How were the new steam locomotives delivered? I have never seen a photograph of a new locomotive either dead in the middle of a train, or under steam, going across the country to it's final destination. When you see brand new steam locomotives you either see them when they were just built at the factory, or when they were new on the railroad they were used on. You never see a Union pacific steam locomotive traveling in New york or Pennsylvania despite the fact it was probably made in New york.
There are pictures of the "Prosperity Special" in existence. This was a publicity stunt of the first degree which consisted of the delivery of about 20 new SP 2-10-2's in one movement in the early 1920's.
I read a story a few years ago about this, locomotives would be shipped along with regular freight trains, the engine would have the drive-rods from the pistons to the wheels removed and stored (on the tender deck I believe). There would be a bypass for the air brake lines installed (I understand locomotives had independent brakes from the freight car brake lines) so the engines brakes could be activated just like any other freight car. also a representative from the locomotive builder was also sent with the locomotive, spending the trip inside the cab which was weatherized (sealed with wood, door added, a small coal stove/heater added - don't ask me about the privy, I don't know if I want to know what provisions were made for that) for the trip. His job was to make sure the wheel bearings were kept lubricated during the transit, to ensure no vandalism came to the engine under way, and to oversea the reassembly completion of any work done to allow the locomotive to make the journey, and to provide any training or technical education needed. They would then stay on at the receiving railroad until the locomotive was accepted by the line then take a regular passenger train service back to the factory.
The above is based on the story I had read, whether all manufacturers did this, I don't know, but apparently there were employees who did nothing but transfer service, often being responsible for multiple engines during a single transfer.
Have fun with your trains
I have read that in many cases larger locomotives were delivered with the side rods disconnected and the pistons were sometimes shipped separately, esp. the front pistons on the biggest articulateds (like Big Boys, Alleghanies & the Virginian's 2-10-10-2s). In many the locomotives delivery route might include lines that had smaller clearences than what it was designed for...
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Some were sent by ship. The John Bull (the Camden and Amboy's first locomotive) was shipped in pieces from Britain to the US. When it arrived it was assembled by Isaac Dripps, a mechanic. Dripps had never seen a steam locomotive in his life. He put it together, got it running and became the engineer.
The Central Pacific's first locomotive was sent by ship around Cape Horn to San Francisco.
There have been a number of threads on this in a variety of forums, including (I believe) this one. The B&O Yahoo group had a very extensive discussion on how the EM-1s were delivered; there is also a detailed discussion of how movements out of the Baldwin works in Eddystone had to be routed to avoid critical 'interference'. (There is a fairly famous picture of ATSF 4-8-4s being car floated... I believe across part of Baltimore harbor... because there was no practical rail route with adequate clearance...)
There is quite a bit of discussion 'out there' on how locomotives were delivered from Schenectady. A probable option was to use the Erie (with its formerly-broad-gauge clearances) for as much of the route as possible in the East. (There is video on the Web of one of the UP U50s being either delivered or tested on the ex-Erie; this is one of the honorary-steam-locomotive-sized things out there... ;-})
There are two types of lubricators, all of which must function when the pistons and their valves are reciprocating, even when not under steam. They are mechanical and hydrostatic. The hydrostatic are the older types that relied on special oils, and also for the boiler to be hot. Oil was literally dripped into hot water inside of a header with small glass windows ( windows so that the engineer could monitor the flow rate) and that mixture would run forward to the running gear under pressure. The mechanical lubricators also need heat, especially for the one of the two types of mechanical lubricators that uses 'cake' lube, or grease. That leaves the remaining of the two mechanical types, simple oil. Even they usually had heaters. When you see a small plume of white steam issuing from a small tube directly forward of the stack on steamers, that is the exhaust steam of the heater for the mechanical lubricator.
Without steam in the boiler, the valves and pistons had to be immobilized for fear of severe and catastrophic wear in transit. The simplest way to isolate the valves and pistons was to remove the main rod, the one that connects the main crank to the crosshead. That way, only the drivers' bushings or bearings and side-rods had to be lubed during transit, and that could be done at periodic intervals during the journey.
Crandell
selectorWithout steam in the boiler, the valves and pistons had to be immobilized for fear of severe and catastrophic wear in transit.
You mean there was a risk that they would move just from the jarring and bounding during transit and they had to be protected from this kind of movement?
Yeah, but if I recall correctly, the only part of the mechanical lubricator that *required* steam was the section feeding steam-cylinder oil to the appropriate places. In the absence of hot steam in the cylinders, ordinary oil would perform cylinder lubrication quite nicely. Some care would need to be taken to avoid inadvertent air compression in the cylinders (which might also lead to overheating and tribological failure) -- but that's not exactly rocket science to implement.
