It seems that Locomotive using condensing tender was very rare, this pic is Class 25 and Type CZ condensing tender from South Africa, c. 1970. Looking at it makes me feel thirsty.
Speaking of German Locomotive, one of my favoite had a similar fate like PRR S1, which is the BR 06 001 and 002, the only two "Northern" type German ever made, also the most powerful two. The smoke lifters on them was something the PRR T1 really needed.
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
M636CThe perceptive publishers felt that a new title might better suit their market so it was retitled "Wheels must Turn" apparently a wartime propaganda message.
Indeed it was, more completely as "Räder müssen rollen für den Sieg", and you can watch YouTube clips that contain it, as here:
One wonders whether 'Wheels must Roll for Victory' is really all that different from Ziel's title, and of course it would have been familiar to many prospective readers?
Jones1945"Mallet of Borsig. The original was built in 1943 to carry a load of 1,700 tons at an 8-degree gradient. 148 tons and top speed 80 km/h"
Jones1945I don't know what is the function of the condenser on the tender of this version...
Reducing the effective water rate.
Note that it is possible this only involves recovering part of the exhaust, not going to the trouble of implementing a full draft-fan rebuild (with expensive and hard-to-maintain components; did Henschel figure out before the War how to make char-resistant fan configurations as on the latter South African class 25s?) and I think that is what you see here.
I also seem to remember that some quasi-condensing design arrangements retained a full blastpipe front end for use when the full capacity of the condenser was not needed (or could not be achieved).
M636C ......Locomotives with condensers were built for service on the Russian front owing to unreliability of water supplies for locomotives. The condenser allowed longer runs between stops for water. The Soviet Railways had built condensing versions of the SO class 2-10-0 prior to WWII for the same reason......
......Locomotives with condensers were built for service on the Russian front owing to unreliability of water supplies for locomotives. The condenser allowed longer runs between stops for water. The Soviet Railways had built condensing versions of the SO class 2-10-0 prior to WWII for the same reason......
Locomotives with condensers were built for service on the Russian front owing to unreliability of water supplies for locomotives. The condenser allowed longer runs between stops for water. The Soviet Railways had built condensing versions of the SO class 2-10-0 prior to WWII for the same reason. The 2-6-8-0 was intended for service in Russia, so a condensing version seems quite reasonable, although I haven't seen any drawings of one. The model includes a a pipe on the left side for conveying exhaust steam to the condenser. There is however no indication of the fitting of an exhaust fan to replace the blast pipe since no steam would be exhausted to the atmosphere. The tender is the type fitted to the Class 52 2-10-0 and would probably be too small for normal service on the 2-6-8-0. It does allow the model manufacturer to issue another model where the lack of a prototype must reduce the chances of criticism.
Peter
M636C ......One of these is fairly well known, as a result of Maerklin making a model of an early Borsig suggested design, a 2-6-8-0. Maerklin gave it a road number in the "53" series, but with a 20 ton axleload it would have had a number in the "40" group, "46" being the lowest available. Borsig's other proposal was a three cylinder 2-10-4 with a booster and coupling rods on the trailing truck, giving a wheel arrangement of 1' E 2'b h3.
......One of these is fairly well known, as a result of Maerklin making a model of an early Borsig suggested design, a 2-6-8-0. Maerklin gave it a road number in the "53" series, but with a 20 ton axleload it would have had a number in the "40" group, "46" being the lowest available. Borsig's other proposal was a three cylinder 2-10-4 with a booster and coupling rods on the trailing truck, giving a wheel arrangement of 1' E 2'b h3.
Very interesting, Peter. I wish there is a book record all the proposed, never built locomotive around the world! Some pic of the 2-6-8-0 avalible on the web:
"Mallet of Borsig. The original was built in 1943 to carry a load of 1,700 tons at an 8-degree gradient. 148 tons and top speed 80 km/h"
Overmod ......I had thought all the PRR eight-wheel trailing trucks were radically different in both construction and principle from the ATSF version (which much more closely follows Buckeye principles, like those in a three-piece freight truck). This adds particular interest to the use of this particular design on so fast a locomotive.
......I had thought all the PRR eight-wheel trailing trucks were radically different in both construction and principle from the ATSF version (which much more closely follows Buckeye principles, like those in a three-piece freight truck). This adds particular interest to the use of this particular design on so fast a locomotive.
