I know that the 4-4-0 went out of vogue right around the turn of the century, but were there any outliers? What were a few of the last classes of these engines built (in NA)? I feel like it's so much easier to do research on British steam - there just seems like there's no centralized source to look up American/Canadian/Mexican stuff :/. Any help is appreciated.
Here's a good place to start.
Guide to North American Steam Locomotives - Revised Edition - Kalmbach Hobby Store
The Reading D11 class 4-4-0 was built by Baldwin in 1914.
It had a wide Wooten firebox, a combustion chamber, was superheated as built with piston valves and Walschearts valve gear, and was built with a rear cab. It was also the last 4-4-0 built for the Reading, with only ten locomotives built to the design.
The Reading had a number of camelback 4-4-0s, and some of these were rebuilt with superheaters, piston valves and Walschearts valve gear, but none were rebuilt with a rear cab.
Few 4-4-0s were built with modern features like the Reading D11.
Peter
The latest American 4-4-0 I can recall was circa 1928, and I think it was built for an 'accommodation train' in the South. From Baldwin, and reasonably modern in its construction details, in service that did not require three driving axles or the capability of a larger firebox (the firebox on a 4-4-0 can be quite deep for good radiant uptake and combustion efficiency if you don't need a larger grate than will fit water-shielded between frames and axles...)
My suspicion is that most of the potential market for 'new' 4-4-0s in the United States was squeezed between the evolving motorcar, on the one hand, and the low-cost ability to use older power on the smaller or less-demanding consists that would be appropriate for an American type to pull. It has been mentioned that the advent of steel cars, first steel underframes and then full steel construction, spelled the doom of the unidirectional 4-4-0 in many services (in favor of 4-4-2 and then 4-6-2 on the one hand, and the 4-6-0 on the other, the latter in its turn going to the 4-6-2 as the benefits of deep and wide fireboxes became better understood).
It would be difficult to find an American rationale for a true modern 4-4-0 like the Schools class. Here even lightweight trains would get 4-4-2s, and those just as with glorified-motorcar streamliners would soon require 'upsizing' if they were at all successful enough to warrant the capital. (Something I find interesting to note is that nowhere do we see cost-effective use of 'more smaller trains' as in the proposed late-19th-century high-speed railroad between Philadelphia and New York. Interurbans of course tried that... and we see where it got them, even as early as the '30s; 4-4-0-hauled trains were always going to be labor-intensive if successful enough to command opportunity capital.
I also suspect the Depression put the kibosh on much "new" construction of anything a 4-4-0 would handle until MU-capable road switchers financed with wartime-fueled creditworthiness would make any steam obsolescent.
I don't remember the details, but I believe Baldwin did build some 4-4-0's post WW2 for export to the South American market. Not many, but some.
OvermodI also suspect the Depression put the kibosh on much "new" construction
Well, that's one of the reasons the Jersey Central held on to the Camelbacks as long as they did.
Flintlock76Well, that's one of the reasons the Jersey Central held on to the Camelbacks as long as they did.
Now imagine if CNJ had waited a couple of years and built the double-enders with turbo 608As, better electrical and 'other' systems, and Loewy-style noses... all in that original blue and orange style...
Well, if someone else had been willing to build the "Jersey Januses" they would have probably have lasted a lot longer. Not Baldwin's best effort by any means.
Shrike,
it would be a funny idea to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era: with (I have to recalculate, but the internet helps) 70000 pounds axle load, 100 inches boiler, wide firebox overhanging the rear 70 inches driver and an eight wheel, no, a twelve wheel box shape tender. Later, one year before austed from service, replaced by a meanwhile superfluous Centipede tender, or one of these ground-scraping PRR sixteen wheels tender.
Serious: in later years, I believe the 4-4-0 would have been regarded as old-fashioned, it would perhaps become a 2-6-0 with driver diameter as fitting and an eight wheel tender.
Maybe someone has made a sketch for contemplation and could post it here?