We might remember that most of these deliveries were taking place in an era when division-level stops were still mandated, meaning it would not be either far or long between stops where maintenance checks on the running gear of locomotives in transport could be made.
I believe it's been commented, elsewhere, that unkeying the piston rods from the crossheads is a better approach in principle for transport (in the presence of mechanical lubrication) than pulling the mains (which would require appropriate bobweights on the main pins, etc., as well as posing some potential issues on modern power -- for example, you do NOT just sling lightweight roller-bearing rods on some blocking on the tender deck or wherever, and installing those rods after delivery would be non-trivial in a number of respects...)
One of Frank King's books has a picture of a DM&IR Yellowstone in a train on it's way from the builder to Minnesota. Can't recall if it was Alco or Baldwin, but the builder put a special sign on it so everyone knew who had built this mammoth engine.
By the way, where the railroad officially took delivery of the engine could be affected by state taxes. A railroad in New York state might say buy an engine from Alco in Schenectedy, but have it 'delivered' to one of their locations in Indiana, if Indiana had a lower sales taxes than New York state.
H. Reid's volume on the Virginian has a section on the 2-10-10-2's delivery which required removal of the cabs and front cylinders, with a bunch of stuff shipped in accompanying gondolas. I don't remember offhand what the routing was to get them there, but I know it was circuitous.
The main rods on the Milw 4-4-2s were strapped to the running boards during delivery. They were installed at Milwaukee after the engines arrived. I know that on scrap locomotives often times the main rods were cut and tossed into the tender of strapped on someplace.
Randy
Reading these accounts of what was done when new locomotives were prepared for transit reminded me of how an N&W J (#600) was moved from Bristol to Roanoke (151.1 miles) in June of 1966. While bringing #45 (the Tenneseean) up to Bristol one afternoon, the left side valve gear disintegrated just east of Abingdon, Va., and did great damage on that side. The engine was moved into Bristol under her own power after the hanging parts were removed. The main rod and what was left of the valve gear were removed in Bristol, the piston was blocked, and the engine was made ready for the trip to the shops in Roanoke. In the article in Trains (pp.47-48 in the March, 1999, issue of Trains), nothing is said about any counterbalancing to take the place of the main rod. Then the engine was run home light--on one side. There was a meet along the way, with #45--and a siding with the proper slope was found so that the engine could be started in case she stopped dead center. Before reaching Roanoke, the engine was run at 90 mph--without rocking!-- for a short distance. Apparently she survived, but, so far as I know, no mention was made of possible damage to the track from improper balance on the drivers.
Johnny
I would have harsh words for anyone running an unbalanced locomotive at 90mph in a known-damaged condition!
Now, having said that, let's look for a moment at the balance. Js had zero longitudinal overbalance, so no net effect of yaw couple, as the absolute peak moment is reduced and it's as easy in principle to damp one-sided yaw force as for both sides.
Taking the eccentric crank and rod down reduces the rotating mass by that equivalent amount (center-of-mass displacement for the crank, and center-of-percussion proportion for the rod). In addition, the rotating mass of the main (bearing, cap,etc. plus center-of-percussion mass of the main) would be absent on that side. I don't have the exact mass figures for these components, but they should not be difficult to determine from available sources (I just don't have the time to do it and then check my work properly). Helps of course that these are lightweight rods with tight lateral spacing.
First thing I would consider here is taking the eccentric off the crank, blocking the eccentric rod to prevent valve movement that might slam the piston forward or backward unexpectedly, and reinstalling the crank on the main pin after the main was taken down. This would go a fairly long way toward ameliorating the out-of-balance condition, for only marginally more working time 'out on the main'.
Again, if I were expecting this on a mainline trip, it wouldn't be "that" difficult to take along one annular main bobweight, perhaps made in sections to make it easier for one man to handle the 'bits'. You would then put this on the main pin and reinstall the eccentric crank to hold it. That permits (unless I am missing something I think I'm not) running the engine at reasonable speed without additional augment -- with less overall augment, in fact, than with two rods! -- as well as towing the engine at any desired or expedient speed normally used for traffic.
Now somebody explain to me, even leaving common sense out of it, how they would run that engine legally "90mph" at all post-'47/'52? I don't believe that part of the Shenandoah Division was equipped for ATC that would have 'grandfathered' speed above 79mph, and the ACL-compliant system for Richmond was not put on J class in any case... so who got the ICC fines?
