Baldwin RF16 Sharknose

[nanaimo73]

In my opinion, this is the best looking freight diesel ever built. A total of 109 were built, along with 51 boosters. I did not care for them in D&H blue and silver Warbonnet, I thought they looked better in dirty black. Like a steam engine, I guess.
I wished they had come over here to Vancouver Island, where we had 13 DRS 4-4-1000s from 1948 until 1975. (11 DS 4-4-1000s visited here as well ).
I do not have the owership breakdown. I do know that the Monongahela bought 7 cabs and a booster from GE in 1967, for about $6,000 each, according to the 11-90 issue of CTC Board. The last two were sold to the D&H in 1974.
In 1978 the last two survivors were sold to Castolite and went on a 6 month lease to the Michigan Northern, who were operating 250 miles of unwanted Penn Central track.
From there they went to the Escanaba and Lake Superior. One of them suffered a scored crankshaft and I have not heard anything since.
Are they still stored unservicable in Wells, Michigan ?

[spbed]

If my memory serves me correctly Trains reported several years ago that somebody I think in Oregon has resued one from Mexico & was restoring it. Just as a aside the DHRR gave me a cab ride on there pair from Newark to Allentown then down to Philly on the old Reading mainline as a perk. Model Power a HO builder modeled them & I have four of them 2 in DHRR colors & 2 in NYCRR lighting bolt colors.

[Randy Stahl]

They are stored indoors in Escanaba Mi.in unservicable condition.
Randy

[BaltACD]

While the Sharknose Baldwins were visually exciting, they were, from everthing I've heard, maintenance nightmares. The B&O had a series of them and they were scrapped long before their contemporaries.

[jchnhtfd]

They certainly were nice to look at. Pity that the MU system that Baldwin came up with worked only with other Baldwin locos -- that was (and would still be) a sure way to kill your market. That and the maintenance problems...

[dldance]

One of the factors in the design to today's locomotives is access and yes the Sharks were great to look at - but...

dd

[Randy Stahl]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jchnhtfd

They certainly were nice to look at. Pity that the MU system that Baldwin came up with worked only with other Baldwin locos -- that was (and would still be) a sure way to kill your market. That and the maintenance problems...

I seriously doubt that they are any more dificult to maintain than a contemporary GE locomotive or even a 6000 HP EMD. I would think the parts availability became an issue more so.
Randy

[West Coast S]

I wonder what became of that de-trucked Shark B unit that was located in a Pennsylvania scrap yard that closed around 20 years ago?

[Overmod]

Randy, I think the parts availability might have to be looked at in context. IIRC, the Baldwins used in the Philadelphia area had their parts availability guaranteed by BLH for some number of years -- I heard both a figure of 20 years and 25 years, and don't know which (but one of the responsible guys was actually starting to post to a Baldwin fan lists last year!) When the guarantees ran out, wham, there went the Baldwins...

I think the Sharknoses suffered 'more than usually' from the end of the cab-unit era. The relatively tiny, high-up cab side windows and the tumblehome of the upper carbody made it extraordinarily difficult to see the ground at the rear of the units. If I remember correctly, the last places that ran Sharks in 'ordinary' service did so in fairly long strings -- and here, the noncompatible MU system would really hurt. I had thought that some of the Baldwin freight cabs (B&O rings a bell here) had been retrofitted with some form of alternative MU -- and there was something about that system that either required that the Baldwin was the lead unit, or had to be in trail (I think it was the former, but can't recall the details now... as my grandmother once said, "It's hell bein' old"...)

As speculated earlier, I thought it was sorta interesting that the last of the DR-4-4-1500s was the one that got the Alco 251 re-engining... even if its long survival was really more of a lucky accident.

[rf16a]

The PRR had a couple of Sharks that were rebuilt by Alco with Alco engines and new controls. They could then mu with non Baldwins.

I wi***hose guys in Michigan would either sell those two Sharks to someone or some railroad that would restore and run them or donate them to a good museum so that we could all enjoy them.

[nanaimo73]

I wonder if Doyle has thought of a Black Widow Sharknose. Perhaps the other should be in NYC paint. Would Steamtown be interested ? It would have been nice to see one nose-to-nose with a T1.

[daveklepper]

I think the Shark Nose Baldwins were great to look at and I preferred the D&H revised war bonnet to just plain black. When it comes to mainenance, well I've always been an EMD fan and probably always will.

[jsoderq]

The units rescued from Mexico were PAs - not sharks. I have photos in my archives. The units on the E&LS caused a lot of problems from "raillfans" so much so that the railraod had to resort to calling armed security to deal with the problem. They are locked up out of site, and yes, the crank could be repaired.

[eolafan]

 If my memory serves me correctly Trains reported several years ago that somebody I think in Oregon has resued one from Mexico & was restoring it. Just as a aside the DHRR gave me a cab ride on there pair from Newark to Allentown then down to Philly on the old Reading mainline as a perk. Model Power a HO builder modeled them & I have four of them 2 in DHRR colors & 2 in NYCRR lighting bolt colors.

I believe the unit you are referring to is an ex ATSF/D&H Alco PA passenger unit sent to Mexico and (by now) recovered and being resored in OR. Can anybody confirm?

[spbed]

Yes now that you refresh my memory of the pix it was a PA not a S/nose

[nanaimo73]

D&H had 4 former ATSF PA4s, these are ALCo built passenger engines. Then they got the two Baldwin Freight RF16 Sharknoses from the Monongahela, which had started out on the New York Central.I outlined the RF16 history at the start of this thread. The 4 PA4s were sold to Mexico. Two are still there , one is being restored in Portland, Oregon and the other is in Washigton, DC.There is a picture of a Sharknose on pages 90-91 of the March 2005 Trains.
The E&LS had at least two break-ins at their shops before the RF16s arrived.Idiot railfans stole builder plates and manuals and other stuff.
Jsoderq-Can both be repaired ?
rf16a-What terminology did the PRR use to tell the Cabs from the boosters ?

[rf16a]

The PRR distinguished Shark cab and booster units by actually adding a letter "a" to the a units' road number and "b" to the b units' road number painted on the side of the carbody.
Example, BF-16 2000-a, cab. BF-16 2000-b, booster.
On an a unit, the letter a was not in the main number on the nose or numberboard, but was on an additional much smaller road number on the lower rear sides of the loco. It's hard to see these in some pictures. I can't tell if all PRR Sharks had this smaller road number painted on or just some.