Sara 05003
Sara T Shrike, it would be a funny idea to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era: with (I have to recalculate, but the internet helps) 70000 pounds axle load, 100 inches boiler, wide firebox overhanging the rear 70 inches driver and an eight wheel, no, a twelve wheel box shape tender. Later, one year before austed from service, replaced by a meanwhile superfluous Centipede tender, or one of these ground-scraping PRR sixteen wheels tender. Serious: in later years, I believe the 4-4-0 would have been regarded as old-fashioned, it would perhaps become a 2-6-0 with driver diameter as fitting and an eight wheel tender. Maybe someone has made a sketch for contemplation and could post it here? Sara 05003
The lack of a trailing truck would in all likelihood kill a 4-4-0 superpower locomotive at the concept stage. Having said that, the British did produce a very modern 2-6-0 in the postwar era:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BR_Standard_Class_2_2-6-0
I wouldn't in any way consider the above "super power," but it certainly was modern.
Flintlock76 Well, if someone else had been willing to build the "Jersey Januses" they would have probably have lasted a lot longer. Not Baldwin's best effort by any means.
EMD were happy to build them for export cusomers by 1952...
Henschel even built the strange, narrow KKs for Egypt which were effectively double ended E8s with twin 8-567C engines.
The next group for Egypt were just normal double enders with one 16-567C each.
This may help in investigating the American type: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=4-4-0
seppburgh2This may help in investigating the American type: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=4-4-0
Yep. Here you go. These three were the last, built in 1927. Chicago & Illinois Midland 4-4-0 "American" Locomotives in the USA (steamlocomotive.com)
I got my 1st train ride, at age 2, on the last C&IM passenger train. Manito, IL (home) to Havana, IL (where dad worked). The power was C&IM 4-4-0 #502. How many others can rightly claim their first train ride was behind a for real 4-4-0 operating in regular passenger service.
When Chicago's electricity provider, Commonwealth Edison, acquired what was to be the C&IM their purpose was to move Illinois coal. But they did initially provide two passenger round trips per day between Springfield and Peoria. There were far better options (Illinois Terminal) for travel between those two cities. So, the C&IM trains served our little towns with passenger, mail and express service. Two car trains were all it took. One head end car and one coach. A 4-4-0 was more than sufficient.
The entire C&IM passenger car fleet was six cars. Built as an add on to a large South Shore order with the electric stuff left off. Three coaches, one combine, and two mail/express/baggage cars - along with those 4-4-0's were all it took.
It's a shame one of those engines wasn't preserved.
Sara, that's a pretty funny April Fool's post. It might be interesting to see a 4-4-0 that was the equivalent of those early diesel Rabbits that were supposed to have coast-to-coast nonstop range... although there is the question of ash handling...
Actually, these narrow-firebox arrangements were likely more efficient than a wide-grate but low-volume radiant section would be. See Chapelon's discussion of his express 4-8-0 conversions, and English experience (as constrained by their loading gage) with good 4-6-0s vs. Pacifics.
While it is technically no longer April Fool's Day: how about a Garratt of two 4-4-0 chassis flanking an actual SuperPower-style deep firebox and the large-diameter and fairly short boiler shell that could be typical on Garratts? (See the interesting Tasmanian express locomotives, double four-cylinder (!) 4-4-2s, for the inspiration, perhaps?). Then give that an extended water-bottle 'tender' that pumps its contents to the water tank over one engine unit to keep adhesive weight controlled... we could call it Concorde technology.
Of course this is now getting into actual divided-drive SuperPower country that would support well over 6000ihp with no worse adhesion than a PRR T1, and Stroudley among others knew what could be done to get stable running without a lead truck...
Shrike, I invite you to read my post carefully again, here is the crucial sentence:
>>it would be a funny idea to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era:<<
..to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era! Not that it is a Super Power by itself!
But, so much I have learned: if you want a Super Power you must have a four wheel truck behind drivers. Ok, then let's turn the thing around and make it an
0-4-4.
How is that? not super running but Super Power! I can imagine it wheelspinning along fantastically. Never mind, it's only fun.