What was left of the eccentric rod (it had been broken) was taken off in Bristol, and the piston was blocked. This was not on the Shenandoah Division (Hagerstown-Roanoke), but the Radford Division (Roanoke-Bristol).
As to speed limits, the speed limit for passenger trains Roanoke-Bristol was 65 mph with some restrictions, such as 60 mph between Salem and Roanoke There were other, more drastic, limitations, but none in the area where the engine was tested.. The article mentions "...some unofficial one-legged J speed tests." Apparently this test was made west of Salem, in a stretch that "...was commonly known as the stretch where passenger engineers could make up time." That quotation gives the impression that the engineers did not worry about either what the N&W or the ICC had said about speed limits. I cannot find any limitations for engines running light in the Radford Division timetable #4, of 26 April 1953; it shows three classes of service: Passenger Trains, Freight Trains, and Freight or Mixed Trains handled by Class A, K, or E Engines.
If the ICC knew nothing about the disregard of the ABS speed limit, how could the ICC fine anybody?
I meant to say 80 mph, not 90 mph.
ICC never had anything to say about 'speed limits' in its safety bulletins and reports, explicitly noting on several occasions that top speed was the responsibility of the railroad involved -- EXCEPT insofar as it might, after 1951, involve operation faster than 79 mph in the absence of ATC or ATS. (With the actual prescribed minimum requirement being extremely simple, leading to a conclusion that this was 'continuation of policy by other means' of the effort leading up to the Esch Act that was later deprecated near the end of 1928).
Under that statute, applicable as there was no train control on the Radford Division to my knowledge (which was a bit weird because Southern had train control out of Bristol from before 1930, and the Shenandoah Division has it, too). To pick a nit ... but a VERY significant nit, with respect to Government glee in enforcement, you mean "79 mph" not "80 mph". The ICC could and did enforce the law for 80 mph, as that speed is a statutory violation and we all know the history of those. I have little doubt that upon hearing of a light engine with one main taken down violating the statute, the ICC would have a field day with the violation orders -- there is little anyone can say in claiming that was a 'safe' operation, no matter how well it might have turned out after the fact!
Was the quote about 'the stretch where passenger engineers could make up time' applicable only in the historical sense... it was only about two years after enforcement of the limit commenced. A bit like continuing to drive 100mph on the New Jersey Turnpike, taking advantage of lax enforcement of the 70 mph limit, in 1974 or later... (I tremble to think what the contemporary NJ state troopers would do if they caught somebody over the 55mph limit with one side of the car missing important parts! -- not a direct comparison, but I think illustrative...)
RME
RME, the article states that the locomotive reached the speed of 80 mph. The ICC made its ruling concerning the maximum speed allowable in the absence of ATC, ATS, or Cab Signals in 1947 or 1948, not in1954 (this event occurred in 1956). As to enginemen adhering to the ICC ruling at all times, I can cite at least two events in the 1960's when I personally know that a train exceeded 79 mph on a line that had nothing more than ABS. It is different today.
Also, in the article which includes this account, it is stated that when the engine was stopped to meet #45, the men on board the engine saw both enginemen on the passenger train looking at them--and flying past faster than 80 mph.
Please remember that I am quoting what the article says about the operation of moving the crippled engine. .
I doubt that there was any official report of the speed actually attained by the engine. Indeed, the official log of the Bristol shop foreman, who was on board, shows a top speed of 55 mph. I also doubt that if the ICC had heard of what these men did there would not have been punitive action taken.
Just for the record, didn't say '54; I know perfectly well that the order was issued July 17, 1947 (See CFR 136.11) to be effective Dec 31 1951.
I suspect there were more than a few violations of the maximum-speed law, both in the old train-control days after the Esch Act was passed, and starting in 1952. The enforcement actions almost certainly involved data from things like Valve Pilot or other speed-recorder tapes, and "isn't it amusing" how often those things seemed to break at a critical moment or the tape from them was quietly lost or misread... See some of the stories in Staufer's Thoroughbreds for examples. How enforcement was done in the absence of speed recorders... probably by looking at other records, which could just as easily be 'cooked' or selectively edited without the Feds being much the wiser. Penalties -- sure. Dislike of the general weed-weasel aspect of ICC oversight? draw your own conclusions.
A comment on a previous comment regarding sanitary needs. Remember that divisions with times for crew changes were rarely more than four or five hours apart, even at relatively slow freight train speeds, so facilities at each stopover were used. Where longer runs existed, they were through barren unoccupied territory and aiming downwind over the side probably was sufficient, with plenty of paper packed in advance. So I doubt anything was added to the typical cab to meet this specific need.
in those days there were no tree huggers
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