https://e-news.su/history/256660-zheleznodorozhnyy-futurizm-sverhshirokaya-koleya-i-bezumnye-proekty-voennyh.html
"At the same time, there was an active discussion of the construction of the Pan American Intercontinental Highway to connect the Americas, and with it the idea of an intercontinental broad-gauge railway was considered. It was supposed to go from Alaska to Argentina and turn both continents into a single economic zone. Nuclear locomotives were the best fit for this project. Soon, negotiations began with the creators of the X-12 on the development of a similar locomotive for an ultra-wide gauge."
https://mi3ch.livejournal.com/2637409.html?page=2 :
"After the materials on the Hitler super train were declassified, similar projects appeared in the USSR.
Deputy Director of the Institute of Complex Transport Problems of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Soviet scientist Vasily Zvonkov, in particular, wrote: “The existing generally accepted railroad gauge in our country - 1524 millimeters - was proposed by one of the builders of the St. Petersburg-Moscow road, engineer Melnikov. Already today it cannot satisfy us. A track gauge of 3 - 5 meters will allow us to build significantly more lifting wagons and use locomotives with a capacity of 40 - 50 thousand horsepower to ensure a speed of 250 - 350 kilometers per hour. The question of using nuclear reactors on such locomotives will be greatly facilitated. After all, as you know, only a significant weight of biological protection prevents nuclear locomotives from entering our roads today, The throughput capacity of BAM has been exhausted for today. The main problem of the inhabitants of the Far East is isolation from the center of Russia.
Nuclear reactors on trains are too dangerous. Today the train from Moscow to Vladivostok takes 7 days. At a speed of 250 km / h, this time will be reduced to one and a half days"
Thank you for this very comprehensive answer!
Informative and accurate reply/
djlivusMy question would be if a freight locomotive can be regeared for passenger traffic or, conversely a passenger one for freight use. If so, what such an operation would imply? I ask that questioon having in mind some examples like New Haven EF3(adapted for pasenger use) or Baldwin Centipedes "rebuilt" for freight
As you might suspect, suspension and guiding are key characteristics of true dual-service locomotives. The Centipede chassis was good for over 120mph by Baldwin's perhaps over enthusiastic figuring (they had touted the ATSF 3460 class as "120 mph locomotives" and Seaboard happily bought them for 85mph freight service (replacing rather good 2-6-6-4s). Most of the 1930s articulated-underframe high speed design -- originally serving a somewhat different purpose on the maid-of-all-work Essl locomotive) was not "as good" as evolved truck designs, like those attributed to Blomberg at EMD. Indeed, Westinghouse seemed to be proposing nothing but AAR type B trucks on all their locomotives -- advantages as you'd expect for B instead of C trucks in high-speed work, and plenty of easily-cooled span-bolstered motor power if you want to pull freight...
The poster child for dual-service electrics is the GG1, which evolved from the New Haven design. This was easily changed from high-speed passenger engine to capable freight locomotive with little more than a simple gearing change, as all the rest of the suspension and underframe remained substantially 100mph capable.
The Rc-4, on which the AEM-7 'toasters' were patterned, is a successful freight locomotive in Europe, albeit one that may require additional time in starting heavy trains. If I'm not mistaken, many features of the ACS-64 'Sprinters' are shared with Vectron electrics, although I do not know how detail-design differences for high-speed service might impair its suitability.
German breitspurbahn project considered more than 40 locomotives - some designed for high speed passenger trains,some for freight. My question would be if a freight locomotive can be regeared for passenger trafic or, conversely a passenger one for freight use. If so, what such an operation would imply? I ask that questioon having in mind some examples like New Heaven Ef3 (adapted for pasenger use) or Baldwin Centipedes "rebuilt" for freight
The Lyle Borst tale is amusing. He assigned the design problem as a hypothetical exercise. Afterwards there was enough interest that he patented some of the design features... the AEC apparently being willing at the time to find alternative markets for uranium enrichment other than as constituents of explosives. It does not appear that security of what is basically weapons-grade U235 for use on the general system of railroad transportation was a cost concern.