Hi Overmod,
ok, ok - you sure come along with a suitcase of suggestions, what stuck out to me was this "double four cylinder" Garratt. No mentioning of compound, were they four cylinder simple? that would be the apex of .. what would you call it? parallel working cylinders? Tasmanian railways .. I didn't even know they existed, surely they are some narrow gauge, no?
Now, seriously, the 4-4-0 would have been turned into a 2-6-0, I'm prettty sure of. I saw a sketch of one such later era 2-6-0 three cylinder type with eight wheel bogies tender, the European 'standard' tender wheel setting at Juni's.
Juni why don't you post one or the other of your designs?
You guys should make a proper inquiry, sometimes it takes a little coaxing for her to start, to get out of the shed, just like with this long Pennsy S1.
Sara, the Tasmanian Garratts are one of the finest flowers of English locomotive design at near the high-water mark of British world predominance. Yes, nicely-balanced four-cylinder simples, relatively high drivers, nice fit and finish. To me they're up there with the Algerian Garratts as the high-water mark... and they were almost the very first Garratts built.
Since most of the 'first-generation' SuperPower engines were still relatively low-speed by later standards, a 'greatly enlarged Stroudley Gladstone' might not be a complete April Fool joke. The problem is less getting the chassis to 'guide' as to make a boiler short enough to fit without sticking out in front far enough to need carrying wheels...
... and I can think of a couple of quirky Belgian engines that might almost qualify as exemplars; there is one design of Pacific they had with almost spookily long 'front porch' appearance...
There were interesting 'tricks' used on the Gladstones to make them far less unstable than you might expect -- thinning and specially shaping the flanges and tread on the lead driver pair, for example. There is at least one published record that discusses their stability in reasonable detail, which I can likely still find in the college library where I first came across it.
In America we did not, for some reason, embrace the idea of the Krauss-Helmholtz bogie, which would give a nominal 2-6-0 the guiding stability of a locomotive with four-wheel truck. That in turn might justify use of the three cylinders in a 'smaller' engine...
Overmod, sorry: I googled for Tasmanian 4-4-0 + 0-4-4 Garratts and I didn't get any. Most were 0-4-0 + 0-4-0 and any other. No 4-4-0 + 0-4-4. None of them all looked anywheres interesting or was good looking in some way. Sorry to say. But with British flowers it is perhaps as with thing generally in Britain: they are different. The Algerian 4-6-2 + 2-6-4 are more notable locos:
https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=Algeria&wheel=Beyer-Garratt&railroad=plm.algerien
detailed description and data table
If you can, would you post a link to photos of one 4-4-0 + 0-4-4 Garratt?
On the SNCB: >>... and I can think of a couple of quirky Belgian engines that might almost qualify as exemplars; there is one design of Pacific they had with almost spookily long 'front porch' appearance...<<
I believe it is the series 10 you a pointing to? Later they built another four cylinder simple Pacific the series 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXQGBPYfrEk
video showing 1.002 on a steam special trip. The loco looks quite acceptable from aside, but the front view is .. forget it! The smoke box is cased in with rectangular shapes that make the whole loco square and broad. At passing by, you see the rods that look quite delicate for a big loco as this in (in European scale) On the trip, she suffers a trouble with a leaking on one cylinder (only has four) and during the trip trouble enlarges until the loco is unfit to continue. This happens all too often with steam special runs today. Is it because the locos are getting overly old or don't the people who run them know how to handle them? I believe: a bit of everything.
Mais, naturellement non pas en France: voie la voyage de la 241.A.17 sur la ligne Imperiale à Paris:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRQI2_Bgils
It's all in French? Yes that belongs to the four cylinder compound locos.
Sara
Overmod, sorry: I googled for Tasmanian 4-4-0 + 0-4-4 Garratts and I didn't get any. Most were 0-4-0 + 0-4-0 and any other. No 4-4-0 + 0-4-4. None of them all looked anywheres interesting or was good looking in some way.
The Tasmanian Garratts in question were 4-4-2+2-4-4...
