BaltACDSounds like posting needs to be done from other than your phone.
Phone is what I have in the field; I'm seldom where I have wireless access on the laptops.
Overmod Sara T Loads / lots? lots of loads? loads a lot! Lots and lots of lock and load... that ought to be a punk song. My crApple criPhone kept correcting 'lots' to 'loads' automatically just as I went to save the post; did it at least four times by actual count. Meanwhile excuse unedited quoted lines at the end; I have to save every 5 minutes or so or the page will reload and delete my loads and loads of posting.
Sara T Loads / lots? lots of loads? loads a lot!
Lots and lots of lock and load... that ought to be a punk song. My crApple criPhone kept correcting 'lots' to 'loads' automatically just as I went to save the post; did it at least four times by actual count.
Meanwhile excuse unedited quoted lines at the end; I have to save every 5 minutes or so or the page will reload and delete my loads and loads of posting.
Sounds like posting needs to be done from other than your phone.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Overmod,
(deleted, never mind, it won't happen)
Sara 05003
Sara THelp, he's asking me for a design!
And did I mention I've wanted to hear Nancy and Ann do Stairway for... more years than I care to think about?
Overmod, no, that's ok, no problem. I just picked it up, never mind. I don't care about little blops I got them too, only see them afterwards.
(deleted, forget it!)
Sara TLoads / lots? lots of loads? loads a lot!
Meine Güte! Would there be danger one axle slips under the firebox or the last is rather with the first coach?
If this goes on, I will start drawing my first steam locomotive and with bogies free to swivel independently, I tell you!
Why, if you need eight axles, why not a 4'4' or if you prefer a 3'5' bogie arrangement (UIC system counting axles not wheels)?
The C1a tender (with 64T and a water bottom) could in theory have eight-axle trucks, since most of the 'overhang' effect on turntables (or in balance) is changed by the 'trailing' truck. Exactly where the two trucks for that would go is TBA, but we could get reasonably close... fthe stoker trough gets progressively plated off as the huge coal pile empties, so the fuel weight will stay reasonably between the truck bearing points over a long range of drawdown...
There are suspension and guiding advantages to the Centipede; some of the rationale is described (in an early version) in the Locomotive Cyclopedias. Interestingly Kiefer noted at one point that the 'lateral guiding' touted for the original Fabreeka-shear-spring lateral suspension was not observed to the extent claimed. This was also the conclusion when the same approach was tried by N&W on a Y-class with outside-bearing trucks.
... such a loco with a "big behind" could sweep off anything standing too near to the turntable, including a mighty punch to the front of a new E8 diesel - heeheehee.
Yes, I saw and read them now. Ok, yes, nice. Loads / lots? lots of loads? loads a lot!
05003
Sara T>>Besides, with diesels << .. and below to end: no comment? would you agree with me? you can't be earnest ...
Sara TOh, yes it does. Provided, as I wrote before: you position the truck or the lead truck and the three fixed axles properly lengthwise so to take 3/5 and 2/5 of the total weight.
The concern is with placing the truck pivots at the appropriate balance points for weight distribution and still have them under the tender and able to pivot independently of each other. With much of the weight forward, the three-axle truck might have to be pushed forward to get its pivot under the rear 3/5 worth of mass, with the two-axle truck now having to be even further forward. Not that this is wrong; in fact there can be advantages to having the 'lead' tender truck far forward. I can think offhand of German, British, and Japanese prototypes that did so.
I don't remember whether this is a water-bottom tender with solid cast under frame or made lightweight. That might affect placement of the reversed pivots.
The colossal overhang at the rear of some of the pedestal tender designs is a different example of the concern. Not all of it is to shorten the tender so everything fits on a shorter turntable...
I don't know if a true balance study was made of the 64-ton "4-10-2" tender in the C1a proposal, but it would be interesting to see where that trailing axle wound up 'optimized' in position. I have read a number of different accounts of that 'next step' in pedestal-tender enlargement but I don't recall seeing any dimensioned drawings.