There was a brief frenzy of transportation applications when submarine reactors became known. If FM engines worked in subs and were more or less successfully ported to locomotives... why not PWRs?
The Alco A-100, which I only know from a single drawing, may use a comparable cycle, although it is tough to dispense with ocean cooling (as some Erie-Built customers reputedly recognized!). While some improvements over the PRR S2 were needed, they were not critically incapable of solution. And there was the promised long running time between (subsidized) reprocessings...
Very interesting considerations!
There was no insurmountable issue with the 'double-track train' going around curves or cross-equalizing... and the test was done with HO snap track... Note that the 'four rails in 18' gauge -- I'd suspect 5m -- would give an interesting centerline distance if considered as double track, say of 5' gauge.
Did the Russian system note that the two 'subsidiary tracks' were each lined and surfaced separately for use? Or that the spacing of the four rails was not 'equal' spanwise?
An issue that came up with the 'double-track train' was the way superelevation and crossovers were to be handled. Note that the Breitspurbahn freight and these Russian systems do not emphasize high speeds (and presumably would be built with limited superelevation as with contemporary "PSR" optimization (?) to 40-45mph with minimized wear and deflection to the rails. That would simplify how crossovers, etc. are provided for the individual tracks.
I continue to presume that carbody-mounted motors remain a good solution for these enormous things, although I see very little mention of the idea explicitly either in the German planning or these Russian versions. You could easily have whatever final drive you wanted with transverse balance on either the upper or lower 'deck', with final drive to the individual span-bolstered 'bogies' running on their pairs of gauged rails.
I have learned more about this stuff in three months than in a whole lifetime of pottering research on some of this stuff.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8oDSKgUYAA_tJz?format=jpg&name=large
Another soviet proposal rendering here
https://i.redd.it/rxaib6wqao361.jpg
One rendering of 5000 tons soviet atomic locomotive. Maybe just a kind of soviet propaganda.
I just have aquired a digital edition of Robin Barnes Broader than broad (I ve sent it via dropbox on mails ) Here says it could attain a speed of 300 km hour
djlivusI understand that in Classic Trains magazine is an article about American version of this rail system? If so I have acces to Classic Trains archive, so I can check.
The basic idea, though, was to treat a double-track mainline as if it were a 'Breitspurbahn' with four separate running rails and cross-span-bolstered bogies each at standard gauge if desired. This would be fleeted to get directionality, and a four-track main of interesting characteristics would be needed even for the analogue of CTC, but the possibilities were interesting... and a given line still perfectly capable of being operated as two standard-gauge tracks for standard-gauge interchange traffic.
As I recall, Professor Milenkovic has considerable knowledge of RRollway in its various developments, and retains interest in the idea. My exposure to this was as a kind of transverse high-density rapid-throughput Iron Highway for automobiles: these would be staged in rows facing the track, driven on the platform transversely, then simply driven off the other side easily or en masse at any stop -- no circus loading, no skilled backing over ramps and between cars.
The version I remember had 19' gauge over the outside rails but one rail in the middle for support. We have had previous threads, I think findable across the Kalmbach forums with the 'community search' term, that had quite a bit of interesting information I hadn't known.
The thing about 'broad gauge' is that scaling laws apply to engineering just as they do to, say, entomology. You can't just scale proportions up, like in modeling -- some parts have to be reproportioned, and there may be size limits that make further increase pointless, much as with multistage rockets. Necessary axle strength and contact-patch size are two such for Bribdingnagian gauge inflation.
I have not read the book, but I understand that 3m was chosen as about the largest gauge that would make a cost-effective system -- some of the passenger interiors were designed around the width possible with overhang relative to the 'quarter points' over the wheels or the effective lateral points of suspension bearing.
