Like the Burlington and to a lesser extent, the Milwaukee Road, C&NW long distance passenger services dieselized early, so the E-4s mostly hauled express and secondary trains on the Overland Route.
charlie hebdoThe tracks to Omaha were only a 90 mph speed limit, I believe.
I love the way you can say that with 'only' in there, like the Milwaukee with their little understated 'reduce to 90' signs and 'trains pass 100mph' indications at crossings. In the East, even on supposedly high-speed railroads, that would still be dramatically fast, and C&NW had far better automatic train control than, say, PRR or NYC to make use of it.
And yes, an E-4 would likely run all day at 90mph and ask for more.
The E-4s were too heavy for the Chicago to Minneapolis trackage. The tracks to Omaha had only a 90 mph speed limit, I believe.
charlie hebdoYou might get some arguments on the merits of the E-4.
The thing about the E-4 is not that it wasn't a capable and delightful locomotive design. It's that for a locomotive with so many inherent traffic shortcomings (relatively heavy axle load, tractive effort and adhesion issues common to high drivers and short stroke) it should have at least been fast, really fast. (And while 100mph is a good high speed for a N&W J, it ought to be laughably easy for an 84"-drivered Alco design from 1937.)
And it wasn't. The AAR had no reason to fudge the testing to make either Alco or C&NW look 'bad' for any reason. And it cannot be denied that no amount of effort could get the E-4 even up to 100mph with the test train ... under what might have been relatively ideal conditions.
Lest you think I'm picking on a Chicago road, we can look at another vaunted "120mph" design, the ATSF 3460 class. This is another example of a design that hits a wall performance-wise pretty quick: It will go close to 100mph all day long, struggle to reach 105 under most conditions, and couldn't exceed 110mph unless straight down after derailing off the Pecos River Bridge. Why? Inadequate valves and passages to make appropriate mass flow at speed. CSR/SRI worked this out in fairly exquisite detail as part of the 'science project' for 3463, but it still comes as somewhat depressing that Baldwin and ATSF together couldn't see this coming.
Meanwhile, another Chicago road, the Burlington, had some ponderous-looking Hudsons (a couple of which got even more ponderous-looking Alice-the-goon streamlining) with, as I recall, 78" drivers -- and these supposedly got happily over 112mph on dynamometer test. (I have not seen the actual dynamometric records, and have no idea of the train resistance involved, so I make no 'comparison' directly with the E-4, but I remain waiting all these years later for comparable measured records either for the C&NW or similar Milwaukee 4-6-4s. Maybe I'll get them now... and, come to mention it, wasn't there AAR test film of bouncing drivers on E-4s, something Kiefer couldn't produce on J-3as all the way up to 161mph equivalent?... let's see that, too.)
I have noted before that when Alfred Bruce of Alco looked back on his 'fastest' locomotives, he immediately noted 128mph+ in writing for the Milwaukee class A design. He is silent on the F-7, and I can't remember him mentioning the E-4 at all. Both of those classes were supposedly designed to reproduce that 4-4-2-style speed, or at least timekeeping performance, with longer and more lucrative consists.
For Peter Clark and others: I have come to the conclusion that something about the 'state of the art' practiced at Alco changed in the period between late 1936-early 1937, when the E-4s were designed and built, and late 1938 for the F-7s. I am not particularly willing to discount all the stories of extreme high speed with the Milwaukee engines as anecdotally invalid, so there has to be something changed between the two designs. Why no one has done an article on this I'm not sure.
A couple of extra West Coast streamlined locomotives...
The SP had at least two Pacifics with full Daylight streamlining and paint but without the conical smokebox door which worked the San Joaquin Daylight but were replaced by Mountain types when the train grew larger.
In the same part of the world, Santa Fe had a pair of old Pacifics with Daylight style shrouding over driving wheels but no skyline casing for the Valley Flyer although they were known to run to San Diego...
Peter
Given they were designed and built at the same time, more or less, why were the F-7 and E-4 not the same, with different streamlined casings....
So many of the leading dimensions were the same that one design could have done both jobs...
But of course the F-7 was regarded as a success and the E-4 a failure...
You might get some arguments on the merits of the E-4.
charlie hebdoIt's what it is called. And it originated in France in 1911.
My references from long ago said 1910, but I suspect that refers to the detail design (which was begun in 1909) - they were finished in spring 1911 as indicated.
To see part of the fun with the trailing truck, here is the sectioned preserved example, with the truck in question pretty clearly visible.
Reading would assay pin-guided trucks fore and aft in a couple of years ... to remarkable lack of success! (Part of that was the trucks had small wheels and were inside-bearing...)
The streamlined MILW version was the F7.
That is immaterial to the 'formative years' of the 4-6-4, and the naming rights to the type. By the time of the F-7s (I cannot get a straight answer whether it has a hyphen or not, and one major reference that has the hyphen has F6 and F6a without!) the concept of the high-speed Hudson type was well-established, and Milwaukee's use of "Baltic" little more than a quirk.
Personally I was quite happy with the (typically-European?) consensus resolution that reserved 'Baltic' for pin-guided-trailer 4-6-4s ... of which there are more examples than you might think: high-speed German bidirectional power among them. Bilty's locomotive is a very different design, and far more stable.
The North Western's nine streamlined E-4 Hudsons were built in 1938.
It is still a mystery to me how Alco could have gotten the design so wrong this late in the game. And then you have to endure all sorts of arguments from authority claiming Alco knew so much about high-speed design, things that have died out of current knowledge, etc. etc. -- but e pur si non muove, as it were, when actual AAR train time arrived. For a locomotive of that size and sophistication to be unable to reach 100mph on test is still surprising to me.
