Temporary replacement for Photo of the Day

[Miningman]

Hope to heck the Photo of the Day feature is not stuck like it is over at Trains. Seems we have missed a couple of days anyway so here is a temporary replacement.

 

CV Train #561 Stafford Springs CT. 

 

1968 PRR last emblem on passenger service. 

 

UP S4 at Kansas City 1965 moving a DD35 'B' #77B around the yard. Apparently the UP ordered the DD35 cabless booster before it ordered the cab unit A's

 

[Overmod]

Miningman

Apparently the UP ordered the DD35B before it ordered the cab unit A's

There is no such thing as a DD35B, any more than there is a South African class 25C.  That locomotive was designed as a cabless booster to be run with smaller, more flexible locomotives for cabs, so it's just DD35.  Put a cab on it and you can call it 'A' ... but that doesn't change the history.

Aha! I hear you say, but UP numbered them as Bs.  As indeed, operationally, they were.  Doesn't change what EMD called them.

[Miningman]

Well heck. Then again that's the point of all this, now we are all well informed. Merci Caboose ! 

[SD70Dude]

That 'side-door Pullman' looks like a Bangor & Aroostook car.

[Miningman]

Yeah that's Bangor and Aroostook alright, pretty snappy looking boxcar series. Have one in N Scale. 

[Miningman]

Ok Good Morning! got your coffee in hand, still a bit fuzzy yet?  ( that's my fav part of the day)... ready for Friday July 17th Photo OTD?

This one has a title : Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle....

Now a quick quiz.

If you were with a crowd of 100 people watching the train what do you think  they would be looking at, fascinated with and talking about?  

Yeah I thought so. 

[Flintlock76]

Yeah, that is a rather odd power mix, a steamer bracketed by diesels.

Whatever works I suppose.

By the way, I loved that shot of those CV units in that New England landscape.  Put me in the mood for waffles with maple syrup!  The dark variety!

[rcdrye]

For you rivet counters, lead unit CV 4924 still had its passenger service boiler.

UP (and SP) ordered DD35s which were intended to run between a pair of GP35s.  UP also bought DD35A (with the added A) units as well.  EMD catalogued but did not build a DD40 with no "A" (though Athearn made a lot of them).

That Pennsy train is a "mail and express" train that may be running as an extra section of another train.  Those are all express boxcars behind the PAs.

[Miningman]

Should we do a Saturday Photo OTD. Sure why not. Got to keep Classic alive and well. 

Here we are with the Southern Pacific and Holeee Mackinaw that is one BIG Mike! 2-8-2 #768 

[rcdrye]

Miningman

Here we are with the Southern Pacific and Holeee Mackinaw that is one BIG Mike! 2-8-2 #768 

That's because it's a Texas Mike.  768 is a T&NO engine, from Baldwin, class of 1913.  T&NO engines had three digit numbers until the 1965 renumbering.

[Miningman]

A Texas Mike! How about that. No wonder... thanks to rcdrye, a wealth of information! 

[Flintlock76]

You know what they say, "Everything's bigger in Texas!"

Just to get an idea of the size of that thing, look ant the man standing next to it.  Back when that picture was taken the average size of a man was 5'8", and look how that locomotive dwarfs him!

[Overmod]

Flintlock76

You know what they say, "Everything's bigger in Texas!"

My old girlfriend would say drily that the way to shut up Texans who started boasting about this was to ask them if Texas had the largest midgets.

THIS is a big Mike:

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/whyte/2-8-2/USA/photos/gn3397.jpg

In case you are wondering, those drivers are a quarter-foot taller than your 5'8" man.

 

[Miningman]

A Sunday Photo OTD ....goes good with your wake up coffee.

Thinking more words have been written on the Forum about the T1 than anything else so here is another pic because we just can't get enough of the T1.   #5536

Q? What would the holes be for on the boiler jacket about mid way along the boiler? 

Late add on-- 6,000 posts!  Do I get a pizza or something .. I'll settle for a Dairy Queen medium size Pineapple Sundae.

[Overmod]

Miningman

What would the holes be for on the boiler jacket about mid way along the boiler? 

Without looking at the detailed piping layout -- probably sanders.

[M636C]

Overmod

 

Flintlock76

You know what they say, "Everything's bigger in Texas!"

 

 

My old girlfriend would say drily that the way to shut up Texans who started boasting about this was to ask them if Texas had the largest midgets.