Incidentally it turns out that for coned-tread wheelsets, it is NOT beneficial to run the wheels separately on stub axles a la Talgo. That imposes a limit on axle deflection and bending strength.
djlivus https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee6XD0eXoAI1uJV?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
I'm real sure that I can run 15,200hp through four axles. On the other hand it will pull any train it can start up to 200km/h...
Someone with the Complete Collection needs to provide the link to 'The Case for the Double-Track Train', an American answer to the Breitspurbahn with a few additional possibilities.
We have an expert on the RRollway, in its 19' wide splendor... that's now within the year range for Classic Trains...
[/quote]
I understand that in Classic Trains magazine is an article about american version of this rail system? If so I have acces to Classic Trains archive, so I can check.
There were any projects for american locomotives with 19' gauge or it was only an ideea?
djlivushttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee6XD0eXoAI1uJV?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
https://www.deviantart.com/futurewgworker/art/Breitspurbahn-steam-locomotive-688384620
One of the 41 projects of collosal locomotives proposed by nazi for a never made 3 m gauge system Breitspurbahn. Width is 6 m and height above 6.8 m
There is a book on this subject:
https://www.zvab.com/Breitspurbahn-Projekt-Erschlie%C3%9Fung-gro%C3%9F--europ%C3%A4ischen-Raumes/18464308188/bd
Other projects:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B5YOYbXCUAAhB7M?format=jpg&name=large
Ther is an article on these locomotives in Trains magazine (with the photo above enclosed) in 86 (I have surveyed their archive and found about these projects)
https://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/File:Breitspurbahn_engine.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee6XBeBWoAAl77K?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
https://www.deviantart.com/futurewgworker/art/Breitspurbahn-diesel-electric-locomotive-586250888
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ee6XD0eXoAI1uJV?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
https://www.deviantart.com/futurewgworker/art/Breitspurbahn-diesel-hydraulic-locomotive-688384342
https://www.deviantart.com/futurewgworker/art/Breitspurbahn-electric-locomotive-688385033
Thank you for finding this!
As a bit of history: the first major use of this approach to free-piston power was as a 'diesel' air compressor for submarines, developed to some success in the 1930s. I find it suggestive that Hamilton licensed the technology, was then acquired by Lima which staked its 'real locomotive' future on this idea while concentrating regular diesel development on glorified switchers, and then Lima-Hamilton was snapped up by Baldwin -- the official story being that 'parent' Westinghouse wanted the Lima heavy-construction business, but going to the free-piston construction for passenger engines may explain Baldwin's adherence to heavy slow-speed engines with little horsepower improvement upside during that era... only to embrace high-speed diesrls with Mekydro hydrokinetic transmission when it no longer mattered...
Note that the weight is still 30 tons per axle, only 'light' by comparison with relatively large steam locomotives. That seems heavy for 'only' 3200hp, which translates in both powered axles and rough hp to one-and-a-half E units.
Think of this a bit like a FM OP cylinder turned on its side, with the rack arrangement replacing the crankshafts for timing, the bounce pistons replacing the crankshafts for piston return against compression, the large pistons providing the scavenge air compression, and the 'horsepower' taken out in the exhaust pressure.
This as previously noted greatly relieved the practical issue of TIT in a practical railroad gas turbine while offering a way to run the turbine reasonably close to its critical speed range over a range of loads by using or idling some of the independent gas generator sections -- compare this to the Essl locomotive, which proposed similar savings by a very different method.
We now know well (from subsequent GM experience with free-piston engines in ships and cars, and the stillborn FG-9) what the Achilles heel of Pescara-style free-piston turbine power is -- and to me this came as something of a surprise, similar to the reason full-active suspensions were not more popular for automobiles or trucks. You will note the absence of a synchronizing method for the gas generators, and the need for a smoothing receiver in the drawing. Oddly enough the practical difficulty was not exhaust impulse noise (which to me would be like the grandmother of all unsynchronized multi-engine aircraft propeller noise!) but the inlet tract noise from relatively light wall construction for the prodigious amount of air required. (I am told that the technical results of the 'big' SNCF test of this approach exist, but I have not found them yet; that the idea was so well promoted, and disappeared so without a trace, indicates similar 'drawbacks' were encountered...