ATSF 2912's tender trucks, a different arrangement of brake cylinders.
The only one pic of S1's tender from Hagley, note the Builder Plate was painted in DGLE except the number of the locomotive before it was sent to 39 World Fair.
I thought I might mention a couple of little-known Duplex designs that remained unbuilt, and probably for the best.
I was looking at German War Locomotives 1939-1945 by Alfred Gottwalt. It mentions the broad gauge railway and illustrates a two unit turbo electric condensing locomotive roughly similar to that illustrated in an earlier post. It also mentions that Adolf Hitler was concerned that 3m gauge (10'0") might not be adequate and that it should be increased to 4 metres....
It does go into greater detail on larger standard gauge locomotives intended for use in Russia. These were to be built to a 20 ton axleload, while the Russians themselves were concentrating on locomotives of 18 tons axleload, and I'd guess the Russians knew more about the track than the Germans.
One of these is fairly well known, as a result of Maerklin making a model of an early Borsig suggested design, a 2-6-8-0. Maerklin gave it a road number in the "53" series, but with a 20 ton axleload it would have had a number in the "40" group, "46" being the lowest available. Borsig's other proposal was a three cylinder 2-10-4 with a booster and coupling rods on the trailing truck, giving a wheel arrangement of 1' E 2'b h3.
There were a couple of 2-12-0 and 2-12-2 designs, generally three cylinder but eventually someone suggested a 2-14-0 which was, amazingly, two cylinder so described as 1'G h2.
However, eventually the Vienna Locomotive Works suggested a Duplex. Someone had been reading about Emerson's work for the B&O and what emerged was a 2-6-6-2 with cylinders each end and a choice of two water tube fireboxes, with and without combustion chamber. What could possibly go wrong?
The Germans managed to lose the war (and more particularly the Russian campaign) without assistance from any of these designs, and the 42s and 52s performed well enough for the Russians to keep many of them right up to the end of steam, although Warsaw pact nations found that they were offered many, possibly without the option of refusal.
This book had a subtitle "Railways in World War II, part 2"
The back cover describes "part 1" which was a reprint of Ron Ziel's book "Steel Rails to Victory" translated to German. The perceptive publishers felt that a new title might better suit their market so it was retitled "Wheels must Turn" apparently a wartime propaganda message.
Jones1945Is that fan-shaped thing inside the red cycle, which supporting the weight of the firebox and cab on the trailer truck is the "inverted-rocker centering device" aka stabilizing rocker?
Yes. Note also the inclined planes on the part of the frame that rests on the roller to provide the restoring force, and the substantial casting that the 'foot' of the roller rests on, a kind of 'chair' that bolts to the trailing-truck frame casting in the kind of place visible in some of the other pictures.
I had thought all the PRR eight-wheel trailing trucks were radically different in both construction and principle from the ATSF version (which much more closely follows Buckeye principles, like those in a three-piece freight truck). This adds particular interest to the use of this particular design on so fast a locomotive.
Trailing Truck of Q1 4-6-4-4 #6130:
Q1 4-6-4-4 #6130 Trailing truck with booster.
The 6-wheel trailing truck of S1 and S2(Steam Turbine) :
S1's tender trucks, once exchanged with 6110's tender trucks for testing, returned after the test. ATSF 2900s 4-8-4 used the same model, probable a design from Baldwin.
Quote feature is screwed up again; here is the three-dollar tour of the general logic behind the stabilizing rollers:
I do not have good records of online illustrations for the following, but you may want to go through the history of trailing trucks (particularly the change from 1st to 2nd-type Delta) and look a bit at the general knowledge of what '20s trailing trucks did and didn't do well.
Most of the early accommodations for trailing axles in locomotives with low fireboxes did not hinge-pivot them following the Bissel formula; about the closest would be Cartazzi axles which arranged the suspension pedestals to have just the right lateral radius that the wheeltread and flange contact patches would 'track straight' to the inside tangent involved. The chief issue here is that one important thing a trailing truck has to do is to steer the back of the locomotive chassis, and as more and more designs recognized the importance of large radiant area, circulators, heavy cast beds and ancillary machinery at the extreme rear of the locomotive, etc., designs that accomplished lateral compliance with -- well, devices like the lateral-motion devices used on driver cannon boxes, acting only as far back as the hub liners on trailing wheels, there are rapidly-achieved limits on how much stabilizing force you can apply, and the range through which that force can be made to act proportionally, which apply strictly to inside-bearing trailers and somewhat less but still meaningfully intensively to the many 'patent' outside-bearing lever arrangements involved in the pre-Delta trailing truck arrangements, many of which are known by their inventor's or promoter's names.
