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Santa Fe Class 2-10-10-2 Steam Engines

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Posted by ACY Tom on Monday, July 11, 2016 12:30 PM

I never understood why 9000 was sent to California for preservation, since the class never operated there in regular service. It has always seemed that an oil burner such as 5511, and/or an oil burning Challenger or 4-8-4 would be more appropriate, since they did commonly operate in California.  Wouldn't the 9000 be more appropriately displayed in Cheyenne, or nearby?

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Posted by kgbw49 on Monday, July 11, 2016 8:41 PM

There are so many "what if" and "why didn't they" situations.

Why didn't SP preserve 4-8-4 4458 or 4459 - the roller-bearing-equipped units - say one in LA and one in Oakland or Fresno?

Why didn't UP preserve a 4-8-4 in Southern CA, or another Challenger?

Why didn't NP preserve an A-4 or A-5 4-8-4 in Minneapolis?

What if NYC had preserved one each of their "Big Three" - a J3a Hudson, an L4b Mohawk and a Niagara?

What if GN had preserved an R-2 2-8-8-2, or Southern a couple more PS-4 Pacifics, or MILW an F-7 4-6-4 Baltic or CNW a 4-8-4 Zeppelin?

What if IC had preserved 4-8-2 2613?

I am sure everyone can add to the list.

The sad thing is saving those locomotives would not even have moved the needle on the carrier's bottom line in the year they were scrapped.

Thankfully UP 9000 is around in Southern CA and SP 4460 is around in St. Louis and many others are out there, far from home rails but at least still around.

But indeed - What if????

 

 

 

 

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Posted by BaltACD on Thursday, July 14, 2016 10:45 AM

kgbw49

There are so many "what if" and "why didn't they" situations.

Why didn't SP preserve 4-8-4 4458 or 4459 - the roller-bearing-equipped units - say one in LA and one in Oakland or Fresno?

Why didn't UP preserve a 4-8-4 in Southern CA, or another Challenger?

Why didn't NP preserve an A-4 or A-5 4-8-4 in Minneapolis?

What if NYC had preserved one each of their "Big Three" - a J3a Hudson, an L4b Mohawk and a Niagara?

What if GN had preserved an R-2 2-8-8-2, or Southern a couple more PS-4 Pacifics, or MILW an F-7 4-6-4 Baltic or CNW a 4-8-4 Zeppelin?

What if IC had preserved 4-8-2 2613?

I am sure everyone can add to the list.

The sad thing is saving those locomotives would not even have moved the needle on the carrier's bottom line in the year they were scrapped.

Thankfully UP 9000 is around in Southern CA and SP 4460 is around in St. Louis and many others are out there, far from home rails but at least still around.

But indeed - What if????

I suspect the bigger reason locomotives weren't saved in the locations you named is that there was very little if any civic desire in those communities to provide locations for them to be preserved.  Saving locomotives requires the cooperation of both the carriers and the communities.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by kgbw49 on Thursday, July 14, 2016 11:29 AM

Sad but true!

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Posted by ACY Tom on Thursday, July 14, 2016 12:24 PM

Lack of a location or willing recipient was a factor in many cases, but it sure doesn't explain the B&O Railroad's major miscommunication when it scrapped the last EM-1 2-8-8-4 after promising it to ITS OWN MUSEUM!

Tom 

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Posted by ATSFGuy on Monday, March 20, 2017 5:36 PM

Have any 2-10-10-2 Steam Locomotives been redone and released in plastic yet?

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Posted by RME on Tuesday, March 21, 2017 10:02 AM

ATSFGuy
Have any 2-10-10-2 Steam Locomotives been redone and released in plastic yet?

Lord, no!  How many of them do you think you would sell?

I don't even think there's much of a market in specialty brass for one of these things.  Here is a page showing the Westside brass model and you can guess how long it's been without a reissue...

Even ATSF didn't keep them long (recognizing that as with the 'added motor units' from Baldwin, the articulated chassis could be much better used under its own separate boiler -- the firebox on the 2-10-10-2s was barely adequate even for the 2-10-2 directly, tandem compound water-rate saving or not). 

Is there a market in plastic for an early-20th-Century heavy locomotive with weird firebox that can't be run effectively on almost any layout?  I think the right answer would have to be to publish Shapeways files that would let interested modelers make originals to rework for epoxy resin castings -- or see if one of the boutique makers like Dave Grover's Eddystone would do the basic work for you.