Technically the free-piston engine suffered somewhat from the use of a 'variable-speed transmission' involving a turbogenerator and traction motors (and remember that Westinghouse just at this time patented a drive with three-phase alternator and compatible motors, which could as easily be used with a gas turbine as a steam turbine). To me this would have been a good 'fit' for a couple of Bowes drives as in the stillborn Ingalls 2000hp lightweight passenger locomotive... although coordinating three axles per truck might have been costlier and not as effective as separate hexapole motors.
https://books.google.ro/books?id=mGBCAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA10-PA41&dq=lima+hamilton+free+piston+gas+turbine+locomotive&hl=ro&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjaq8rh9JTyAhWHgP0HHSJBBDo4ChDoATAFegQIBRAC#v=onepage&q=lima%20hamilton%20free%20piston%20gas%20turbine%20locomotive&f=true
It seems Lima locomotive was a C-C with only 360000 lbs weight
Overmod http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/40358.aspx Note that they've got two turbine locomotives for ATSF mixed up. The one you're discussing is the one on the Centipede frame, which I think has more affinity to the stillborn BLH free-piston locomotive than to anything out of BCR at that point (I think they were still testing the Hilsch tubes and final separation along with the turbine 'on the ground' in Dunkirk) The missing B-B-B-B was the Allis-Chalmers turbine built for ATSF, which seems to have come and gone largely unremarked in railfan history, despite the fact that Allis-Chalmers had early competence in industrial gas turbines. Much of the problem, including with the prospective 2-D-D-2 for ATSF, was the implicit concern that Really Cheap Garbage Fuel was the only thing making the gas turbine practical as a diesel competitor (read Charles Kerr, Jr's analysis for a better laying out of the real-eorkd economic argument). As noted the 'big' ATSF tender was cheap for the adoption at that point, and had the ginormous oil capacity (whether #5 locomotive fuel, or 'Bunker B', or that awful cheap-as-possible dirty residual) as well as large nonstop water for the steam-ejector air on the Long Trains that big locomotive would be running. How you get around the noise and crap in the exhaust when pulling the luxury postwar successor to the Super Chief is less certain. I'd have liked to see at least one built... although by the time of actual construction it would have likely been span-bolstered trucks rather than colossal cast underframes...
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/40358.aspx
Note that they've got two turbine locomotives for ATSF mixed up. The one you're discussing is the one on the Centipede frame, which I think has more affinity to the stillborn BLH free-piston locomotive than to anything out of BCR at that point (I think they were still testing the Hilsch tubes and final separation along with the turbine 'on the ground' in Dunkirk)
The missing B-B-B-B was the Allis-Chalmers turbine built for ATSF, which seems to have come and gone largely unremarked in railfan history, despite the fact that Allis-Chalmers had early competence in industrial gas turbines.
Much of the problem, including with the prospective 2-D-D-2 for ATSF, was the implicit concern that Really Cheap Garbage Fuel was the only thing making the gas turbine practical as a diesel competitor (read Charles Kerr, Jr's analysis for a better laying out of the real-eorkd economic argument). As noted the 'big' ATSF tender was cheap for the adoption at that point, and had the ginormous oil capacity (whether #5 locomotive fuel, or 'Bunker B', or that awful cheap-as-possible dirty residual) as well as large nonstop water for the steam-ejector air on the Long Trains that big locomotive would be running.
How you get around the noise and crap in the exhaust when pulling the luxury postwar successor to the Super Chief is less certain. I'd have liked to see at least one built... although by the time of actual construction it would have likely been span-bolstered trucks rather than colossal cast underframes...