The Delta two-wheel truck, as perfected, solved the tracking issue with the pivot and axle location, and the equalization issue with onboard levers controlled by the relatively heavy frame structure. However, you may note that simply by extending the truck frame far back in the right way, you can arrange lateral-motion compliance between the extreme rear of the frame and the truck-frame extensions, thereby achieving as long a lever arm as really possible to exert steering force both 'on' and 'to'.
The problem being, as you will quickly notice in a model or with reference to drawings, that the swing is very long -- much longer than an undamped facing-spring arrangement can accommodate without dreadful resonance. (There is an epic story about a Reading 2-10-2 given "sprung" truck steering that was so bad even at drag speeds that someone from shop forces had to come out and weld the arrangement solid to permit getting the train the rest of the way over the road...) The initial arrangement used here took advantage of a happy characteristic of equalized engines: if you use inclined planes in the 'corners', the actual weight of the chassis can serve as the proportional restoring and centering force. It did not take long before the idea of using upside-down heart-shaped cams, or a gear-and-sector approach, cut to use rolling and not sliding tribology, was adapted to give long swing (we see pairs of heart-shaped cams also used for lateral in some Adams pin-guided lead trucks, which among other things allows separate control of small-period lateral oscillation coupling to hunting due to flange clearance or railhead wear vs. progressive curve guidance or Voyce Glaze-style steering against what would otherwise have to be handled by relatively high reciprocating overbalance.
As a peripheral note: you have probably read up on Woodard's clever articulated trailing truck ... and some of the reasons it could be a disaster in practice, particularly when you tried to back the train on a curve. An interesting thing some of these trucks shared with the earlier two-axle Delta trucks was this: the axle spacing is prescribed as part of the Bissel formula, but other considerations -- practical weight distribution to the axles and location of the ashpan arrangements being two -- often dictated a geometrically suboptimal position for the leading trailer axle. Timken devised a highly interesting arrangement that essentially treated a four-wheel trailing truck as a very long single-rear-axle Delta frame, with the forward axle completely free to 'float' laterally in its pedestals, the weight being transferred to it from the frame via a couple of large hardened lateral rollers. The guiding force for the rear of the chassis was only passed to the track through the cone and flanges of the rearmost wheelset; the forward one was essentially weight-bearing only.
"I did some googling. I haven't found anything that conclusively proves what I'm about to say, but it looks like the person being misquoted here is a guy named Darryl Anka, who claims to be channeling a "multi-dimensional extra-terrestrial being" named Bashar. Anka has a web site that I don't want to link to, but I'm sure you will find it if you search for it. I'm reluctant to link to any woo woo sites, but I think I have to post a couple of links, since they are the only evidence we have of where this quote came from. The quote started appearing on the web some time in 2001. (You can use date ranges when you search with Google). http://www.angelvalley.org/assets/pdf/bashar-ides-of-march.pdf [Broken] (titled ‘The Ides of March’, channeling from Bashar by Darryl Anka) is filled with so much nonsense that I can't make myself read it, but it came up in the search results, so I searched the document for "frequency", and found that it ends with the words This is not philosophy! This is physics! Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is physics.​ This web page contains the quote Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality.​ It's attributed to Bashar, not to Einstein. "Reference https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/einstein-misquoted.583449/
Miningman"Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics."
Except that, oh Lord, it's not. This sounds like someone who has confused pop-Einstein with pop-Tesla with about as much actual physics knowledge as someone talking about 'detoxing' and 'cleansing' has medical knowledge.
Resonance is really useful, as are the somewhat more sophisticated versions used in control theory. Note that strange attractors (and other convergent or metastable-convergent functions using sequential probabilities) don't work at all deterministically in the happy idea that what may be true for SHM or electromagnetic radiation accurately describes even small systems of complex reality.
And then we get to what E=MC^2 is derived from, and what it means, and from there we get to quantum mechanics and what the 'numbers' that can be quantum entangled actually represent (hint: it assumes particular structure of matter, and preservation of relationships in that structure across 'distance', in ways that have nothing to do with oscillating frequency in the classical sense).
