Here is a place for you to share your favorite locmotive! Feel free to go loose on why it is you favorite, any interesting specifications, and just general information or stories that may go with it. Please share a picture of it if you can!
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Alton and Southern #12, an 0-8-0 at the St. Louis Museum of Transport. One of four remaining American-built 3 cylinder steamers. It was the museum's second locomotive when donated in 1948.
Reading 2102, my favorite since her April 1971 on the old Akron canton and Youngstown excursion. And the 1218, miss those ns excursions.
Just about any Berkshire loco... like Pere Marquette 1225, or Nickel Plate 765 as outstanding examples. Big enough to fill the heart with awe, but not so big you can't see the whole thing without being so far away you can't make out detail. Near perfection in style and outline. Not much different than #12 (S. Connor's post above), but without the visual unstable look caused by lacking the leading and trailing trucks.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
This is tough, there's nary a steam engine I've seen I didn't like BUT, if I had to choose one, and ONE only that I could have alive and running around loose on the mainline I'd have to choose Norfolk and Westerns Class J, the Mighty 611.
Why? Many have said, and probably with some partisanship, that it's the best steam passenger engine ever built. In its engineering and styling, in its efficiency, its ability to get up and go, I have to agree. Perfection itself.
Save 'yo Confederate money boys, the South's gonna rise again, and 611's gonna pull it!
I'm going to have to go with my northeastern roots and say a Pennsy D16sb. So graceful and yet capable looking, just right for a modest sized, tuscan red consist.
Very cool locomotives! Interesting to see everyone's spraul of interests!
We have been through this kind of listing before, and I agree with the N&W J, overall, but from a strictly nostalgia point of view, it would have to be the dear old Pennsy K4, just because I spent so many deslightful hours behind it, sometimes double-headed. If there were NYC Hudsons around, they might get second place in both counts, but i am also partial to the Ripley AT&SF three designs, the UP 844, the CB&Q O-5, the Southern green and gold P5, the New Haven I5, the Daylights, and that is only the standard gauge portion of my loves. Then go to the United Kingdom for the Castles, and any of the Gresley Pacifics.
My very favorite locomotive is a Baldwin, built in 1929, modified as necessary while in service, retired 1960ish to a purpose-built storage structure, last steamed at the railroad's last run in 1975.
Kiso Forest Railway second #1, 762mm (2'6") gauge 0-4-2T.
I think highly of a variety of behemoths (N&W 611 foremost among them) but a locomotive the size of my Toyota pickup is small enough to love.
Chuck
GP38-2s
I love anything Colorado narrow gauge, & Santa Fe 3751, but only 1 engine brought the love of trains to my son...
Long live UP 844!
Though there were only 16 built before ALCO went out of buisiness, my favorite loco is the C430.
So hard to choose. From a purely appearance standpoint I'd have to go with the CPR G class Pacific...or the D -10 class Ten Wheeler. From a sheer power standpoint I like the 2-10-2 Santa Fe s and the the 2-10-4 Texas (Selkirk) engines. I'm not really drawn to the huge articulated engines... they look too much like alot of bad plumbing to me. Would love to stand at trackside to watch a C&O T1 handle 160 carloads of coal..
J class gets another vote. too many goods ones to pick from. i always liked the B & O president class pacifics too.
A thread like this one comes up every now and again and my choices are not cast in concrete. These are my current picks:
Steam: IHB U-4a, the "grandest 0-8-0 of all"
Diesel: BRC C424 on a boat job or a BRC SD40/slug hump-pusher set
Electric: South Shore R2's (always a pair)
i wish to thank thechief for a marvelous photograph that is worthy for the Trains front cover in my opinion
CSSHEGEWISCH A thread like this one comes up every now and again and my choices are not cast in concrete. These are my current picks: Steam: IHB U-4a, the "grandest 0-8-0 of all"
Wow! The IHB U-4a looks like a more modern version of A&S #12! 3rd cylinder and all! Do you know what the U-4a's tractive effort was? I've heard it's the strongest 0-8-0. Strange, since I thought the A&S #12 was strong at 60, 60 0lbs!!!!
Too bad one didn't survive, I think I might have a new 2nd favorite!!!!
I've stayed out of this one because there are too many choices. So all I can do is to make a few suggestions, broken down into categories.
Diesel switchers: Lima, any variation of B-B end-cab unit.
Diesel Hood unit: F-M, any variation of Loewy-designed B-B unit. Particularly partial to the H20-44 in multiples, but also love the H15/16-44.