Yes, I'd like to see someone make these in a cost-effective form.  No, I don't think anyone making these would sell them at any approximation of a cost-effective cost.  Nor do I think you'd get enough reservations to convince any for-profit manufacturer to invest the time and money to make a production quantity.

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Posted by ACY Tom on Tuesday, March 21, 2017 6:17 PM

The Santa Fe 2-10-10-2 was produced as a limited production HO brass model some time around the 1970's. I understand it could get around curves in one direction ony because the piping got in the way. I don't know what the minimum radius was. The prototype engines were impractical, short-lived, used in very limited territory, and pretty ugly in the opinion of most observers. With all of those things going against them, it's not likely that any manufacturer will produce a model nowadays.

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Posted by daveklepper on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 1:46 PM

AC, I really admire you as a sorce of solid information!

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Posted by Paul Milenkovic on Friday, March 24, 2017 8:52 PM

RME
 

I don't even think there's much of a market in specialty brass for one of these things.  Here is a page showing the Westside brass model and you can guess how long it's been without a reissue...

 

 

The brass model as much as shows what was wrong with the prototype and why it didn't steam right.  To say a locomotive is ugly is not a technical argument, but it perhaps reflects an intuition that the proportions are out of whack.

There are certain rules steam locomotive designers came up with regarding relative proportions of the grate, firebox, tubes, and firebox sections of the boiler.  If that model does one thing, it gives one a better sense of those proportions than the few extant photographs.  The model proportions suggest that this locomotive was just "thrown" together without taking those design rules into account.

If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?

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Posted by kgbw49 on Friday, March 24, 2017 9:52 PM

We have to remember this was before they really understood the power of the large firebox...

Image result for santa fe 2-10-10-2

The size of the 2-10-10-2 firebox is miniscule even compared to the later Santa Fe 2-10-2 firebox...

Image result for santa fe 2-10-10-2

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Posted by thomas81z on Saturday, March 25, 2017 6:50 PM

someone a few months ago acquired a 2-10-10-2 brass ho model ,it was sweeeet im gonna look on FB ho pages &see if i can flush him out 

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Posted by Boyd on Monday, March 27, 2017 12:30 AM

Dr D

SANTA FE AND THE ARTICULATED LOCOMOTIVE

Alfred Bruce, Director of Steam Locomotive Engineering at American Locomotive Company ALCO comments that the first Mallet compound articulated engines were constructed in the United States in 1903 and 1904 by ALCO for the Baltimore & Ohio.  This was 16 years after the European railroads which developed and used the Mallet compounds in considerable quantity. 

Baldwin Locomotive Company built its first Mallet compound in 1906 as a 2-6-6-2 for the Great Northern Railway as a road engine.  The 2-6-6-2 was by far the most built articulated engine in American railroad history.  So popular that it was built until the end of steam locomotive construction in 1949 when C&O 1304 was constructed new by Baldwin.  C&O 1304 is currently under restoration by Western Maryland Senic Railroad today.

Baldwin followed this design with the 2-8-8-2 for the Southern Pacific in 1909.  This was also to prove to be another extremely popular locomotive wheel type.  Not to be outdone with these successes and the articulated compound Mallet craze, Baldwin built for the Erie Railroad in 1914 several triplex engines.  The infamous 2-8-8-8-2 type 6 cylinder tank locomotives of which only 3 were ever built.

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In the midst of this Mallet compound craze in America the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe jumped in with both feet in 1909 with the construction of "Prairie Mallets" from Baldwin of which were two 4-4-6-2 passenger compounds and two 2-8-8-2 helper compounds.  Santa Fe touted the long rigid boiler, 73 inch drivered speedsters as the "largest and most powerful passenger locomotives in existance."  First numbered ATSF 1300-1301 this was later changed to ATSF 1398-1399.

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Santa Fe followed these engines with another unique passenger engine in 1911.  These were 2-6-6-2 articulated locomotives that according to Alfred Bruce did not feature low and high pressure cylinders.  Other sources record them as all Mallet compounds.  It is certain that of the 65 engines constructed a total of 7 locomotives featured a hinged boiler. Santa Fe ordered these passenger articulated speesters with 69 inch drivers. 