Much more fun than "frequency" per se is the ongoing discussion of the wave-particle duality in so much of this physics. Just be sure you have the aspirin bottle reasonably near when trying to conceive of what an actual 'photon' represents (and why it has a virtual wavetrain of more than one EM cycle at given wavelength/frequency contained in it...)
There is PLENTY of stuff that was that does not 'still exist'. One case in point should be highly familiar to you: where are the neptunium-series daughters??
And I ask you to consider the numbers that would have to be manipulated to produce a time-stable S1 ... as opposed to one with, say, a gold tooth in its front end, or paint patched for Conrail, or one metric-size tender wheelset. Transfinite numbers, aren't they? Suspect no amount of faith-based reasoning can help extract just the right complexity and phase in just the right area of reality to help with this -- unfortunately. If only Mary Baker Eddy's father had been able to craft a religion...
Miningman Regardless, The S1 should never have been scrapped.
Regardless, The S1 should never have been scrapped.
OvermodNote the difference between a 'main' driver's rod pin and the one on the wheelset with the lateral-motion device installed. That last picture likely does reflect the difference between main and coupled-wheel sets, the item pictured with the lateral-motion device installed and in the foreground therefore being indeed either the first or third wheelset. Suspect these are implemented with concentric 'snubbing' springs rather than any kind of friction damping (as was, I think, more general PRR practice for this stuff at the time). That might be an issue with lateral flange force at high speed, even with good lateral control on the lead truck; there is something of a geometric issue here both in spiral and continuous curve between the 'chord' between lead-truck and trailing-truck-pivot pins projected out to the tread-contact/flange-contact line vs. the actual desired tangency between tread cone, fillet, and (only in last recourse!) actual flange face as the lateral take-up occurs. Resonance here due to underdamping (or the wrong snubbing frequency ranges) might lead to some very poor effects...
ALCO made Lateral Cushioning Devices for the UP FEF-2 locomotives (820-834)
Patent Drawing from Google.
"Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics."
Falsely attributed to Albert Einstein but maybe there is hope for The S1 to be made to appear. Pop! There it is!
(This kind of makes a person's thinking to short circuit...like thinking about infinity).
However I do believe everything that was still is, just not sure how. Have some ideas but way too everything for here.
We do use matching resonance in Geophysics as an exploration tool.
Note the difference between a 'main' driver's rod pin and the one on the wheelset with the lateral-motion device installed. That last picture likely does reflect the difference between main and coupled-wheel sets, the item pictured with the lateral-motion device installed and in the foreground therefore being indeed either the first or third wheelset.
Suspect these are implemented with concentric 'snubbing' springs rather than any kind of friction damping (as was, I think, more general PRR practice for this stuff at the time). That might be an issue with lateral flange force at high speed, even with good lateral control on the lead truck; there is something of a geometric issue here both in spiral and continuous curve between the 'chord' between lead-truck and trailing-truck-pivot pins projected out to the tread-contact/flange-contact line vs. the actual desired tangency between tread cone, fillet, and (only in last recourse!) actual flange face as the lateral take-up occurs. Resonance here due to underdamping (or the wrong snubbing frequency ranges) might lead to some very poor effects...
Photo taken in 1938 in Baldwin workshop, roller bearing (?) equipped on the axle, I don't know If this was built for S1. (Source: Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania)
I tried to find out what happened outside the "Broadway" during the Dark Age of post-war America's railroad history in mid-1950s, which was only merely 10 years after PRR sent S1 to the torch. These two videos from YouTube answered me many questions I haven't even asked yet.
"GREYHOUND BUS LINES GUIDED TOUR 1957 PROMOTIONAL FILM 71122""The Golden Age of Travel | Airline Hostess | 6 Hours on Pan Am 1950's" The general public had more transportation choices, all forms of conspiracy theories aside, the Free Economy was working just fine, until......
Breitspurbahn: Ocean liner on wheels
This is really something I would spend a fortune just to experience......
___________________________________________________________
Well that is something I have not considered. Fascinating.
Also re: Breitspurbahn
Can you imagine having a conversation about Pennsys new 24,700hp
4-12-12-4 + 10-10 + 4-12-12-4. Yeesh.
The Smithsonian Channel covered this fairly well along with some animation on their series on Combat Trains. The Nazi's had over a hundred engineers working on this. They had a lot of plans, lots of locomotive designs, consists fiqured out ( I suppose that swimming pool would be a wave pool), lots of drafting blueprints and scale models but all they got done in the construction was some route surveying.