[Norfolk and Western] even made a promotion film of "the modern steam locomotive" explaining rationally why for them the steam loco was still the better choice. For a coal carrying railroad, the fuel came practically for free. ... it would have been interesting if with all the mergers Norfolk Southern would today run modern 2-6-6-6 and 4-10-6 (Juniatha's proposal) locomotives to be externally controlled in combination with the inevitable diesels. (ohh - what sweet music is coming up right now, sorry I got to stop, lean back and dream myself away - bye!)
... it would have been interesting if with all the mergers Norfolk Southern would today run modern 2-6-6-6 and 4-10-6 (Juniatha's proposal) locomotives to be externally controlled in combination with the inevitable diesels.
(ohh - what sweet music is coming up right now, sorry I got to stop, lean back and dream myself away - bye!)
Sweeter music still... the right locomotive for N&W wasn't an overweight tub of an Allegheny, it was the simple adoption of proportional boosting of the LP engine on a Y6 chassis to balance the thrust and compression, so it would behave dynamically like a good simple articulated up to reasonable freight road speed ... 45mph for sure, perhaps 55. With that one little change you can realize much of the silly hype in that movie; the engine that efficiently runs compound can also run freely. In the modern Norfolk Southern operation... almost everything runs 45-55mph, much of it needs monster starting TE, and would benefit from the short length of the time-honored 2-8-8-2 chassis with capable boiler perched above...
>>MILW had to use that truck because of the load of the oil fuel. Interesting to speculate on a true high-speed tender design.
>No, they didn't! They only had to shift the trucks so that the now-at-the-rear six-wheel truck would take 3/5 of the tender weight and the leading truck just 2/5. That's simple, if I can tell that without having designed a locomotive.
I have always thought it interesting that many of the highest-speed American designs have had not just six-wheel, but eight-wheel trucks leading under the tender. (ATSF at least put a pivot on the sideframes to limit the effect of long rigid sideframes...) It is difficult for me to explain how they concluded this was a good idea vs. low-inertial-mass primary on a pair of two-axle frames and a span-bolster arrangement... but then again, in the early '70s I'd have supported chevron primary springs...
>>PRR had lots of money and gangs for lining and surfacing, and used heavy rail.
>I wish I could find that photograph of a Pennsy loco and her front wheel was right in what was an unbelievable "ditch" of a hammered down rail joint. The joint was still present but the rails both were really knocked down over half of the size of the joint and bent outwards. It was unbelievable.
During parts of WWII I can imagine deferred maintenance in some key areas -- parts of Enola yard, for example -- to get to the state you mention: a low joint allowing itself to be hammered increasingly lower. But that would be a curiosity on the PRR.
There are a number of historical accounts by section foremen and other responsible PRR track-maintenance figures that tell the amount of work that was required... I don't remember where they could be found, but a few questions on the PRR groups.io group would likely get the old heads talking. One very funny (although only in long retrospect!) story I was told involved a PRR train with an important official unexpectedly being run at speed over a section of track being supported on rail jacks. Somehow this didn't derail it, but you can bet everything inside the cars was well shaken, and the inhabitants stirred. The narrator was sure he was going to be fired, but the official said 'the ride was so smooth once we got to the part you had done that I couldn't fault you'.
Fine and smooth ... for three weeks, when it would be knocked out enough to go back and do it all over again.
>Yes, I doubt that Pennsy in contrast to the all-American "shareholder value" spent more than a minimum of maintenance on track upkeep.
>US railroads haven't learned even today what a huge contribution to lowering maintenance costs of both permanent way and rolling stock a well-maintained track can provide.
Where we're presently shortsighted is in perpetuating removal if multiple tracks, often for wacky legal or tax reasons, and tolerating more track-damaging operation than I'd consider sensible, for example with flat wheel policies. We never got out of an adversarial safety model, either. Remains to be seen how the various 'neo-privatized' passenger railroads manage the necessary high quality ... or fail.
>>soaked and soaked and soaked PRR for development money.
>Then they should have made a good deal, or did they lose the money the way they gained it?
I suspect there were reasons, perhaps between the PRR board or management and the capital consortium that controlled Baldwin at the time, for why PRR happily kept stoking away with the dollars. It was a HELL of a lot of money for one engine, no matter how large or how sophisticated.
>they could have bought a fleet of eight-engine Essl Baldwins...