Any info about wheels configurations of Lima proposal for gas turbine locomotive? Hirsimaki says it would have been single unit with 2 cabs. I think I have read somevhere it was a C-C locomotive, but could that be large enough for a turbine locomotive?
https://books.google.ro/books?id=qndCAQAAIAAJ&pg=RA2-PA129&dq=santa+fe+3750hp+turbine+locomotive&hl=ro&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiSjY7zrJPyAhXz_7sIHZvNCxEQ6AEwBXoECAYQAw#v=onepage&q=santa%20fe%203750hp%20turbine%20locomotive&f=false
From these I understand that Santa Fe gas turbine was basically the same with J Yellot coal gas turbine intended to be built by Baldwin for PRR. But, the last was to be 3750 HP and have cabs at the both ends. Instead, Santa Fe,s would have been 3000 hp and would have used an oil gas turbine in a Centipede style body locomotive. There was also a project from Lima rejected.
djlivusAt page 293 there are some interesting info about an 1982 steam turbine electric giant locomotive on 6 wheel trucks, 1,200,000 pounds weight
Note that some of the problems he encountered with the fluidized-bed combustion were and are addressable.
This was the era of 614T, when engineers had to 'rediscover' much of the art involved in practical locomotive boiler design.
Incidentally, note the bibliography a few pages earlier which contains an article by Steins in Railway Age on the proposed coal gas-turbine (Nov 27 1948, p.1029)
The history of coal turbines when I researched them in the '80s was fascinating. Note the version in the hearings testimony, built inside an Alco DL600 with fluidized pulverized coal blown into a vibrating reservoir in the short hood. With no sign of, say, cooled FGR passivating the pre-dried and pre-pulverized stuff, which was to be blown in from covered hoppers. I suspect this would have rediscovered the joys of high-carbon critical-mixture facilitated rapid unanticipated disassembly.
https://books.google.ro/books?id=PB-b8sql2B0C&pg=PA278&lpg=PA278&dq=Lima+coal+gas+turbine+locomotive+project&source=bl&ots=lfdJ5kL9TT&sig=ACfU3U09IhSA88koqy4khTWzvXDdHhP9hw&hl=ro&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwja3vzr2pLyAhX8_7sIHe6DCqQQ6AEwEHoECCYQAw#v=onepage&q=Lima%20coal%20gas%20turbine%20locomotive%20project&f=true
At the page 293 there are some interesting info about an 1982 steam turbine electric giant locomotive on 6 wheels truks, 1200.000 pounds weight
I just received the book on prr locomotives. I will scan it and send it to mail in one, two weeks. Using a lens to zoom in I have suceeded to see exactly the small numbers of D-C-C-D turbine. So: height is 16 feet, 0 inches (4,87 m), lenght between couplers is 112 feet (34,13 m), 105 feet wheelbase, 147 feet total wheelbase, 155 feet total lenght; weight without tender is 810.000 pounds (367,4 tonnes). Axle load is 45.000 pounds and 60.000 pounds (2X45.000 + 12X60.000). Tender axle load is 51.666 pounds
Be interesting to see if he mentions the Westinghouse improvement patents on the S2-style drive system in the latter half of the '40s, particularly the two-speed planetary and the elimination of the unfortunate geared reverse-turbine idea.
It will be interesting to read whether the unsprung-mass concerns I had about the drive as implemented (see those expressed by Juniatha and Sara T.) turned out to be serious in PRR practice.
I have read the Keystone Magazine article by Neil Burnell's about the PRR S2 recently. Today I ordered another Keystone Magazine that contains two more articles (one of them is a letter from the reader, another one is "Problems with the operation of S2" by David E. Slee, a 10-page article. I will sum up my thoughts here after reading all of them. (Who would have thought wheel slippery was one of the problems that S2 had to fix?!)
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Yes, double-thanks!
Thank you for this very complete explanation!
djlivusThis was an early version of Jawn Henry or a different locomotive never made?