Didn't John Kneiling have some ideas along these lines as well.
You really think this could be a thing?
If steam do you haul around a lake with the locomotive. The water demand would be gigantic. A boiler mishap would take out a town.
MiningmanThere are other alternatives to a gasoline tax but I mention this as the most likely to temper down extended highway trips.
Oh, there is a much, much better theoretical alternative, one which in fact looked very likely in its earliest years. That is the construction of all modern grade-separated highways compliant with ITS (like the one GM was developing intensively in the '40s) and therefore flexibly and appropriately tolled in a way that can track any traffic pattern or combination of incentives/disincentives reliably. Naturally the minimum rates are set to recover cost of capital and aid in proper operation of the relatively complex automatic machinery ... and can be easily adjusted to keep overused or congested lanes priced to capacity. If that is the expectation for the future of multiple-lane grade-separated parkways, as it was in a lesser sense well into the Fifties, you never get to metastasizing freeways sucking the life out of cities and causing the paving over of downtowns. And more appropriately, it keeps a luxurious and convenient rail service well-enough patronized to make system improvements desirable.
The actual future that should have been starts with J.P. Morgan's railroad expert NOT dying unexpectedly in 1906, but instead leveraging much of the available power of the investment bank into PRR-like grade and capacity improvements on elements of a practical transcon -- this might involve a more successful version of the Reading Combine with a stronger Poughkeepsie Bridge, or a B&O not impoverished by the New York Extension. It is possible that the Hepburn Act wouldn't have gone through as it did had more knowledgeable people lobbied against it, not for cheap advantage but to assure good railroad profitability in depth.
This is just at the time Edison et al. made the enormous strides in practical use of structural concrete, and good-size earthmoving machinery began to appear in civil efforts. It's not difficult to imagine the grading of the Atglen and Susquehanna and the bridges/viaducts of the Lackawanna Cutoff more and more widespread across the parts of the Northeast that constituted the historical bottlenecks both to power and speed.
Now fast-forward to the Twenties, and the PRR plans for New Era reconstruction of substantial parts of some of its main lines for high speed. It is not difficult to figure out a world in which the Depression was caught relatively early as far as its effect on production and factor transportation were concerned, and in this world expansion of both electrified and unelectrified power would run hand in hand with the improvement 'curve' from 1928 on instead of being starved. That is the model for constructing true high-speed trackage from the early Thirties forward, with all the fun stuff done around the world with lightweight push-pull compatible trains finding all the use they deserved, and lightweight but much larger trains taking their place as needed.
Of course, what I've wanted to see ever since the days of 'the case for the double-track train' was the United States version of the German Breitspurbahn: actual grand-hotel style superior to almost anything possible in competition.
(Ok lets try this again ...I lost the response, cannot recover it, somewhere in the Cloud..what a frustration.It was done too! Good grief)
Yeah, Seven of Nine would have made a great spokesperson for Amtrak in the '90's. Legions of men could be lead off a cliff.
As to my theoretical proposal, and the tax angle, I think Truman was the kind of President that would just tell everyone to "suck it up". There are other alternatives to a gasoline tax but I mention this as the most likely to temper down extended highway trips. Both freight and passenger would have benefitted and the Nation as a whole just from an environmental viewpoint or carnage and mayhem. Today it would seem genius, the absolute right thing and without anyone knowing perhaps saved well over a million lives. Ike and Kennedy would have gone along with this, even solidyfying it further and then it becomes a way of life, without question.
Fares would be kept low, as well as sleepers and dining. It is for the common man, not for the wealthy. The wealthy can drive and fly. Target customers would be business folk, travelling salesman, seniors and teens. It is a social benefit of sorts and viewed as an absolute necessity and a viable option. Lets say in due time long distance trains are cut back somewhat as alternatives arrive. Maybe long distance trains become the domain of luxury cruises, not part of this system. The real markets are the intercity East, the West Coast, Texas, Florida, Middle America radiating from Chicago, and isolated areas relying on rail.
Just think a 20-25 year advance on anything running in Japan and Europe today. This would be a source of incredible pride and neccesity.
https://youtu.be/71I7Gq-_BAw
Open the above and enjoy Jeri Ryan aka Seven of Nine
The Commies have taken over
MiningmanI can see the Borg appliances all over you, a-la-Picard.
