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railroad books that are inaccurate.BEWARE

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Posted by M636C on Sunday, April 12, 2015 9:34 AM

Wizlish

The use of the + to describe an articulation point was introduced (I believe with the use of parentheses, and a discussion about why the convention was going to be more accurate) around the time Kalmbach was reprinting Wiener's book, circa 1970.  Wiener adopted it because it's almost impossible to torture Whyte coding into expressing what some of the more exotic articulation systems could present 

"Beyer-Garratt" should never be spelled differently, and of course that goes for 'Garratt' (with the capital letter and the double 't') too. 

 

Like "Mallet",  "Beyer" and "Garratt" are surnames, Beyer one of the original partners in Beyer, Peacock and Garratt an inspecting engineer employed by the New South Wales government (at Beyer, Peacock among others). It is said that Garratt got the idea for his locomotive watching large naval guns being moved on two four wheel rail wagons.

The British used the "+" for articulation continuously, at least post World War II, particularly for Beyer Garratts. It was used for electric locomotives and later diesel locomotives where the bogies (trucks) were connected by an articulation (so a GG1 would be 2-Co+Co-2)

So a Mallet or a simple articulated would be 2-8+8-2 for example. However while these had the same general form of articulation as the electrics and diesel locomotives, the Beyer-Garratt boiler cradle rested on conventional truck pivots and there was no articulation hinge justifying the "+" as in 4-8-2+2-8-4 and it could as easily be 4-8-2-2-8-4 except that the "break point" isn't clearly identified. Fairlie types, too, used conventional pivots not justifying the "+" associated with a hinge-type articulation.

M636C

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Posted by Wizlish on Saturday, April 11, 2015 4:20 PM

A few comments (since we have revived this thread from the grave):

I was taught that the reason for using "simple articulated" rather than something like 'single-expansion Mallet' was that it was a courtesy to honor M. Mallet's express wishes that compounding be considered an essential part of one of 'his' locomotives.  This is mentioned in Wiener's canonical book on early (pre-1930 or so) articulated locomotives, among other places.  That does not mean that it would be 'wrong' to use the term 'Mallet' as an engineer's description of the chassis and steam-pipe arrangement, and there was at least one discussion on this list in the past which involved the use of the term 'single-expansion Mallet' (which is used in at least one place in Wiener's book).  I prefer to abide by the inventor's declared wish and use 'Mallet' only for compound locomotives.

The use of the + to describe an articulation point was introduced (I believe with the use of parentheses, and a discussion about why the convention was going to be more accurate) around the time Kalmbach was reprinting Wiener's book, circa 1970.  Wiener adopted it because it's almost impossible to torture Whyte coding into expressing what some of the more exotic articulation systems could present ... and it would be of great benefit for Texas Chief to review a copy of this book as there are wildly many more kinds of articulation than the Mallet arrangement!  I do not think that the + convention really caught on very well, any more than the school of thought that says Whyte coding should go from the smokebox end and not the front of the locomotive, even though that makes more engineering 'sense' in some situations.

"Beyer-Garratt" should never be spelled differently, and of course that goes for 'Garratt' (with the capital letter and the double 't') too. 

erikem, you're half right: there were 'Consolidation Mallets' a bit before the 'Mogul Mallets', but mot by much, and I don't think the cab-forward idea was 'proved out' for more than a few months at most (both classes in cab-forward configuration are from 1911, I think).  I do find it fascinating that SP found it worthwhile to put the four-wheel lead truck and simple expansion on the six-driver locomotives.  Yes, they had conventional-cab 2-8-8-2s earlier ... I believe some with those fascinating hinged boilers, too.  (Weren't the first ones, MC-1 class, the little engines that ran in Texas?)

There WERE two versions of the T1, but the other was the T1a (the one modified to have the piston valves).  The other T1 that was rebuilt with the rotary-cam valve gear was not reclassed, perhaps because it kept the same valves and arrangement as the others.

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Posted by UP 4-12-2 on Friday, April 10, 2015 10:36 PM

Morning Sun Books often have great color photography, but some of the authors definitely fall into the "think they knew more than they did" category.

I'm sorry to say I was disappointed in the Santa Fe in Color series books, because Lloyd Stagner made some inaccurate quotes regarding the Santa Fe steam power (tractive effort and horsepower curves) in those books. 