Essl was Swiss; it might be fun to trace the actual etymology of his name. It might be Romansh, alsch'bereit.
>>The service density then justified the wonderful and sometimes heroic servicing that had to be done.<<
>No, not in my opinion! No way of density could justify keeping to an outmoded way of handling with extra manpower and work.
>As I wrote before, the technology was not up to date and the handling was neither, no wonder it fell behind diesel power.
>Had the diesels been handled in the same old-fashioned way, they would not have saved anything.
One of the very smart things Kettering and Dilworth arranged was the power assembly with unit mechanical injector and rack. If you look at a typical EMD 'station' in the early diesel years, it is often comparatively small... and largely occupied with a number of each of the parts that might be needed to repair the common things needing attention. That was not as well-evolved on E7s as it was on E8s; when much of the service involves expensive parts that are all replaced without holding the unit out of service more than hours, and there is no X-day sort of requirement to run extensive but optimized rebuild every 30 days or so, there get to be practical economies on labor that are worth far more than financed parts and materials.
Besides, with diesels the word always is like you knock off steam and install diesel and instantly you save money.
Standard arguments right through the Thirties were that using 64-odd precisely machined and very, very expensive cylinders to do the work of two was ridiculous. Baldwin gave up on selling the Essl locomotive because they couldn't make it at a cost that would let them sell it at a profit, and that was about as far as they went with it. EMD had to sell $625,000-odd dollars of fragile and somewhat maintenance-critical hardware to do a job that a good modern locomotive costing about $180,000 could often do. That was an understood given before an EMD salesman would even get in the door. Had the railroads in the United States not had great credit after the windfall boom of war traffic, it is doubtful they could have been able to dieselization either as quickly or massively as they did... and the fact that so many of them did, and quickly too, indicates there's more to the practical appeal than just the diesel starting any train it can pull.
I winced reading that story about export sales to DB. It reads as if the EMD salesmen didn't bother to understand the technical staff's needs and preferences, let alone show the effects of where the prospective economies on the one hand and potential operating improvements on the other -- or to demonstrate them effectively in a German context. They didn't deserve to make a sale even if their product had offered contemporary advantage.
>No word at all about costs of buying or leasing diesels, while really it laid the foundation for later bankruptcy of a number of railroads. Really to pay off the turnover costs by just some 10% lower running costs was like paying a Rolls Royce by your dishwashers salary.
>>neither Alco nor Lima seems to have even looked twice at what the duplex technology promised,<<
>And it was never realized, not even in the T1. Still, it is obvious that with four smaller cylinders (and adequate valve gear) power output cannot be but superior to a loco with two larger cylinders and inadequate valve gear.
The interesting conclusion on PRR, very irritatingly to me, was that for PRR's actual needs it was not superior. The Q2 was a magnificent achievement ... for running wartime freight in 150-car trains at high speed, then turning quickly to return on another such train. In a postwar world of 50mph freight, the added maintenance of the four cylinders didn't justify the improvement over, say, a J1a 2-10-4 with the drivers upsized to 70" via larger tires. No terrifying boiler steel shortcomings, no complicated and poorly-implemented slip systems, and a water rate assuring stops every division at full output (the thing that killed the original V1 cold as soon as PRR saw practical F-unit power). It could be argued just as strongly that advanced modern construction and maintenance with lightweight rods and good balancing practice on a 10-coupled was all that would be needed out of a single locomotive, just as a Mallet chassis with two six-wheel engines represented all that was needed out of a locomotive with two.
Had the 87-car law passed in 1937, or the decision about firemen on trailing diesels gone the other way, or turbocharging and then traction alternators and then reliable electronics and AC synthesized drive been adopted, we might have seen areas of steam renaissance long before now.
>I only learned the Niagara had an insufficient volume of cylinders for the boiler output and then the valve gear was already inadequate. Juniatha could have laid that down precisely, but: writes here no more!
