.
S2: Overweighted when built, but very close to success. Got ditched when Pennsy was low-key as broke as a beggar in 1948
You are getting carried away by flights of fancy. Look carefully at what actually happened to PRR in 1947, and more specifically why it concerned them. A large part of the concern involved uncompensated wear in the wartime years, and loss of the large guaranteed fast traffic in those years, and they were very, very far from "broke" at that point, just receiving a potent wakeup call about their up-to-then-a-bit-complacent attitudes and priorities.
And the S2 was a clever design, but in the hands of people who sometimes couldn't run T1s it was a bit like one of the turn-of-the-century fast ocean liners: a disaster just waiting to happen with irremediable damage on comparatively little provocation. You see this from 'outside' in the correspondence preserved at the Hagley: they are all gung-ho on how effective this new wonder locomotive concept is going to be, and debunk 'conventional wisdom' on some of the misconceptions (like low starting torque due to 'slip') ... but oh brother, watch the tune change as the staybolts start to pop! (And no, there is no market basket of incremental fixes to get around that; as subsequent history regarding Westinghouse sales of direct-drive steam turbines effectively shows.)
The answer even in the Forties was a V1 layout, two 'articulated engines' powered separately by their own turbines, making better use of the capacity of a Q2 boiler. (Apply all the changes listed above to the slightly-modified boilers used on V1s...) This failed not so much for hard technical reasons as a somewhat-delayed recognition that you either needed to haul an ocean or arrange expensive water-treatment dosing (that your crews would likely botch necessary consistency in application of) if you wanted a range much more than one division without stopping for a good, solid fill. Whereas a bunch of Fs, with no augment and no piddling caustic substances onto the track, and no statistically-detectable explosion hazard, could make it across four or five without refueling, and (in that era) without even a need other than 'political' to come to a complete stop (and recharge and release, etc.)
Unless you were born and raised in Philadelphia, or were extremely successful in the financial markets (much more so than even Mr. Young!) you had little chance. I would argue (with some pain, as I have ties to Philadelphians) that proximate cause of the true dumpster fire that was PC was the inherited red-team management, including that cost-cutting mouthpiece from down south.
However, if your idea of sound management reflects, say, the suggestions you made in the other thread on postwar passenger service -- you'd have thrown the balance sheet in the toilet far faster and probably far more irremediably than any potential PRR management team would, let alone could have done. What you show is precisely the sort of 'fighting-the-last-war' thinking that actually produced the Great Streamliner Fiasco of the late '40s and '50s, almost all of it money irrevocably and uselessly thrown away on something that just wasn't going to work in that era of the real world as it came about. And yes, we could logically have fixed all the underlying issues (given 20/15 hindsight, something we usually aren't provided far enough in advance) but that's not PRR management, it's thousands of people at all the levers of power in American industry, society, and government, sometimes doing things that would guarantee loss of career if implemented in a kind of suicidal and counterintuitive series.
And just as a heads-up: sometimes English expressions are faux-amis. Perhaps the best, or at least terrifying, misuse of idiom in my long and fruitful experience with the language, and only partly conceivable as a malapropism, is
All she needed was a longer track for her to spread the legs!
That is certainly NOT what you meant to say -- the expression is 'stretch her legs' and what you actually said means something ... not the same, not the same at all.
Miningman Anyone notice how that dumpster fire is chugging away just like a steam locomotive. Observe far right end chugging away even few seconds. The entire Duplexii, Steam Turbine, Modern Steam Era was a dumpster fire.
Anyone notice how that dumpster fire is chugging away just like a steam locomotive. Observe far right end chugging away even few seconds.
The entire Duplexii, Steam Turbine, Modern Steam Era was a dumpster fire.
TOP DEFINITION
Dumpster Fire
1. A complete disaster.
2. Something very difficult that nobody wants to deal with.
eg. This project is a complete dumpster fire!
In entertainment or sports, a laughably poor performance usually caused by:
1. Lack of planning, preparation or talent.
2. Random events that effectively sabotage the effort (i.e., technical problems).
eg. Dumpster Fire is the kindest thing I can say about Oakland's game against San Diego.