Those of us latter day railfans, who were not there, are imo better served by going back to the original source to get the real facts.  The bibliographies listed S. Kip Farrington's "The Santa Fe's Big Three" as one of the sources, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.  Mr. Farrington was a man of means who had the connections to the railroad to actually be there when some of the steam motive power tests were run--and he published a significant portion of first hand locomotive data in his book--including the drawbar horsepower curves.  Though perhaps a bit dry to anyone who doesn't happen to work in engineering design, it is a great read.  Unfortunately, not all the Santa Fe's locomotive test data survived, but what was published by Mr. Farrington proves they were indeed some marvelous engines.

When talking horsepower, it is important to consider in what speed range, as it varied significantly...

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Posted by erikem on Thursday, April 2, 2015 5:54 PM

Noted. It wasn't clear from your original message whether "SP" referred to trains crews only versus train crews and front office.

My not always reliable recollection was that SP's first Mallet's were normal cab 2-8-8-2's, with the MM's ordered after the cab forward MC's were proven out.

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Posted by challenger3980 on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 9:41 PM

IIRC, the "Original" cab-forwards were "MM's" (Mallet Mogul 2-6-6-2's) which later were reclassified as "AM's" Articulated Moguls when they were simpled. I was writing about what I had read about how the working train crews spoke of the equipment, not how the company offices classified the equipment.

Doug

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Posted by erikem on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 9:06 PM

challenger3980

The SP refered to all of their Articulateds as "Malleys" wether they were simple or compound, not saying they were RIGHT, but that was their practice.

The SP did make a distinction between Mallet's and articulateds. The original Mallet cab-forwards were class MC-1 (Mallet Consolidation), while the later non-compounds were called AC's for Articulated Consolidation.

- Erik

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Posted by AltonFan on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 10:56 AM

challenger3980

I have always heard, and followed the definition of a "Mallet" as being a COMPOUND Articulated, but seeing that Anatole Mallet is no longer alive, this debate is not likely ever to be decided conclusively, what Mallet himself considered to be a "Mallet".

Doug

 

I vaguely remember reading, but can't recall book, chapter, or verse about this, but I seem to recall that Mssr. Mallet designed his locomotive expressly as a compound, was rather proud of his acomplishment, and was none too pleased when simple articulated locomotives came on the scene.

Dan

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Posted by challenger3980 on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 7:59 PM

Ajax

Please guys when talking about facts at least use his real name Lucius Beebe not lucas.

 

Thank You, You beat Me to itWinkYesYes

Doug

 

 

 

 

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Posted by challenger3980 on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 7:55 PM

The SP refered to all of their Articulateds as "Malleys" wether they were simple or compound, not saying they were RIGHT, but that was their practice.

I believe all of their Early cab-forwards were built as compounds, and that I am sure is where the practice started. Later when many(all?) were converted to simple, and later classes were built as simple, the habit was ingrained and never changed.

I have always heard, and followed the definition of a "Mallet" as being a COMPOUND Articulated, but seeing that Anatole Mallet is no longer alive, this debate is not likely ever to be decided conclusively, what Mallet himself considered to be a "Mallet".

Doug

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Posted by Firelock76 on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 7:44 PM

To ACY, and any of you other gentlemen getting ready to publish, or are thinking about trying your hand at writing, just remember what Teddy Roosevelt said about "The Man In The Arena" and press on!

For those of you who've never read "Man In The Arena" in a nutshell what Teddy says is one man in the arena getting dirty, sweaty, and bloody but gettin' it done just the same is worth a dozen carping critics sitting on their butts not doing anything but talking.

And best of luck to all of you!

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Posted by ACY Tom on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 6:16 PM

Like Victor, I'm a bit nervous.  I may be setting myself up as a target when I admit that I was very much involved in the production of the new Morning Sun book on the Akron Canton & Youngstown and the affiliated Akron & Barberton Belt.  I'm not credited as the author.  That honor belongs Bob Lucas, a dedicated gentleman who contributed far more to the book than I, or anybody else, did.  I was enlisted as a fact-checker and a proofreader and a rewriter.  There were several of us involved in the project.  There is at least one usage issue that was resolved by consensus, with which I disagreed.  So when the book comes out in April, I'm prepared to duck to avoid the brickbats.

As was mentioned above, Morning Sun prints what the author provides, and he does a terrific job of it.  TLC is, as far as I know, pretty reliable when the subject is the C&O.  I'm not sure about his reliability when it comes to some other roads.  I have a few quibbles about his B&O material, particularly his book on the B&O EM-1's.  By the way, a B&O railroader in the 1950's knew an EM-1 as a Mallet.  I'm not sure I knew the difference myself at the time, as I was about 12 years old; but if I had corrected him, he'd have considered me a smart-aleck, snot-nosed kid.  So I just bit my lip and listened to what he had to say.  I learned a lot that way.  Discretion.