Alfred Bruce considers these flexable boilered Santa Fe 2-6-6-2 as unique because (1) the first use of an outside bearing trailer truck to support a fully wide firebox mounted behind the drivers.  (2) the use of the "hinged boiler" in two sections with each section bolted to an articulating frame over which it rode.  A flexable "hinged boiler" bellows joined the two units that sealed only firebox flue gas.  (3) the actual steam producing boiler was only the 19 foot flue section over the rear engine unit.  The front boiler section was instead a large flue gas feedwater heater unit which was built to the full diameter of the rear pressure boiler.  This was variously described as "Baldwin feedwater heater and Santa Fe design reheater and superheater" or 'Jacobs superheater" or "combustion chamber - reheater/superheater" 

This "flexable accordion" boiler section joining the front and rear units did not contain steam pressure - it merely sealed firebox flue gas to the locomotive stack.  As such it burst regularly owing to the buildup of cinders which when compressed popped the rivits.  A ball socket joint connection was developed and tried.

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If all this was not enough, Santa Fe also constructed in their own shops another series of ten articulated Mallet compounds of the 2-10-10-2 wheel type using the railroads existing 2-10-2 locomotives for the high pressure units.  Added to these were new Baldwin built 2-10-0 forward frame constructions as the front low pressure locomotive sections.  These home built engines were numbered ATSF 1300-1310.

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Finally Santa Fe tempted fate one more time, by considering an over the top construction of a 2-8-8-8-8-2 locomotive.  This plan got as far as requesting Baldwin Locomotive Works to draw up plans for the "greatest Mallet of all time" - the QUADRAPLEX DOUBLE COMPOUND!  This engine was to feature two cabs one for the fireman and one for the front of the locomotive engineer location.

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After 1915 Santa Fe became a "rigid frame" steam locomotive railroad and their designs moved forward to what would eventually be the SANTA FE BIG THREE - passenger ATSF 3460 "Hudson" 4-8-4 type - passenger ATSF 2900 "Northern" 4-8-4 type - and freight ATSF 5011 "Texas" 2-10-4 type.  Locomotives of superlative quality and construction unequaled throughout the world!

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Gone would be the days of the "Prairie Mallet" and of the whimsical engineering of the past - in the vast steel wheel turning wild wild west!

Doc

 

WOW!! When is Lionel or MTH going to make a 2-8-8-8-8-2 in O scale that must be four plus feet long. They might need to build some 0-144 curve tracks. I imagine you would need a 2nd mortgage on the house to order that one. 

Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Monday, March 27, 2017 6:59 AM

George Henderson, who was responsible for the Triplex design, actually did consider Quadruplex and Quintuplex designs.  I'm sure that they would have run out of steam before they even moved their own length.

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Posted by MrATSF on Monday, March 27, 2017 6:04 PM

I'd like to add a couple of comments to "Doc's" notes. The Santa Fe had a total of 64 2-6-6-2 compound mallets built in 1910-1911 numbered in the 1100 and 3300 series. Numbers 1157, 1158 and 1159 had jointed boilers , as did numbers 3320 through 3323. All the rest had rigid boilers. Even with 69-inch drivers, they were not intended for passenger service but for freight service across the plains of New Mexico and Texas where they served well until replaced by the 3800 class 2-10-2s. As to the 2-10-10-2s, they were numbered 3000 thru 3009 and worked west from Winslow, Arizona to San Bernardino, California during their very short career. He is incorrect in naming "Santa Fe Big Three" as shown. Truly, the height of Santa Fe steam development was the 1938 4-6-4, 4-8-4 and 2-10-4, but in the environs of Topeka, the terms "Hudson", "Northern" or "Texas" were never spoken.

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Posted by NdeM6400 on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 10:34 AM

The low pressure cylinders on the VGN 800-series 2-10-10-2s were 48 inches in diameter. To my knowledge, they are the largest cylinders in a railroad steam locomotive. They and several other parts had to be removed for shipment to the VGN because of clearance restrictions.

 

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Posted by RME on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 1:39 PM

I trust that wanswheel or someone like him who knows how to access the original magazine photograph will provide a link to the very informative 'front view' of the low-pressure cylinders, so you can appreciate just how large 48" cylinders with adequately strong construction and lagging could be on standard gauge.  In the meantime, here is a brass model in 3/4 view:

 

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Posted by Boyd on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 2:36 PM

Wow 48" is huge. That could be a dinner table. 

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Posted by kgbw49 on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 7:14 PM

Virginian 2-10-10-2

Image result for virginian 2-10-10-2

Image result for virginian 2-10-10-2

Image result for virginian 2-10-10-2

Related image

 

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Thursday, April 13, 2017 7:04 AM

Is it just perspective in the photos or are those 48" cylinders larger than the driving wheels to which they are attached??

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by Shadow the Cats owner on Thursday, April 13, 2017 7:25 AM

They were close the drivers where 56" in diameter. 

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