But consider the advantages -- Seven of Nine with added senses, for example...
The problem is that history is very, very clear about what voters would stand to be taxed for, especially taxed on gasoline. The quid pro quo for the original Highway Trust Fund involved the hard condition that none of the money would be diverted to 'transit' or some mode other than road-building; I in fact would be screaming at the idea of using a gas tax to pay for transit somewhere else from where I live, or as a subsidy to some private railroad so it can make a guaranteed 6% on services I don't use. (Remember this is before the period where the right kind of claims for 'publicizing' whole commuter districts and services could be made, I believe New York State being the first in about 1966, with the utter and complete understanding the stuff would never, ever come remotely near paying for itself.)
I still vividly remember the analogy that was given to me early on in the Amtrak years -- this being back when Volkswagen made a cheap economy car. Running the published numbers indicated that every passenger who rode Amtrak could have been given a Volkswagen and gas to run it a reasonable number of miles a year, at full government expense, and the finances would have come out ahead. And that's platinum mist and far-from-exceptional service on a great many route-miles. Imagine what could have been involved for Turquoise Room level services... or even for attractive cruise trains where all the operational models for food service and entertainment work efficiently.
A division is set up to advance technology and achieve great things for the future, call it a railroad version of NASA but much earlier.
Johnson's High Speed Ground Transportation initiative was just this, and more, and indeed in that 'guns and butter' era plenty of money was thrown at the "modern" alternatives ... unfortunately, all too often the mid-Sixties versions of the lightweight trains of the Fifties, or that early competitor of mag-lev for the scientifiction aficionados, the hovertrain. Again, the idea of a Democratic Party-sponsored system of subsidy of things perceived as, or that could be 'spun' as, rich-folks luxury, with so many programs of the Great Society competing for available funds, is not something I'd wager confidently on.
Also bears noting that this was the era where the 'next step' after the 707 and similar 'jet set' transportation was going to be the practical supersonic transport, which really should have been built to XB-70 technology and not Concorde kludging. And where the world actually went instead was to the Freddy Laker model, where you go New York to the West Coast in about 6 hours for $135 and so fill every seat on colossal aircraft with enormous potential equipment utilization. (Take a look at the flown mileage of the Braniff 'Big Orange' 747 and tell me how anything ever designed or built for Amtrak could compete.)
Overmod-- Oh my. I can see the Borg appliances all over you, a-la-Picard. Even the directed laser beam comes straight thru my screen.
I shall do my best to fight back against assimilation, resistance can be expected.
Lets assume the people at the top are learned folks, a bit more attuned to the future than your average bear. A special meeting is called perhaps even attended by the POTUS and the Railroad CEO's from across the land, to address the alarming trend in passenger train ridership. Since these are concerned leaders and have superb information lets set the date as 1950. Perhaps in the very room the famous Godfather scene was filmed, in Grand Central with the Empire State Express painting on the wall. That part dosent matter, just to add a touch of seriousness to the discussion. UP, Sante Fe, C&NW, Milw, NYC, Pennsy, B&O, GM&O, Monon, Soo Line et al, they are all there. Hundreds of millions have been spent on re-equipping new streamliners. Sleepers and diners are new and plentiful. Service standards are high. Their track is plentiful, dedicated and in tip top shape with knife edge ballast. Even on the Rock Island! War time profits have been correctly used for this. However the trend is undeniable, ridership is dropping off alarmingly, and it is in the nations interest to maintain a strong viable and leadership role in passenger services for the long term and into the future.
I see Truman as a man who will make hard decisions in the Nations interest. I see Ike as a President who has a skeptical eye on what he famously referred to later as the military industrial complex. The Nations interest in this is paramount to him as well, Madison Ave, GM, GoodYear, even the Railroads themselves be damned. He is sympathic and correctly so, as is Truman, to make sure this passenger service is kept alive and well and the investment not be lost. Lets say the rest of it unfolds just as it did. The highway systems, the airports, the St. Lawrence Seaway, all of that. However just before that happens the government takes over all passenger track, the equipment, the stations, the employees in passenger services. The Railroads supply the engineers, for now anyway, and are held to account that passenger trains receive top priority in track superiority where required. Local and State taxes are waived in the Nations interest and due to Federal Ownership, period, over and out. A giant burden is taken away from the railroads, no payment to the railroads involved, tax relief is guaranteed. Maintenance costs are greatly reduced. They must still pay for the upkeep of their own freight tracks, but anything to do with passenger is now cost free. There is a lot of quid pro quo in these negotiations and the details involved but there was a common sense and understanding of the spirit of things back then that perhaps does not exist today.