Miningman Summary: The S1, S2, T1's, Q1, Q2's, 1947+ PRR... throw in the Niagara as well, NYC
Summary: The S1, S2, T1's, Q1, Q2's, 1947+ PRR... throw in the Niagara as well, NYC
Oh my dear Miningman, the list should be much much longer:
All these things were either still store in Hagley, missing or being destroyed during the merge of PC and Amtrak's take over. (GG1's model was saved by a staff during PC merge)
(non copyrighted pictures from rrmuseumpa.org)
In case you missed it:
A post was made for a handmade PRR S2 #6200 6-8-6 Steam Turbine Locomotive in Model Railroader forum. Some forum members of Classis trains may remember that I posted one of the videos in this post. The new post contains new updates of the model. Note that the model itself is powered by steam turbine as well!
Direct link to the post:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/273199.aspx
-Accidentally deleted my post- Sorry, please remove.
If you scroll down these 2 links that NDG just posted on the NYC thread you will see beautifully kept locomotives, picture after picture all clean and shiny. Some just off a run, some heading out, some in the middle of a hard run...look at Jubilee 2929 pulling 60 cars! ... and that's hand fired and actually despised by crews, but the pride and discipline is showing. Jubilee 2920 going through cow flop Saskatchewan, dusty, rural, light branch line track, but looking good in the neighbourhood.
Many of these pics are at the end of steam '58-'59 when everyone knew their time was up and they were just using them up. The CPR and many if not most roads never allowed appearances to go to pieces.
The only exception would be Jubilee 2911 which was the only one painted up in freight colours of all black and it is dirty after a run, but nothing that was not part of a deferred the heck with it and a general philosophy of not caring about who they were.
I would also have to say that the Diesel era continued a shabby practice after a short period of not doing so, all the way into the Penn Central era and early Conrail. Many of the E's and F's were a total disgrace.
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/photos/cpr_steam/jubilee.htm
http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/photos/cpr_steam/royal.htm
Oh MY......a tossed stone raises a thousand ripples! I didn't expect a post of an "ancient" T1 pic would cause so many inconveniences. I hope it didn't damage you guys friendship!
I love PRR's DGLE and F.O.M livery; the Keystone plate; how they placed the headlight; how they insisted to use the Belpaire firebox and refused to use steam booster engine and smoke deflector; I love how they designed the smokebox door; I am fascinated by the beauty of S1, S2, Q1, Q2, T1, and Streamlined K4s; I admire they made the most powerful Mountain Class 4-8-2; I love they hand-picked Raymond Loewy but not other industrial designers; I love their network and how they named their limiteds; I love how they gave steam-powered locomotives the very last chance... I just don't like how they treat S1 and T1s. They weren't perfect but really deserved better treatment.
Well regardless, Happy Thanksgiving to you and all South of the 49th.
What did the turkey say to the computer?
.....google, google google
MiningmanSo once again I rebuke your assertion.... at least about the morning thing.
So she recognizes quality, regardless of circumstance. So should you.
1992...Denver, Colorado. Room service, ordered, came up to my room, a lovely gal, let's call her Leslie. I'm in my housecoat, quite unwashed and unkept, needed my cofffee real bad ( no cheapo coffee maker in the rooms yet). Leslie looks at me and says " no one should look that good first thing in the morning". Honest to gosh, that's what she said.
So once again I rebuke your assertion.... at least about the morning thing.
She proceeded to write her phone number down on the stationary, handed it to me and said " I would be fired for this, strictly against the rules...give me a call and I'll show you around town".
I did and she did, visited her many times and she came up to see me a couple of times. Went on to be a jazz and blues singer and eventually we drifted apart and that was that.
MiningmanThe engines appearance was a shambles and there were cutaways all over. The cab was a mess. Story was somewhere 47-49 can't remember.
Toward the very end of their service -- if I recall the semantics, evoking words like 'if we don't see what she'll do now, we'll never know.'
Too small a grate, pathetic excuse for coal, issues with drafting pulling down all that smoke and soot that shouldn't have been there. And yes, formal acknowledgement after 1948 that they had no effective future, no matter how clean you could get them between runs.
Compare this with the state of the J1s and ATSF leased engines on the Sandusky branch after just a short time, particularly the amazing evidence of priming and water-treatment 'failure' that seems to have characterized so many of the engines there. I don't think PRR was really renowned for shiny engines ("Smoke and Mirrors" and the various publicity shots aside) and yes, pictures of the S1 in service are even dirtier and more forlorn than most of the T1 movies evidence.
Do I think they deserved better? Clearly.