Try:
Garratt Locomotives (railtasmania.com)
and: RailTasmania.com - TGR outline diagram for M class garratt locomotive
These were taken out of service fairly early since the track was not up to the standard required by these fast and heavy locomotives. The boilers were the same as the L class 2-6-2+2-6-2, and the M class boilers were used on the L class during WWII.
Oh, thank you, Peter for the information!
Funny: the 'rear' single idling axle is closer to the driven one than the first driven axle. It looks like they would even interfere in certain suspension moves. Hmm, the type looks much like the other types, I don't see anything especially elegant or fitting in them. A variety of rectangular shapes around the boiler. Well, tastes are different. In general I don't see Garratts as quite so good looking locos. They will have been fitting for the job, but they are more of a work horse than an Arabian, no?
M636CEMD were happy to build them for export cusomers by 1952...
Quite true, but they just weren't interested in 1945/1946. Probably they'd seen the error of their ways by 1952 and realized there was a whole big market out there.
Oddly, they never went back to the CNJ with a "Look, we changed our minds" proposal, at least not to my knowledge.
Sara, the Tasmanian Garratts were double-Atlantics. Herb Garratt himself understood that guide trucks at each end of a reciprocating chassis were appropriate both for high speed and sharp-curve guidance. At that time a four-wheel lead truck was considered essential for express locomotives; it is less important for the trailing engine in a Garratt because of the steering effect of the cradle pivots.
A contemporary account that shows the geometry of the layout from the side is here:
https://livinghistories.newcastle.edu.au/nodes/view/30305
They will always be funny-looking locomotives to those who value 'classic' proportions in the sense Cole et al. at Alco were defining just at the time the Tasmanian Garratts were built. On the other hand, an eight-drivered locomotive that runs diameter speed with a load on Cape gauge is no plow horse no matter what the esthetic shortcomings may be.
No one mistakes an Algerian Garratt for anything but a racehorse, though. It is a true shame what became of these; they deserved better.
For fun, we might as well invoke that other classic 'advanced-Garratt' design (also on Cape gauge) -- the NZR G class, which to me is an Arabian (or perhaps a Morgan with some neuroses ) although certainly not a Virginia Thoroughbred. My introduction to these was via the irrepressible W.W.Stewart who had great fun with some of the defails [not exactly a typo!] of how these locomotives came to be and what assumptions were made in their design. I find I do not quite share his assessment of general lack of common sense involved, at least not from general principles...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/29903115@N06/42989152850
Now I'll grant you that's NOT a pretty face, and there are gangly details, but those could be fixed...
Note the comment about how good these might have been if built as having double NSW A-class chassis details...
Flintlock76Quite true, but they just weren't interested in 1945/1946. Probably they'd seen the error of their ways by 1952 and realized there was a whole big market out there.
I actually sat down at one point and sketched what an "E8" with double cabs would involve. Keep in mind that you'd still need two separate 12-cylinder engines plus, in that era, steam generators -- it gets pretty long, and there is a fair amount of specialized detail design.
It might be interesting to see what would have been built if the post-1966 public assumption of commuter operation had been done earlier. I have little doubt this would have involved something like RSD7s as early as Alco could make them run reliably -- 1956? -- and in any case something like it with the 251 (which the RSD15 wasn't, quite, in my opinion). I'm not sure the case for full-carbody streamlining and A-1-A trucks on brand-new commuter power bought for the purpose would be a priority for a government sponsored organization of the kind likely to be established practically at a given period of interest...
Sara TMais, naturellement non pas en France: voie la voyage de la 241.A.17 sur la ligne Imperiale à Paris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRQI2_Bgils It's all in French?
It's all in French?
I think we need to push to adopt the French word for 'railfans'. It is difficult to find a term in English that is non-pejorative in some sense, and some are downright insulting and intended so. On the other hand, "passionne/passionnee" says what's appropriate succinctly and (in my opinion at least) with semantic precision and economy.
I love that they call 241P 17 "La Mountain"...