So yes a cost to the Government. No mandates to make a profit, but a well oiled, robust and modern passenger service is kept intact. A division is set up to advance technology and achieve great things for the future, call it a railroad version of NASA but much earlier. Paid for by the way of a special gasoline tax, which of course also pays for the passenger trains shortfalls. Fares are inexpensive, ditto sleepers and meals. This assures less highway intercity travel and long distance trips. Perhaps North America would have developed incredible and unforseen 'we can only imagine' trains which point the way to responsibility of family and environment, pride, a less frantic and insane society, smarter people and cooler heads.
Another could be a direct guaranttee of $$'s at say a 6% return on all passenger services, covering any and all shortfalls from stations to track work, again paid for thru a gasoline and airport tax. This will insure high levels of service and an incentive not to discontinue trains. It will keep many cars off the highways, but still fine for suburban going to work or the grocery store use but if you are going to visit Aunt Petunia in Moose Jaw, then its a no brainer, one takes the train and the train is available.
Essentially this is what happened but in the exact reverse!
If you showed that picture that Jones1945 put up in his last post, of E8 4312 all beat up with its sad consist, to the CEO's and the POTUS in 1950 they would be horrified and maybe think, and who could fault them, that the Communists took us over. But the guy from GM would be smiling, not only did they destroy the passenger train with a wink and nod from government they got to feed them the poison.
You know it reminds me of your current President who before his inauguration was discussing the costs of the new Air Force One and said "we want Boeing to make money, but not that much money".
MiningmanWe had it and we had it all and a lot of it was new and state of the art.
And the fact that so much of it was gone in two decades, almost across the board, with only the exceptional hanging on, will tell you all that is really needed about the economics. It would be nice to have a 'flagship' level of service on a meaningful national network, or a reasonable American equivalent to the original ICE or Trans-Europ-Express services. But absent a motivated government with the political will and community organizing needed to perpetually throw down thousands of revenue dollars per passenger to provide services for the relatively few at a level inherently targeted to the relatively wealthy ... and that is NOT something American democracy has reasonably provided in most postwar years ... you really can't expect, say, any railroad in the Northeast to pay for that stuff itself.
[quote]In the East there were many places, the important ones, where the trackage was 4 mains, 2 dedicated for passenger, one EB and one WB. Quite a lot of other trackage was 2 mains. It is only now that double tracking is becoming a thing again. The passenger service and its trackage should not have been lost in the first place.[quote]
Of course, this begs something of a question: the safety of typical double-track mains with close spacing and deferred maintenance. Slowing down for all passing traffic is not an unreasonable action, but much of the supposed utility of the separated tracks goes away as it becomes progressively unsafer to traverse them with a closing speed well over a fifth the speed of sound.
And then we come to the BIG thing that was never really very well solved, the issue with local taxation of all that ROW needed for the multiple tracks and other plant. It's easy to snicker at New Haven selling all its stations and then leasing them back, but it takes down an otherwise high-and-trending-higher tendency for locals to skin the perceived octopus because they could. Worse yet, under the Fifteenth Amendment it becomes difficult to impossible for the Federal government to override local and State taxation with a commerce-clause excuse, although there are times when that might have been achievable (right after the Heart of Atlanta decision, for example).
You may also note that one very early thing NYC did was replace an obsolescent four-track main with CTC, reducing an enormous amount of various kinds of cost and liability in the process. Could the other two tracks have been removed if the passenger traffic had remained at classic Great Steel Fleet levels ... albeit operated a bit slower at some times and route segments? Or could CTC over three or four tracks in places provided still more effective fluidity? We won't know, because two-track CTC was perfectly adequate for what NYC ever needed by the time it was operational.
There were several effective ways to prevent this loss and preserve passenger service to a very high standard. (That could be discussed later.) Getting there faster means nothing.