Here is an interesting though not comprehensive site on streamlined steam:
https://streamlinermemories.info/?page_id=13253
if I recall correctly from reading other tomes on the, UP streamlined 4-6-2 was used from Omaha to Cheyenne and the streamlined 4-8-2 was used from Cheyenne to Ogden.
That doesn't mean they didn't get to LAUPT or Portland to show 'em off to the public.
Overmod charlie hebdo Milwaukee Road's 4-6-4s were called Baltics. Thereupon hangs a tale that never gets old. Bilty, not Kiefer, invented the Super-Power 4-6-4 passenger locomotive, and would have had it built first if the Milwaukee had had a little more disposable income in 1926. However, he did not think he had 'invented' a wheel arrangement; he called it 'Baltic' after a pair of very cool European 4-6-4s from 1910. There is s resolution of a sort in the Whyte code: a 4-6-4 with two pin-guided trucks (like the originals) is a Baltic; a 4-6-4 with a radial trailing truck is a 'Hudson'. This preserves semantics ... but don't expect a Milwaukee Road fan not to say proudly what his F-6 is, without invoking the regional isms that so characterize 4-8-4s.
charlie hebdo Milwaukee Road's 4-6-4s were called Baltics.
Thereupon hangs a tale that never gets old.
Bilty, not Kiefer, invented the Super-Power 4-6-4 passenger locomotive, and would have had it built first if the Milwaukee had had a little more disposable income in 1926. However, he did not think he had 'invented' a wheel arrangement; he called it 'Baltic' after a pair of very cool European 4-6-4s from 1910.
There is s resolution of a sort in the Whyte code: a 4-6-4 with two pin-guided trucks (like the originals) is a Baltic; a 4-6-4 with a radial trailing truck is a 'Hudson'. This preserves semantics ... but don't expect a Milwaukee Road fan not to say proudly what his F-6 is, without invoking the regional isms that so characterize 4-8-4s.
It's what it is called. And it originated in France in 1911. The streamlined MILW version was the F7. The NorthWestern's nine streamlined E-4 Hudsons were built in 1938.
Four or five MT-1s, but these were essentially limited to fancy paint on tender and cab and a somewhat top-heavy skyline casing. I do NOT think 'streamlined' (not even 'semi') looking at pictures of these.
Overmod Am I uncharitable in chastising all of you that ignored the AC-9s again? If you are going to count Royal Hudsons and such, those surely qualify... the OP hinted at this, but the locomotives deserve full recognition by name.
Am I uncharitable in chastising all of you that ignored the AC-9s again? If you are going to count Royal Hudsons and such, those surely qualify... the OP hinted at this, but the locomotives deserve full recognition by name.
AC-9's were originally assigned to the El Paso to Tucumcari line as they were coal burners. They were then assigned to the Espee lines in northern Nevada east of Sparks, not exactly west coast, but is west of the Rockies.
Did not the SP "stremstyle" at least one 4-8-2 in the Daylight way, and it ended up in SF - San Jose commuter service?
charlie hebdoMilwaukee Road's 4-6-4s were called Baltics.
Milwaukee Road's 4-6-4s were called Baltics. I doubt if it ever happened, but the C&NW streamlined Hudson theoretically could have hauled a joint UP/SP/CNW train to California, rather than just to Omaha.
I thought about Santa Fe's "Blue Goose" late last night, but from what I can find it only ran from La Junta Colorado to Chicago. I remembered the Union Pacific's "Forty-Niner" as well, but those trains were handed off to the Southern Pacific at Ogden Utah, so it's unlikely those UP streamliners ever saw the West Coast.
However as the saying goes, "Never say never." Even though it's unlikely, you just don't know. One of those Santa Fe Hudsons, the 3461, did run from LA to Chicago at least once, but it wasn't a streamliner.
And of course Overmod's right, the Southern Pacific did have those streamstyled AC-9's with skyline casings and exterior boiler "plumbing" kept to a minimum. I guess the problem is when most of us think of Espee articulateds we think of the cab-forwards, not the less famous AC-9's. That is, less famous unless you're an Espee fan.
I think when you read about Milwaukee Road "Hudsons", the ones going to eastern Montana would likely be unstreamlined F-6s. (There are some people who think the early S-class 4-8-4 design was a 'stretched F6')
Those F-6s don't get nearly the attention they deserve as an interesting design, probably because of their somewhat 'unrefined' appearance (and their being so overshadowed by the Myth Of The F-7s, which is another story). Evidence is very strong for this being the first locomotive type to sustain true 100mph operation in normal service with a train. Why some of these weren't 'streamstyled' for the PCE trains is a bit of a mystery... of course I could say the same for some of the 4-8-4s.
We should probably not forget the ATSF Mae West/Blue Goose, although it is comparatively less likely that the engine saw service on the West Coast rather than on the east end where its somewhat deficient high-speed potential could be better realized. You can bet that had 3765 been given its anticipated shroud, however, you'd have seen a very different history!
I'd have to wonder if UP 2906 or 7002 made it through to the West Coast as protection power, for example on the Forty-Niner.
You're welcome!
Strictly speaking, I'd say the Daylights were more "stream-styled" than "streamlined." When I think "streamlined" I think of the locomotives styled by Raymond Lowey, Henry Dreyfus, Otto Kuhler, and so on.
If you want to go "stream-styled" on the West Coast other than the Daylights I'd say look north of the border at the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National "stream-styled" locomotives. Honestly I can't think of any others out there.
I don't know of any off the top of my head, but I've been designing Lego locomotives recently, and am on a streamliner kick - I'd love to do something more in my neck of the woods, but aside from the GS-4s and the warbabies (and a few other SP steam types), nothing comes to mind. Am I overlooking anything from other railroads?
As far as I know, the Milwaukee Road's F-7s never ventured past eastern Montana...
(Excuse the wheels - the gears are just placeholders).
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