She'll tell you, though, and that's what's important... In my opinion, one big issue with Niagaras was that you couldn't reliably get anything like 'nominal' high-end boiler output out of them in practice; you'd get carryover at some point and the lightweight drive components wouldn't survive that. Almost from the beginning you see the Niagara being reduced in potential, starting with pressure reduction and less exotic steel in boiler construction; when the vaunted five-valve poppet heads are provided, lo and behold! the installation is tinkered to provide lower horsepower with higher fuel and water efficiency. Baker with full Multirol pin-jointing ought to be fine for piston valves of appropriate construction up to 85mph, just as Walschaerts proved to be on the PRR T1a... again, could better results come from a more precise gear and twin valves? probably... but could the cost have justified the benefit for what NYC needed to make its money?
>For me, it suffices that full output was at 56% cut off, way too long for good use of the heat in the steam.
I suspect that this is an artifact from the original design of the locomotive as a 75"-drivered incremental step up from the L4 Mohawks. In part I see it as what you do to make a nominal 6000hp out of an engine more comfortable and probably far more cost-effective operating services that let its horsepower peak come at properly shorter cutoff.
>>It doesn't take much reverse 'leverage' on mileage or sustained speed before the enormous fixed costs of steam support are less and less favorable -- and meanwhile EMD produced the E8, which was enormously better and more reliable than the E7.<<
>Seen from outsides the Americans were mightily proud of their steam locos, one American I met over here on a steam special put it concisely as "We always had the biggest and the best!" On the other hand, you don't seem to trust them all that much, it is never questioned that any shabby old diesel was off hands better than the latest of steam. If that's your idea of US steam, where were they the "the best"?
>I wrote already that no extremely intense use of the locomotives could make up for or justify an out-of-date handling with many superfluous procedures, some even to the disadvantage of upkeep.
Note that it's really the other way around: you have to have the optimized maintenance, the equipment and parts, the careful training and supervision and creation of a spirit of eclat before you'll ever get intensive use out of modern steam power.
>It appears that European and especially, excuse me, German steam loco maintenance and running was much more to the point and organized to keep the locos at a minimum of maintenance work and manpower.
Little question in my mind that was so. Some US-American chauvinists may try to say 'it's because they had to retain steam' and, indeed, over the years for various reasons much of the 'commodity' use of steam has gone.
>That's why this comparison between a US diesel and the 03-10 class three cylinder Pacific went bad for the diesel.
I would also add in passing that the country that produced the Amerika-Loks had no reason to go 'desperately' anywhere for workable diesel solutions.
>>567-engined E units
>Your answer to that humoresque item is as earnest as all others before. Overmod, what's the matter, why are you so tight and straight? You should get more laid-back, more easy, maybe you should try Yoga, it makes you let loose all that burdens you, live now, take it easy.
>Same with my paragraph below my signature: it was a description of what happens to me ever so often: I can't sleep and do all kinds of things at night, even go to the forum. That's no complaint but tells you why I make a comment at dead of night 5h in the morning. Then again I sleep mornings till noon .. that's my twisted mess of time arrangement.
I found this one from the bay, no idea who made the model but I really want to see more pics of it.
Sara T. There was one railroad that did know and practise proper maintrenance of steam and also designed and used steam locomotives as optimum as possible, and that was the Norfolk and Western. Their routine measures did not need to be heroic to turn power in a few hours and maximize the return on investment in modern steam power. I suspect their dieselization, when it finally did come, was due as much to a new managemenet prejudice than actual economics. Of course, if they had waited lohg enough polution standards and even global warming might have forced the decision.
If they had wished, they probably could have secured the patents for the necessary applyances and made them in-house.
Sara TEspecially directly following left /right alternating branchings are dangerous, the momentum built up in the first curve crushes at full force to the other side in the second curve (excuse my simplified explanation, I'm not an engineer)...
https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_Milton1955.pdf
A detail mentioned here is that a common factor observed in this and other crossover accidents was 'bursting' of the track toward the trailing points, without the locomotive either 'climbing the rail' or overturning. The interesting observation is that there was no gauge or other damage to the section between curves in the crossover, which leads me to wonder if the force on the track is in part complicated by train run-in against the engine, as in the Gulf Curve accident on New York Central in 1940.