Do I know how to fix them to be right? Probably. And to run them better, and to train others to run them better. Not the locomotive's fault.
Do I know specifically about the coal and dirt problem? Yes, and so does much of the contemporary press.
All I'm pointing out is that this one, specific, T1 might easily be in the typical shape any contemporary PRR locomotive, steam or diesel, might have been in after a hard run where lots of cheap coal was being burned. I'd bet if I caught a candid shot of you in the morning, or after a hard day, you might not look as dapper as you'd prefer, too; why not extend a lady a little courtesy?
I blame PRR for far more than dirty engines. And it is amusing, to say the least, to see you defending Al Perlman's Niagara/Hudson-torching NYC as the better half (not just 'less sickly') of PC; at least PRR respected its historic collection. You might as well try to claim that management from even-better-bouncing N&W would have made PC work ... oh wait, we know how that worked.
As Kalmbach Classic Trains headline states... Timeworn! In less than 5 years, and Jones and I say 2 years. If your stated response was the case then the commentary would reflect that as would have the photographers notation.
Reading the story of the famous, alleged, 140mph? ( memory) run down the Fort Wayne Division captured by a Gil Reid painting and familiar to all railfans, it clearly is written on how forelorn, beat up, disgraced, filthy the engine was once assigned to the crew. They couldn't even read the words 'Pennsylvania' on the tender, revealed only by swiping away the grime. The engines appearance was a shambles and there were cutaways all over. The cab was a mess. Story was somewhere 47-49 can't remember.
If you think the numerous appearances of T1's in photographs looking like crap on a stick when these were practically brand new reflects a company that has pride well go right ahead and delude yourself.
I recall you defending the tearing down of Pennsylvania Station, being some dark dank urine stained eyesore.
With perhaps the exception of some electrified lines, the railroad after 1947 lost it mind... its tracks, its yards, its towers, its stations all a disgrace. Not content yet it managed to take a bouncing back New York Central with it. So this Philistine calls horse feathers on your rebuke.
Miningman
Does it occur to you judgmental Philistines that (1) the locomotive may have just come off a train, and (2) it is suffering from what appears to be a serious rear gland leak on the visible cylinder of the forward engine, something it likely wouldn't be showing for more than the time it would take to drop pressure for repairs after getting to an appropriate service location?
Covers might be off for a related reason -- the one in the 'prow' to access the smokebox door would almost certainly not have been removed in running in this era. Nothing is missing that wouldn't have been taken down for access, and there is little if any visible sheet-metal damage.
I suspect this is how ANY contemporary PRR engine may have looked after a road trip, given the coal quality in the strike era.
Miningman 5536 was a Baldwin built one. It sure looks like hell in the picture. Metal ripped off and holes cut all over. It's dirty, unkept and the boiler jacket is a mess. This would be a disgrace on the CPR at John St. Roundhouse, or the Glen in Montreal, the foreman's head would roll. Yes, it's quite likely this is 1947 and it's only 2 years old. The PRR has lost it's mind, it started here, never ended, deranged and devoid of any class or pride tore down their wonder in New York City, deferred everything and in a fit of mercy was obliterated off the planet. Not a proud Railroad, not at all.
5536 was a Baldwin built one. It sure looks like hell in the picture. Metal ripped off and holes cut all over. It's dirty, unkept and the boiler jacket is a mess. This would be a disgrace on the CPR at John St. Roundhouse, or the Glen in Montreal, the foreman's head would roll.
Yes, it's quite likely this is 1947 and it's only 2 years old. The PRR has lost it's mind, it started here, never ended, deranged and devoid of any class or pride tore down their wonder in New York City, deferred everything and in a fit of mercy was obliterated off the planet. Not a proud Railroad, not at all.
I agree with you, Miningman. It is hard to find another example in that era where the new mainline steam engine was beaten up like this, #5536 in the pic looked like a 30 years old engine instead of 2 years old. Compare to the pics of CPR's steam locomotive in service, they were always looked clean and tidy, unlike T1s of PRR, they were as messy as a tank in the front line of the battlefield. "A straw shows which way the wind blows". A beaten up T1s showed the dead end of PRR.
"Hey Clement, good job making your new engines looks like my unwashed underwear. Do you have time to talk about the deal of our diesel thingy we discussed...."
Rule #1: Always keep your fleet clean and tidy.
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