 

THIS is a big Mike:

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/whyte/2-8-2/USA/photos/gn3397.jpg

In case you are wondering, those drivers are a quarter-foot taller than your 5'8" man.

 

 

Some of these GN mikados were built using boilers from retired 2-6-8-0s, which gives you an idea of size. Some built this way were later fitted with the boiler seen at the link, which was larger....

Peter

[Miningman]

Another T1 question. Might be difficult to answer in a meaningful accounting way but do you think the 52 T1's built actually recovered their cost of being built, got in the black and added to Pennsy bottom line? Not all T1's racked up the same amount of mileage with some far greater than others. They were used pretty sparingly after 1948? I presume. Did they actually earn enough to pay back their cost and then some or were they a never ending source of red ink that never came close to their initial investment? 

[gmpullman]

Overmod

Without looking at the detailed piping layout -- probably sanders.

   I would agree. There were clean-out plugs in the sand traps located right about where the holes in the jacket appear to be located:

T1_ES by Edmund, on Flickr

   They seem to have been made as a later modification by justifiably frustrated shop crews. I imagine a job that should have taken thirty-minutes would easily turn into two shifts if the entire jacket section had to be removed to access the sand trap clean-outs.

BLW_T1 by Edmund, on Flickr

   There seems to be none evident in this builder's view. Upon studying a collection of other photos I see that there were several variations of the mid-flank access panels. Some were hinged at the tops and others, as the example of the 5523 show, have hand-holds cut into them for handling.

PRR_T1-5523 by Edmund, on Flickr

   The streamlining of the T1 went through quite a few modifications over their brief presence on the PRR, that is a given.

Regards, Ed

[Overmod]

gmpullman

I imagine a job that should have taken thirty-minutes would easily turn into two shifts if the entire jacket section had to be removed to access the sand trap clean-outs.

And you'd best believe there was a LOT more sander-related maintenance on T1s, which turned out to need a lot more sand a lot more of the time than was 'expected' when the prototypes were built -- probably so much as to require re-sanding at unexpected points, perhaps in bad weather, perhaps being contaminated as it was placed into those streamstyled sand hatches...

Something interesting to track would be whether there were coherent 'phases' of cleanout access through the shrouding between the as-built variants (Juniata vs. Baldwin) and a consistent type of change when all the noses were revised from 'porthole' to radiator type a couple of years later.  Hinged aluminum hatch covers would not last whether they latched firmly or not; steel covers in the aluminum shroud would be asking for corrosion; slipstream in any case would not be kind.  I've always thought the tight round ports were the 'right' solution for these locomotives even if they might be marginally more susceptible to weather and freezing... the arrangement as applied to 5523, with round ports for cleanout and easy modular access to more of the sander plumbing, is even more logical at only very slight cost in 'streamlining efficiency' or appearance. 

[Miningman]

Were these things not apparent/obvious at the time they were designed and built?  They had the 2 prototypes for a couple of years before they placed the big 50 locomotive order.  Did they not learn a thing, the obvious things? ...one could claim the same for the nightmare inaccessible cam boxes. The cab ventilators? Why were these items not apparent during the years of testing with Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Also the designers could not have been that blind to glaring design flaws, even if they are simple things. 

So many weird mysterious items with these locos. 

[M636C]

To return to the GN Mikados briefly:

This is the intermediate stage, the M-2 simple articulated...

It is farly easy to visualise this boiler on the 2-8-2 chassis. Photos of the conversions which lasted from around 1930 to 1944 before getting O-8 boilers seem hard to find.

Peter

 

 

[Miningman]

Nice pic Peter. The locomotive looks immaculate. Indeed that would make one monster Mikado. I posted a pic of the GN O-8 about a year ago but danged if I know where. 

[Overmod]

Miningman

Were these things not apparent/obvious at the time they were designed and built?  They had the 2 prototypes for a couple of years before they placed the big 50 locomotive order.  Did they not learn a thing, the obvious things?

Some of the big obvious things they did, in fact, get.  In particular the dubious equalization setup with the walking beam between the engines was redesigned in the production versions ... not quite enough; they worked on the rigging and snubbing actively until at least 1947, and had more modifications pending for the big 'fix the issues' redesign in 1948 (which of course never came, as the money would be 'better' spent on progressive dieselization).