Overmod:
>>Press Run Coronation Scot had been lined across not just one but several crossovers to put the train several tracks off any sort of straight line through.<<
Especially directly following left /right alternating branchings are dangerous, the momentum built up in the first curve crushes at full force to the other side in the second curve (excuse my simplified explanation, I'm not an engineer), see the accident of an express on DB at Brühl in the year 2000, going too fast through an alternating branching in a station where the main track was under construction.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenbahnunfall_von_Br%C3%BChl
The speed was more than three times the limited speed set for the cross over, because the driver of the 101 class electric had believed he had a free road from now on. That was not the case and the electric ended up in the terrace of a nearby house, the coaches were folded and scattered all over the place, it was quite horrible. Cause: unclear setting of permanent signalling.
>>The tender had it the wrong way around: the four wheel truck belonged front because it guides better and adjusts better in curves.
Still more: putting a Commonwealth truck of that style leading on a tender is not a wise choice. Compare the general style used on the NYC Baldwin diesel Gravel Gerties ...
MILW had to use that truck because of the load of the oil fuel. Interesting to speculate on a true high-speed tender design.
That said: Alfred Bruce of Alco more than hinted that he saw the As run faster than 128mph, more than incidentally. I would not like to see Commonwealth truck behavior at that speed.
>> on PRR's nominally better track,<<
>What? that wobbly erratic nailed track on trifle sandy ballast was better than the Hiawatha's? How bad was that one?
PRR had lots of money and gangs for lining and surfacing, and used heavy rail. Looking at either the Milwaukee track or what CB&Q ran early Zephyrs over will curl your hair!
>>NYC-style high-speed track-pan<<
>80 mph max .. oohm ..
85 mph ... and could have been higher with a little better ducting and vent design in the cistern. Truthfully though, that was as fast as NYC needed to run trains at that time.
>>It would be hard to speculate on which of the likely suspects for ending development might be.<<
>That's one of your patented Overmod-sentences which leave me mind boggled. Ok, maybe it's my lack of knowledge of US parlance.
No, it's just too florid. What I meant was that even by 1935 many things were stacking up to give PRR a better high-speed steam locomotive for their actual railroad than the E8 would be. And that before we consider electrification for much of the real money-earning high-speed trackage.
>>Baldwin depression-boondoggle that was S1<<
>Wasn't it a combined effort by all the three builders, Chrysler, Ford and General Motors, oohm, sorry, you know what I mean?
It was, but it was Baldwin that apparently did the final detail design and much of the fabrication, and more to the point soaked and soaked and soaked PRR for development money, all in the throes of the second Depression. If I recall, Chris Baer went through the Hagley records and PRR paid something over $3.2 million (!) gold dollars on various projects and plans; much of the colossally useless size and complexity are almost surely associated too. One notes with some despair that neither Alco nor Lima seems to have even looked twice at what the duplex technology promised, unless you count the C1a which Alco didn't do the critical research on. For what PRR (over)paid on a locomotive that couldn't even access key parts of their system, they could have bought a fleet of eight-engine Essl Baldwins and had an actual 120mph passenger locomotive in 1939.
I'm glad, of course, that they built the S1, and I'm sorry they never had a real place or a real service to use it, and never came remotely near getting All That Money back out of it, and then sold it expediently for 30 pieces of silver in the end.
>Building a loco too long for the given railroad track and curves wasn't unique for them, Krupp in Germany managed the equivalent with the two 06 class 4-8-4: they just didn't make it to go around at least 180 m radius curves common on DR, they just made it to jump the rail in that case. The 45 class with even longer driven wheel base made it, but it was designed by Henschel. With the 52 class Degenkolb brushed away such fuss and she went through 100 m radius curves and even tighter, too.
I have never really quite understood how the key mistakes were made on the 06, which is one of my favorite 'fan' engines even though it didn't run too well. I'd love to get my hands on one to 'Chapelonize' it, and then find a service worthy of what it could do.
>>developing as two Atlantics comparable to E8s under a common boiler<<
>How should I figure that? as a Garratt 4-4-2 + 2-4-4...?
>I'm using PRR's language for the design. PRR had something of an obsession with four-coupled engines for true high speed well past the date modern balancing made F7 Hudsons and S1 Niagaras practical; they seem to have thought that mind bendingly high speed was reached by 460, the "Lindbergh Engine" for example. They thought of the Duplex as the engines of two Atlantics running independently, sharing one four-wheel guide truck and siamesing the two trailing trucks into one to carry the now-double-size firebox and circulators.