Hello, Overmod,
you wrote the most again! About what you mentioned:
I am sorry if I come on too strict about aesthetics, but this is surely over 50% of the attraction of steam to me as I see it today. If the locomotive is a heap of junk (ho-ho-ho!) then it wasn't worth building in my view. Ok, this is not quite the way engineers like Woodard or Bulleid may have seen it. But it's my view.
Tasmanian: I would still much rather go for the fantastic nature there than for small 'double ender' steam locomotives, I have to excuse again (becomes a habit)
La Vapeur en 'la Grande Nation': yes they must have had a hangup for the American names of the 4-6-2 (Pacific - pronounced: Passivic) and 4-8-2 (Mountain, pronounced Montajne .. where the 'e' gets _almost_ lost) but much less for the 2-8-2 (Mikado - Miika-doo) and not at all for any other wheel systems.
I like the way how they handle the locomotive, everybody moves like an artist, so much more finesse, there is no rough 'rum-bum' like the guys in Germany often make a feature of: "Look, how we can do it!" to get attention from the laymen public. In one scene the mécanicien (driver) opens the regulator and holds it at his stretched fingertips: no German driver would do that.
It might have been interesting if the three 05 of us would have been called to participate in these catenary and pantograph high-speed tests where they used a Chapelon 231.E at up to 175 km/h. This flashed my thought: that was just our official speed and as Juni had calculated we would have been the equivalent of a Chapelon Pacific at that speed and maybe could have run a little faster too. Where was the post, I have to look it up, or can someone else find it?
x
(I can't get this posted properly so I quit)
Funny: the 'rear' single idling axle is closer to the driven one than the first driven axle. It looks like they would even interfere in certain suspension moves. (Sara)
Herb Garratt himself understood that guide trucks at each end of a reciprocating chassis were appropriate both for high speed and sharp-curve guidance. (Overmod)
Having spent some time seriously looking at the tracking of iron ore gondolas some forty years ago, it was found that the highest lateral forces in curves were caused by the leading axle of the trailing truck on the outer rail.
About the same time Amtrak's SDP40Fs were involved in derailments also involving the leading axle of the trailing truck. This was thought to involve movement of water in the internal water tank, but the high lateral forces occurred in the same place, water tank or not.
After the original two Garratts, the first design was a 2-6-0+0-6-2 for Western Australia. This was found to be hard on track in curves, due to the lack of a leading axle to guide the rear engine unit in curves.
The two Tasmanian designs took account of this by providing an idler axle. It should be understood that the lateral force in a curve is proportional to the axle load on the wheelset. So a lightly loaded axle, close to the coupled axle both provides the guidance and reduces wear on the coupled axles and on the rail in the curve.
It looks odd when viewed by people familiar with conventional locomotives, but it works.
The EMD 'double-enders' were Australian designed and built under license there; it is unlikely EMD would have found a market for them here before introduction of practical 567 turbocharging (Overmod)
As much as I would like to claim Australian credit for the design of the double ended locomotives, they were in fact designed in La Grange as early as 1949. The design started as a single design for both Australia and Europe, but the clearance requirements in Europe resulted in what was effectively a new design, while in Australia taking 3" out of the width and maybe 6" out of the height (partly by moving the fans from the centre line to lower on the curve of the roof) meant that the EMD pressed steel nose components could be used.
I think that some local design was required, to use the different sizes of steel section available in Australia, but the overall design came from La Grange. The dimensions were shown in both metric and feet and inches, something not known in Australia until 1973.
OvermodI think we need to push to adopt the French word for 'railfans'.
Actually, I got a laugh out of the Germans adopting and adapting the American term for steam locomotive fans.
Dampf-freak. And why not, if it works?
Hey, I've found myself using a word for "rivet-counter" I learned from Juniatha:
"Nietenzahler." That works too! (I hope I spelled it right!)
And to go a bit further, a lot of toy train fans have adopted the German word for zinc rot, "Zincpest," for the deterioration of the zinc used in pre-war toy trains.
Flintlock76"Nietenzahler." That works too! (I hope I spelled it right!)
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