They do need to be discussed, and 'getting there faster' certainly does mean a great deal ... when it is appropriate (as in many corridor services, even today). One of the enormous expenses on LD trains is the necessity of a great many operating trainsets, with all the personnel involved, in order to have even rudimentarily convenient services. "Sailing days" are cute, but let's consider how many big passenger ships are still actively used, let alone fully subsidized, for long-distance point-to-point travel. The only practical way to provide 'daily' service over LD routes is to provide reasonably advanced speed over as much of a prospective route as possible; the economics work much as they do for aircraft. The thought of a California Zephyr built at full price and run as it was, as a cruise train going 45mph all night to let the pax sleep in their costly beds, with all the associated issues in finding and qualifying attendants with the right attitude and aptitudes, reworking the commissary and dining-car kitchen systems, etc. etc. etc. for all the required trainsets on all the required routes, is vaguely terrifying, even if you sweeten the pot with automobile-ferry service (backed up with free or discounted rentals at both ends if the ferried cars aren't promptly available).
Now, I was hoping that the idea that B&O had with Speedliner trains and Reading had with its Wall Streeter service, the idea of fast motor trains with reasonably full amenities for daylight operations, would catch on for the higher level of service and amenities we're expecting here. That wasn't the premise of those ridiculous stripper lightweight fad trains, but note what happened, and why, when some of the idea was tried on the Las Vegas Aerotrain experiment.
It would have been interesting to see what SPV consists for comparable service level (perhaps with 125mph dash capability) might have provided. Heaven knows the bugs that killed that platform were easy enough to solve. Of course you'd have to solve the showstopping issue with the unions and gearing the outer axles... something that was sure not going to happen in the '70s, and perhaps wouldn't happen even now. And at any rate the world has moved on from there technologically, and almost anything even remotely workable has priced itself out of contention for anything but spendthrift and politically distorted regional or local government-backed entities ... I do not notice special concierge service being something in the Florida or Texas private development operations.
Overmod......in fact the power needed may go up dramatically at higher and higher incremental speed ranges, certainly at the point where streamlining becomes functional rather than a marketing device. The point of shortening cutoff at higher speed is not related to 'decreasing horsepower' ......
Overmod To my knowledge, there are no objective tests sustaining a "7200dbhp" figure, and I suspect you would encounter impractical amounts of high-speed slip long before the locomotive would deliver that power through 'two sets of four' in real-world conditions. (You can run the Davis formula for a train operated at the 'design conditions', 1000 trailing tons at 100mph with whatever adjustment for track, streamlining, etc, you care to make to get a kind of Bekenstein bound on what the required horsepower at 100mph would have to be; that's a useful exercise 'for the reader'...)
Overmod Note that the Q2 was tested on the stationary plant, and given a figure in testing of just shy of 8000hp, although I don't know offhand if the S1 was tested at the time that figure was determined.
Overmod There were several spirited discussions involving the 'follow-on' design for the "T2" (code-named '5551') and one of these specifically involved using the S1's equal-length main rods in conjunction with Deem-style conjugation and cheek-plate traction control to eliminate the long frail piston rod on the forward engine.
Overmod Not unless you are Lima and fudging numbers, perhaps for management's advantage, on the only railroad built to tolerate truly extravagant axle loading at the time. (It remains to be considered how strong the VGN trackage was for their versions). On PRR the civil division probably always had enough 'clout' to keep the motive-power department strictly honest on its axle loads, both static and dynamic, in the years such an issue would be of concern.
Overmod ……There is no need for huge investments in New York and Chicago Air Line-style grade- and curve-limited construction or true HSR speeds that are fully sleeper-compatible for any of this traffic, or more southern destinations like St. Louis…….
Overmod …..and to this day you will find people who confidently state the T1 couldn't operate routinely east of the entrance to Pittsburgh station without intolerable derailing/slipping/insert ignorant canard of choice.
Overmod ……you never see the F7s running faster than the low 100s in service, but you do see some fairly spectacular evidence of running-gear failure that for the longest time was covered up in the fan-press coverage of the locomotives. And you see the F7s being taken out of service very early in the game and scrapped suspiciously fast with little attempt to preserve one, even though the replacement dieselization was haphazard at best, as bad or even worse than what happened on PRR.
Overmod In perspective, it is almost impossible that either Q2s or T1s would survive in any service meaningful to them even as late as NYC was operating Niagaras. That means no later than 1956, TrucTrains or no. Those additional couple of years don't change much, if anything, about nostalgia or 'alternative-history' claims for longer working lives for those two classes of locomotive.
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