This being the original idea, of course, the one that was B&O 5600 Emerson duplex-proportioned, before the project ballooned into six-wheel trucks and 7800-odd nominal horsepower that couldn't be used at any speed PRR cars would ride acceptably.
>>even Niagaras were hard put, even with special circumstances all in their favor, to compete with those.<<
>.. even with special circumstances all in their favor? As far as I have heard it was the other way around if you are talking of the famous comparison tests with the diesels: the first choice favorable trains and circulation was given to the diesels, only what was then left was given to the Niagaras.
Re-read the test account (a version is free to read online at Hathitrust). What was rigged severely in the Niagaras' favor was precisely that they had guaranteed high-speed turns, a short time apart, with little necessary slow or dead time. The service density then justified the wonderful and sometimes heroic servicing that had to be done.
Meanwhike if you look at the maintenance expense and delays assigned to the diesel, they reflect an early version of E units, few in number on a road not fully invested in quick maintenance or spares and dependent on a great many specialty parts and a great deal of know-how not institutionalized yet.
Where your argument is better is after the testing, as NYC for pure marketing reasons touted 'Dieseliners' for all the best trains... and the overall patronage and profitability of much of the 'rest' of the Great Steel Fleet, particularly the guaranteed fast mileage promised by multiple sections, was falling off a cliff as early as the late '40s. It doesn't take much reverse 'leverage' on mileage or sustained speed before the enormous fixed costs of steam support are less and less favorable -- and meanwhile EMD produced the E8, which was enormously better and more reliable than the E7.
It is possible to replicate some of the tabular cost and performance data as presented in the 1947 survey forward into following years. Doing that, with accurate personnel costs year over year, shows how even efficient modern steam maintained as well as good management can provide for, is at a disadvantage, one which accelerates hideously as the many specialized auxiliaries cease to be manufacturable at any price a railroad will pay, and the labor market forever eliminates railroad shop service as a cost-effective cheap and dead-end career choice.
And then comes 1954, and the proxy fight, and that execrable banty rooster Young and his orders to Perlman and the cost-cutting everywhere. A future in which stripper trains with diner decor became the great shining promise for lightweight service... until four months later it's obvious less than nobody cares. No place for Niagaras in that world even if they ran consistently with indifferent maintenance and operation... which they certainly did not.
>And they still won the competition if you read the report properly (superficially it can be read the other way around, that was one of the shortcomings of the report; according to my earlier personal information from Juniatha)
They won the comparison in 1946. It is not likely they would if it were conducted in 1949. They would lose in 1954, and be unsustainable ... well, about the time they actually did, by 1956.
>>567-engined E units<<
>Add.: Why was it called the 5-6-7 engine? because that was the simplest naming and the best to remember by such plain minded guys like Pearlyman, Alfred (like the later Mad magazine character, heeheehee).
Think of it as 'easy as 1-2-3' but more advanced, like Arthur Clarke using HAL to get 'one up on IBM'.
By the time the engine got into C-block detail design it would run forever with comparatively easy maintenance. By the time it was practically turbocharged, it could supplant most of the remaining surviving steam, and then you got the 645E and early F, and then the 710. Consider the RB3600, which is basically little more than an E unit with turbos on the engines. Had there been the demand for truly high-speed passenger operation that the 1947 ICC train-control order slammed the door on, two of those could handle any consist the best and fastest high-speed reciprocating locomotive could -- or scale down to 1800hp just by isolating prime movers. Then consider the reasons the design was never built -- two-engine units ballooning to 6600hp on the one hand, and a single 645-20 easily making the power of the double-engined unit in the shape of first the SDP35 and then FP45... I didn't much care for what the cowls looked like, but they were very serviceable as first passenger and then 90mph freight engines.
1956 was also the year GE woke up to understand that enormous HP per cylinder could be efficiently produced out of the Cooper-Bessemer design that produced the 7FDL. In between the 645/710 and the GE engines, it has never been possible in all these years to promote a cost-effective steam design for production, and that's not because GM threatened to pull car deliveries from railroads keeping steam.