Diesel Cab unit: Any Baldwin Shark
Steam switcher: Any version of USRA 0-8-0, to iunclude the enlarged version built for B&LE. Honorable mention to B&O's class U 0-10-0 and Union's 0-10-2, which were the only two ten-drivered switchers that are attractive to my eyes (YMMV)
Streamlined steam: N&W J 4-8-4; N&W K-2a 4-8-2; B&O P-7d 4-6-2 in that order.
Nonstreamlined steam passenger: B&O P-7c or P-7e 4-6-2 in Royal Blue.
Steam freight or dual service, conventional or articulated: Too many to choose.
And by the way, the I.H.B. U-4a 0-8-0's had a tractive effort of 75,700 pounds, plus 13,800 pounds provided by the booster, for a total of 89,500 pounds! A.H.M. produced a model of this engine in the 1960's. New Haven had a small group of similar 3-cylinder 0-8-0's, too.
Tom
All time champs?
American steam- SP GS-4 Daylight
British steam- A1 pacific Tornado, built in 2008
German steam- Bavarian pacific S 3/6
French steam (sorta) 141R Mikado
Diesel- Alco PA
Electric- the mighty GG1
So an 0-8-0 wheel arrangement had a booster? Where?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
I've heard some steamers had boosters on their tenders, thats where it must have been on the U-4a
Southern 4501, then the N&W "J" "A" and "Y" in that order
S. Connor I've heard some steamers had boosters on their tenders, thats where it must have been on the U-4a
Sure enough.
Booster (and Elesco heater!) later removed:
Here is a side view of a similar tender booster that survives at IRM:
Forgot about tender boosters.
On the subject of boosters, that tender booster has smaller drive wheels than even the smallish wheels on that 0-8-0, which is a low speed drag, hump, or transfer engine. People can correct me on the actual application, but we can be sure it was lugging long strings of freight short distances at low speed.
So if the small drivers on the 0-8-0 limit that engine to say, 20 MPH tops, would not the even smaller wheels on that booster with siderods flailing around limit the engine-tender combination to even less, say 10 MPH?
Or because the booster is gear drive on only one wheel and siderod to the other, kind of like the Pennsy S2 turbine that can get away with smaller wheels for a given top speed because you don't have the unbalanced reciprocating angularity?
So if you can run a gear/siderod combination at higher speed per wheel diameter than a conventional piston-rod drive, why did a high-speed steam piston engine with gear or jackshaft coupling to a siderod drive of smaller but still fixed-frame drivers never catch on? That arrangement was used a lot on early electrics.
Paul MilenkovicSo if the small drivers on the 0-8-0 limit that engine to say, 20 MPH tops, would not the even smaller wheels on that booster with siderods flailing around limit the engine-tender combination to even less, say 10 MPH? Or because the booster is gear drive on only one wheel and siderod to the other, kind of like the Pennsy S2 turbine that can get away with smaller wheels for a given top speed because you don't have the unbalanced reciprocating angularity?
It's kinda both.
The booster is geared drive to the small wheels of the driven axle, has the essential advantage of 'inside connection' to its crankshaft, and drives on a centered pinion, and of course disengages and stops/idles before it reaches a critical speed. By the time Franklin stopped making reversible boosters they were nominally good for about 30mph in gear, assuming you had the steam generation capability to sustain that.
Theoretically, the quartered outside connecting rods can be 'perfectly' counterbalanced dynamically; the trouble is that the trailing truck is suspended, and the plane of rotation of the rods is outboard of that of the counterweights. Then add all the unsprung mass of the counterweight-and-rod system, hung outboard of the journals, and you have an unpleasant-riding proposition at even reasonably high speed.
I don't know whether the units applied to the U-4a tenders were reversible. (The patent for the reversible auxiliary locomotive is 1742610, available here.; it came out several years after the U-4as were built)
What is the "steam generation . . . to sustain that"?
In other words, how is a booster different than a second engine set on an articulated, where for examples, a Challenger didn't have that much more boiler than a Northern?
Are boosters steam hogs because they lack variable cutoff and/or throttles?
Well, the cylinders on most boosters weren't that big.... so I don't think that they would have been a problem in terms of steam usage.
And also, most steamers that had boosters were built with them, so they would have also been designed around that, and I'm sure the steam usage of the booster unit was taken into control.
My favorite locomotives are,
NYC J3a Hudson their very beautiful steamers in 20th Century Limited paint.
Amtrak F40 in Phase III and P40/2 Phase V
GP38-2.
Amtrak America, 1971-Present.
VGN 2-10-10-2
Would have loved to have seen and heard it in action in WV and VA coal drags in the 1920's.
The most beautiful and my favorite steamer is any 4-8-4; their lines, balance and symetrey are so above and beyond anyother steam engine - no contest. Bill Reed
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