I think the fact of the sander cleanouts being made elegantly accessible speaks well of PRR design ... as does Ed's mentioned solution of easily-removable sections including the access ports.  It is pretty clear to me that Baldwin and PRR did not predict the absolute incidence of high-speed slipping on these, and once they observed it decided to fix it with sand rather than with conjugation, trim valves, or braked traction control -- not a particularly unfortunate decision, just one that required a lot of sand, a lot of the time, especially since the amount of free lateral in the driving wheelbase and the detail design of the sand pipes made alignment of the sand with the actual railhead, especially at the speeds where high-speed slipping would bare its fangs, a more difficult exercise than 'expected'.

The problem with the cab ventilation is likely a combination of issues, the first of which was the enclosed vestibule cab.  We note that similar cabs on the P&LE A-2-As, certainly not 100mph locomotives, were dramatic soot traps, much of the stuff coming in via preferential vacuum effect through cab ventilators just as on the T1s.  Even contemporary aerodynamics would have easily provided ways to avoid this... had there been adequate smoke lifting along the back part of the barrel and firebox, something even wing smoke deflectors would not properly provide.  In a way this is part of the price paid for effective front-end action combined with relatively small GA: forcing the fire at the back, with comparatively little ejection action required at the front, made for trouble.

Even then all might have been well if PRR continued using the passenger gas coal of prior years.  Instead there were the coal-strike shortages followed by intentional neglect and deprecation of steam power... and a 6400hp locomotive with a 92' grate is going to suffer disproportionally when fed a diet of slack and high-ash low-rank run-of-mine stuff.

The issue with the cambox is colossally overrated.  The official Franklin notes point out that the item that was upended in front of the rear engine was not supposed to require regular maintenance attention despite its nightmare-box complexity -- the thing that was deranged by the slipping and that suffered from poor maintenance adjustment was the little stunted link gear that improperly adjusted the travel of the oscillating cams (a thing, by the way, you don't want to do to get actual economy out of poppet valves, which don't cut off at all the way long-lap long-travel piston valves do).

And the cure for that cat crap was, of course, rotary valve drive, and by 1948 Franklin had a 'cured' version, with several better-advanced (but still not quite 'advanced' enough) versions in the offing after 1950.  The problem was that unless you wanted to do patent surgery on valve chests (albeit that was something PRR led the world in, by experience, with the T1a) you were going to be using bridged type A admission valves, with all the unshrouding and debouncing and convoluted tracting issues those brought to the party.  This before you try solving the issue of spherical follower line contact on expensively-profiled expensively-shifted cams... something even Franklin couldn't peddle as reliable with a straight face.

On the other hand, with eight admission valves per cylinder there was little doubt you were going to get all the admission you needed, crappy porting or not, to make high horsepower at high cyclic.  All you needed was better compression control... which was a known thing then, albeit with more modulated capacity than 'relief valve' makers understood would be needed, and with reversible insulated storage of the consequently much larger steam mass relieved in high-frequency compression relief.

There was, on the other hand, no question that if you actually intended to run a reciprocating locomotive substantially north of 120mph for any length of time it would have to be divided-drive ... you could argue about the desirability of conjugation, but not about high-speed valve gear survival on the one hand and buckling mains and fracturing pins on the other hand.

It would have been highly beneficial to have seen NYC build a C1a prototype, which it could have done with comparative ease had line production of the T1s allowed an easy engine-bed modification for the piston valves and larger firebox of a 'Niagara' boiler.  That in turn could be relatively easily modified to use nominally longer stroke with advanced balancing practice, with the inherent slip recovery advantages of piston valves, at more practical 'extreme' speed for '40s-style operation.

Ah, what the world lost when PRR failed to adopt the front-end throttle timely!

[Miningman]

Actually could follow most of that so thank you Overmod. 

I get this suspicious feeling that had the approval and the order for the additional 50 T1's occured a mere 4 months later than it did it would have been cancelled outright and completely and we would never have seen the big wave of them. 

So was the expenditure an outright massive loss or did they actually earn enough back to the treasury considering their capital outlay, high maintenance cost, a lot of fiddlin, and brief working lives along with lower mileage accumulated by some of them. 

In other words had they never have been built would the books reflect $50-$100 million or so in added cash that was never lost in the first place or did they actually add to the coffers substanially? Who knows? 

They were the way of the future for a very little while, less than a year. 

[Miningman]

Monday July 20, 2020 Photo OTD.  ( I don't like that 202020 thing at all, the 2020 is bad enough as it is! )

When there was an airplane in Pennsylvania Station.