>steam stays at full 285 psi, I have to go take a drink of water, then go back, steam is at 280, creeps up to 285 again, safety valves start to sizzle, I have to move again .. and so on and so on .. Ambrosia - Drink of Water...You know, if you were on a proper direct-steam system, you'd be circulating at 285 continuously, with the pressurizer modulating electric heating elements as in a nuclear PWR, and you wouldn't need a fire until 20 minutes before getting up. Part of what was becoming common practice in the States... while there was still demand for it.
I have been looking for actual drawings of the E8 for many years. I suspect there is something at the Hagley museum in Delaware but I haven't had the time and health together to go researching.
What we know is that it would have 84" drivers, very lightweight running gear, and oil firing. This was at the time of the Hiawatha development and I suspect the rationale was the same: light extremely fast power for use on comparatively short and lightweight streamlined trains. I expect the tender wouldn't have to have the odd wheel arrangement of the Hiawathas, on PRR's nominally better track, but it would be just like PRR to try stretching their range at high speed... without NYC-style high-speed track-pan arrangements.
It would be hard to speculate on which of the likely suspects for ending development might be. Most successful streamline rapidly developed to where larger equipment and more powerful locomotives (with 84" drivers too) would give the best return on investment. The Steamotive concept,which PRR apparently embraced for a time, was publically revealed in late 1936, and the Westinghouse steam-turbine alternatives with more conventional pressure and atmospheric exhaust only a few years later. Of course the Baldwin depression-boondoggle that was S1 development was also developing as two Atlantics comparable to E8s under a common boiler, with the follow-on 4-8-4 sized locomotive capable of E8 speed on 80" drivers...
And then there were 567-engined E units -- PRR had a pair on order in 1941, but the War canceled it. By the time that order could be filled, it was as E7s, and even Niagaras were hard put, even with special circumstances all in their favor, to compete with those.
Those of you with a technical interest in watertube boilers might be interested in the July 1940 issue of the ASME transactions (v62 n5 commencing p367)
http://cybra.lodz.pl/Content/6095/Trans_vol.62_no.5_1940.pdf
The original full description of Steamotive in the ASME journal was in the Feb 1937 issue (v49 n1 pp78-82) but I can't find an online version -- I'd bet wanswheel can.
Yes, these are turboelectric -- the key is the term "Steamotive".
This was the plan to compete with what was then developing 'streamliner' diesel power; at the time of origin this would have been the state-of-the-art of the early GM two-strokes, perhaps even before the advent of the 201A.
The design was fully mature by late 1936, and described at the 57th annual meeting of the ASME (Nov 30 to Dec 4 1936). A contemporary account describes this as a 'flash boiler' comparable to the one Barney Oldfield used in 1909 and notes that the version described used "a quarter-mile of small pipes all in a space the size of an office desk". The experimental plant was installed at one of GE's ex-Thomson-Houston facilities in Lynn, MA -- 1500psi, originally with a suicidal 1050 degree F temp, reduced to 900 in practice. Naturally this involved distilled water and careful automatic control of the firing, and full condensation (which, like the later enginion AG design, could be justified with the lower mass flow nominally required). Turbines in this system were quite small for the developed horsepower... they were dwarfed in mobile applications by their own exhaust plenum.
This is the system used, and reasonably well documented, in the two UP steam turbines of 1938. These made 2500hp at 40,000lb/hr, 1500psi/950F according to the B&W SM-9L dataplate. The system was originally designed to scale all the way to 10,000hp, and we might gauge the expected horsepower of the PRR designs by seeing the practical motor power per driver axle before slip set in to spoil the party -- these perhaps involve 428A motors which would have been common to what PRR planned to use with the electrification west to Pittsburgh after 1938.
Michael Duffy (in Electric Railways, 1880-1990, 2003) describes Steamotive as a market failure by 1940, but I think this is evidently an economic and not a technical assessment. What is obvious to me is that the practical introduction of the 567 represented a better way to use liquid fuel... and a great many PRR experiments in this epoch, from the E8 Atlantic through the Steins motor-truck designs to these turboelectrics, involved some form of liquid-fuel firing.
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