The earliest description post-'47 is an item in the trade press, featuring a drawn side elevation of a locomotive with the PRR V1's wheel arrangement illustrating a blurb that a particular railroad (I believe it was characterized as a 'coal road') was considering the steam-turbine electric. Considering the PRR-N&W 'connection' it seemed obvious how and where the technology transfer was going. Certainly once PRR had deprioritized steam-turbine implementation (partially, perhaps, in favor of coal gas-turbine development) it would only be logical for N&W to build on what at that point was a project that had been greenlighted for construction in 1944.
By 1950, and then to 1952, there are reports covering how N&W was actively developing 'their' steam-turbine: I think it had progressed to electric drive by 1950 and was being given all-wheel drive (including the two 'smaller' trucks) by 1952. Considering the marked lack of enthusiasm around the PRR P5b 5702 experiment into powered small trucks of this sort, and the rather dramatic failures involved with the C&O M-1s, it is not surprising that the same thing that induced the Dutch to go to 'bogie power trucks' in their early-'50s electrics was also seen here in a 'revision' of all-wheels-powered chassis for a large steam-turbine-electric. In my opinion this was decidedly not a camel's-nose-in-the-tent for truck-compatibility with a diesel fleet, as would be a clear advantage on a railroad less decidedly diesel-hostile than N&W in the early Fifties. Certainly if it were seen as a major incentive for other coal railroads to adopt TE-1-style engines in lieu of diesels, the compatible-truck argument especially with Westinghouse motors ought to have been tried... however, since Westinghouse had abandoned the domestic railroad market by the time that would have mattered, and brought Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton along for that ride, it wouldn't have been that valuable (and the fact that N&W managed to irrevocably damage something like six of the Hexapole motors in what was basically extended testing is a very, very dangerous issue that I seldom see discussed in connection with this design).
A missing link involves the boiler design used in the early Fifties, before the adoption of the chain-grate 600psi design that essentially limited the locomotive to 4500hp, half or less of what PRR designed their 'comparable' post-V1 locomotive to develop. I had thought this would be a pulverized-coal watertube design, but I have neither drawings nor hard technical descriptions to prove this. I strongly suspect material is 'out there' that can resolve the question. Unfortunately I expect much of the necessary technical records were disposed of at the same time, perhaps in the same dumpster, that the main-turbine drawings for the TE-1, but none for the V1, were 'recovered from the trash' when Westinghouse purged some of its obsolete records.
Overmod There is an untold story lurking in here somewhere. Remember that the V1, developed between the late '30s, greenlighted in 1944, and suspended by 1947, was a PRR design for a PRR that no longer had interest in new coal-burning power. But PRR had nominal control over a railroad that DID have such an interest... and lo and behold, in 1950 we hear that N&W is signing a contract for a turbine-electric... the little 'artist's rendition' of which is EXACTLY the chassis of the turbine-mechanical V1, and not the Baldwin turbine-electric.However, by a couple of years later, N&W confirmed that the locomotive was to have electric, traction-motor drive (it's a whole article in Railway Age) and by that time the general details of the 600psi watertube boiler, chain grate like the M2 Automatic, and so forth were mature. I do not think, however, that the design had gone to span-bolstered trimounts like the ones that ultimately appeared on the TE1 (Jawn Henry)
There is an untold story lurking in here somewhere. Remember that the V1, developed between the late '30s, greenlighted in 1944, and suspended by 1947, was a PRR design for a PRR that no longer had interest in new coal-burning power. But PRR had nominal control over a railroad that DID have such an interest... and lo and behold, in 1950 we hear that N&W is signing a contract for a turbine-electric... the little 'artist's rendition' of which is EXACTLY the chassis of the turbine-mechanical V1, and not the Baldwin turbine-electric.However, by a couple of years later, N&W confirmed that the locomotive was to have electric, traction-motor drive (it's a whole article in Railway Age) and by that time the general details of the 600psi watertube boiler, chain grate like the M2 Automatic, and so forth were mature. I do not think, however, that the design had gone to span-bolstered trimounts like the ones that ultimately appeared on the TE1 (Jawn Henry)
This was an early version of Jawn Henry or a different locomotive never made? Only for freight or also passenger locomotive?
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