In this and other threads I've seen more errors in fact, punctuation, spelling, and usage than I can count.  LUCAS Beebe?  SD40-2T?  PRR T-1? (PRR didn't use a hyphen in locomotive classes)

So anyway, I'm the next target.  Gentlemen, please step up to the firing line.

TomDunce

(edited)

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, March 25, 2015 3:12 AM

I am a well-published author, but my field is architectural acoustics.

I do try to be as accurate as possible, with good footnotes.

For further information: daveklepper@yahoo.com

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Posted by wabash2800 on Tuesday, March 24, 2015 6:34 PM

Being a published author, you folks make me nervous. <G> Seriously, I'm only aware of one small factual error in my recent Wabash book, but I may never tell... <G> (With more research than writing, I tried to cover myself, including over 700 endnotes...) But the railroad actually dips into another county for just a short distance...not like the 1922 Rand McNally map I used as a source.  And then there is the creek the railroad misnamed in its maps. (I suppose I was preoccupied with the factual information and assumed a map from a good source would be correct. I am double sourcing the maps in my new book.) But my point is that there will always be some kind of mistake in a book, but hopefully doing a lot of research from good sources will cover you and folks can tell you made a good effort anyway. Do we have any other authors here?

Victor A. Baird

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Posted by Firelock76 on Sunday, March 22, 2015 10:26 AM

In all fairness to "Morning Sun"...

I've got at least a dozen "Morning Sun" titles and haven't been disappointed in any of them.  Some are better than others to be sure but I enjoy them all.

Keep in mind the "M-S" books are essentially railfan "slide shows" in print.  If the data from the original railfan who took the shots is incorrect then it follows it's going to be incorrect in the book.  Personally I think we should thank our lucky stars that some folks cared enough in decades past to make the effort to document the rail scene as it was, and in color too!  If they flubbed the facts on occasion, well so what?  Enjoy the pictures and remember what was and will never be again.

And dittos to what oldline said.  God bless Beebe and Clegg who started it all!

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Posted by oldline1 on Saturday, March 21, 2015 3:00 PM

All Mallets are articulateds but all articulateds are NOT Mallets!

Also the Pennsy T-1 and Q classes as well as the B&O George Emerson were rigid frame engines with 4 cylinders and not articulateds or Mallets.

I always question Motorbooks, Solomons books and most any picture books from the Big Box stores, B&N, and stores like them. They DO have nice photos and unsually the reproduction is well done but as to facts........I wouldn't count on them being accurate. Just enjoy the pictures!

Same goes for some Morning Sun and TLC.

We need to give a lot of credit to Beebe & Clegg for starting the rail photo book industry. They were the first to do it and, like I said in an earlier post, while they were huge railfans from the early days they were first and foremost artistic types and not historians per se. They sure did cover a lot of territory and some railroads most of us would probably never have heard of without their books.

Roger Huber

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Posted by NP Eddie on Friday, March 20, 2015 8:39 PM

AB Dean:

Please e-mail me at enburns@comcast.net and I will attach the letter to Mr. Yenne. No, I am not crazy for giving you me e-mail. I have met two great railfans, one from Israel and one from New Hampshire.

 

ED Burns

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Posted by Deggesty on Wednesday, March 18, 2015 10:35 PM

You reminded me of the supposed origin of the term "Wabashing." It seems that the employees of the Wabash were going to strike, so orders were given that all foreign road cars were to be delivered before midnight--whether or not there was room in the receiving yard(s). So, the transfer crews pushed the foreign cars into other yards--and kept pushing until they were all in, with no concern that the cars stayed on the track or not.

Johnny

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Posted by NP Eddie on Wednesday, March 18, 2015 10:28 PM

AB:

As information, I crossed the BNSF's Hinckley Sub at Andover, MN and saw a UP freight with covered hoppers with reporting marks "CMO"! I worked a clerking job once in a while in 1966 at NP's Lower Yard just north of downtown Minneapolis. My first task after midnight was to check the Omaha interchange track north of our yard to make sure the Omaha did not sneak cars in before midnight so the NP would get stuck with a day's per diem for said cars.