1929 Amelia Earhart broke a bottle of champagne on the propellor of a Ford Tri-Motor and led passengers to an air-train cross country trip. 

How about that! 

[Overmod]

Miningman

In other words had they never have been built would the books reflect $50-$100 million or so in added cash that was never lost in the first place or did they actually add to the coffers substanially? Who knows? 

There is really no doubt whatsoever that the same amount of capital put into diesels ... admittedly, some diesels not likely to be what PRR actually would buy in those years ... would have contributed far more dramatically, both to profitability of operation and elimination/avoidance of loss, than the T1s ever 'netted' for the company.  It could be argued that even a more flexible and potentially effective alternative, the 'revised' V1 circa 1947 had it been introduced only a few months earlier, would not have contributed as materially as equivalent investment in "good" internal-combustion power.

I think some claim could also have been made that the development work of various kinds on the T1s after 1946 -- restylings, boiler steel, those wacky excuses for feedwater heaters among them -- if saved could have materially benefited the early transition.  Again, and a big 'if', if the money had been put into sensible diesel-electric power, not nearly as 20/20 a set of options in 1946 looking forward as it is today.  Almost certainly, the choice not to convert more engines either to RC or to piston valves reflects the understanding of just how valuable diesels were, potentially, to PRR operations even 'net' of its desire to remain friendly with the coal business.

Now it is not too much of a 'stretch' to see the PRR motive power department, if possessed of a few less duplexes and a few more millions in the months immediately after discussion of the Bowes drive for the V1, being pitched the idea of the Bowes drive in an Ingalls 2000hp passenger engine, which became a 'thing' not long after that time.  The promise of noncontact drive to very high speed virtually independent of prime-mover torque-peak rpm in a comparatively light unit, with Superior engine longevity, might have inspired precisely the kind of order -- and the kind of success that breeds further orders -- to see Ingalls making series production of locomotives in a period EMD was relatively saturated with orders for much more intricate, fragile, and expensive passenger locomotives requiring more care to operate.  I also suspect an Ingalls-Bowes engine would make a perfectly good 2000hp freight unit with relatively little modification once the Great Passenger Dying-Off was observed progressing... a perfectly good intermodal-train engine in perfectly practical MU as fast as there was torque to go... 

Now, while we are at this game of spending motive-power money more tellingly, it also has to be said that the money that could have been saved by not letting Baldwin skin the company for over $3 million Depression-era dollars on 'research and development' on the Big Engine could easily have been spent instead on a couple of full 6000hp Essl locomotives, plus a few 408 genset spares to make the trick work as intended.  It would be fun to see a Trail Blazer accelerate faster than a GG1 in instantaneous, only to cruise a few minutes later at the equivalent of the burn of a couple of Geeps in run 6, would it not?

 

  

[Overmod]

Miningman

1929 Amelia Earhart broke a bottle of champagne on the propellor of a Ford Tri-Motor and led passengers to an air-train cross country trip. 

Vince, you and Mike can do better than that.  This was the American female Lindy, who had flown the Atlantic in the year between Lindbergh and then ... and the 'cross country trip' was the introduction of commercial coast-to-coast fifty-one hour service (!) involving sleeper service from New York to Columbus and then on ATSF between Waynoka and Clovis.  Depression and weather uncertainty killed it; Mike can find service pictures of the planes used in the service.

Of course,GCT had something later that trumped a Trimotor:

[Miningman]

Actually Mike has nothing to do with my Replacement Photo of the Day AND you're not allowed to upstage the new management but since you gave such a succinct answer to my T1 query I will accept what has been  put forth re: the Rocket.

Now having stated Mike is not part of this thankless task he has sent in an emergency photo to your challenge.

Amelia 

 

https://www.ameliaarchive.org/archive/amelia-earhart-christens-ford-tri-motor-front.jpg

 

[Overmod]

That's good -- but still not as good as "Giant Conquerors of Space and Time" which should have been in the first of these airplane posts.

An airplane, like a locomotive, is a wonderful thing to see 'plinthed', but a far finer thing in its element:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/70/1b/41/701b413cf4603123c53ecc4583236767.jpg

[Flintlock76]

I'll take that Ford Trimotor over that oversized bottle rocket any day of the week!

Yeah, I'm a dinosaur and proud of it!  Besides, a "Tin Goose" is way more cool than a tin tube!