Ed Burns

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Posted by FlyingCrow on Wednesday, March 18, 2015 9:08 AM

Ed...luckily I was able to thumb through a copy and not have to buy it.  It was c..p.  A typical Motorbooks quickie.    But I will say that the best RR book I've had in my library in a long time is Stan Mailer's "The Omaha Road"   (CStPM&O)   Truly a throwback to the detailed rr books of yore!  

ABD

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Posted by NP Eddie on Tuesday, March 17, 2015 7:34 PM

ALL:

The worst railroad book I read was "Empire Builder" by William Yenne. I wrote him a two page single spaced list of all the errors in the book. He poo-pooed my corrections was nit picking. There was a picture of a rebuilt BN (X-CBQ) E8/9 for a commuter train. He claimed that was on the Empire Builder! How could a X-GN E7 was was scrapped in 1971 be on a 1980's commuter train. He could NOT tell the difference between the two locomotive models or that one number could be used on two locomotives, as 1st 9901 or 2nd 9902.

"Trains" did not review that book.

Ed Burns

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Posted by Ajax on Sunday, March 15, 2015 10:22 PM

Please guys when talking about facts at least use his real name Lucius Beebe not lucas.

 

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Posted by AltonFan on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 5:58 PM

There's nothing more annoying than that damnable + sign.  I never noticed DPM use it, but if he did it's probably because he was of English descent.  They're the ones who initiated that nonsense in describing the wheel arrangements of beyer-garrats (spelling?).

I don't think DPM's ethnic background (he was Scottish, BTW) had anything to do with the + in articulated wheel arrangements.  IIRC, Morgan was persuaded to do this by Robert LaMessena, an authority on articulated locomotives.  I don't recall why LaMessena insisted on this practice, but he uses it in his own books.

FWIW, diesel builder's plates for a B-B type diesel sometimes have the Whyte Classification 0-4-0+0-4-0.

I remember an old-timer at my local hobby shop once warning me that Lucius Beebe's books have to be used with caution, and told of an instance where the caption described a scene as being one year, but an automobile in the picture was clearly from a later year.

Dan

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 7:51 AM
The above posting is correct.   The N&W Y's are Mallets, but the A's are simple articulateds.  Challengers, Big Boys, Yellowstones, Allegainies, are also simple articulateds and NOT Mallets! 
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Posted by feltonhill on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 5:59 AM
Anatole Mallet invented the 4-cylinder articulated compound locomotive.  Therefore you need to have all those adjectives to use the term Mallet correctly.  A 4-cylinder simple articulated doesn't really fit the description of a Mallet.
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Posted by rogruth on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 10:52 PM

The Q1 was a 4-6-4-4,the Q2 was 4-4-6-4.

Only one Q1 was built in 1942 #6130.

Twenty  six Q2's were built beginning in 1944 #'s6131,6175-6199. 

Q1 scrapped 1952.

Q2 6131,the prototype, scrapped 1952.

6175-6185 scrapped 1953.

6186-6199 scrapped 1955. 

 

 

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 10:23 PM

 Kurn wrote:
 Beebe,and other rail writers of that era generally called all articulated locomotives "Mallets".Even DPM did on occasion,along with his + sign.Still,Beebes books are wonderful,and no rail library should be without some of them.

There are about 4 of his books on the shelf here in town at the college library.

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Posted by Texas Chief on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 10:19 PM

"Mallet" was the name of the frenchman who invented the articulated steam engine. Therefore, any articulated engine, irregardless of it's wheel arrangement, can be called a "Mallet"!

Dick

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 6:06 PM

What I have read of the Casey Jones wreck indicates that the IC train was called the "Cannonball Express."  The M&StL also had a "Cannonball Express" in the early era.  I wonder if there were others who used that name as well.

Wasn't the plus sign part of a more refined version of the Whyte classification system that used additional symbols to make finer distinctions in wheel arrangements?  I recall that DPM insisted that it was the proper system, but apparently he could not convice most others. 

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Posted by arkansasrailfan on Sunday, July 8, 2007 1:32 PM
One book I'll add is about tourist railroads, and in it the author says that Casey Jones drove the Cannonball Express, he's using a song as a source. I don't think that the IC every had a train like that.
-Michael It's baaaacccckkkk!!!!!! www.youtube.com/user/wyomingrailfan
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Posted by espeefoamer on Sunday, June 3, 2007 3:36 PM

While Beebe's books are full of great photographs, his history is to be taken with a grain of salt.

Also the Morning Sun series of color photo books are sometimes not too accurate.

Ride Amtrak. Cats Rule, Dogs Drool.

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