The AA class 2-6-6-0s were the first with a lead truck. They were among the largest hand-fired locomotives ever built. The story goes that Virginian tried to hire both right- and left-handed fireman so they could work in pairs.
I think the experimental boiler was on the AB class 2-8-8-0 600 (1911). The engine suffered from cracked frames and boiler leaks. After Baldwin supplied a new Boiler and frame it settled down to mine run service, but was even less popular with crews than the hand-fired AA class.
The slightly larger AC class 2-6-6-0s (1910) were also hand-fired. All but one of the AA and AC classes eventually got stokers and superheaters.
That sectional boiler with the front part as a feedwater heater.
This was the same general idea as the ATSF 'hinged boiler' Mallets -- the firebox and boiler were the rear; the front was all, or nearly all, chock full o'tubes for more heat transfer surface.
Off the top of my head they were hand-fired and saturated steam as delivered, so they can't have been much fun for firemen. (They were later equipped with stokers and superheaters.) 22x30 high pressure, 35x30 low pressure cylinders. In common with many contemporary Mallets, they had piston valves on the high pressure cylinders and slide valves for the LP cylinders.
What was unusual about the Virginian's early Mallets?
Overmod pretty much got it. The Deepwater Railroad was completed first, the Virginian resulting from the completion of the Tidewater Railroad and the merger wih the Deepwater. The junction on the opposite side of the Kanawha River from Deepwater (with the New York Central's Toledo & Ohio Central) was, and may still be, known as DB Tower after the Deepwater Bridge).
Pennsylvania has lots of strange place labels. North East, PA, near Erie in northwest PA, still makes me laugh.
Are the technical details what you are requesting as your question?
Deepwater. Kinda like the Jersey Shore, PA of West Virginia...
There was a Deepwater Railway and a Tidewater Railway that were developed (by William Page) as intrastate components of what became the Virginian Railway. I always considered them examples of 'wishful thnking' about what would be done with the coal that was shipped over them.
The earliest Mallets on the Virginian were actually 'Tidewater Railway' engines -- they were interesting in contemporary technical details.
Virginian, like C&O and N&W was known mainly for sending coal to Tidewater. The west end of the Virginian's main line was in a location with an unlikely name, considering this...
Correct on all counts.
N&W retired the ex-Virginian electrification west of Roanoke VA it got in the 1959 merger after shifting traffic so that it ran one way on the ex-Virginian, the other way on the "old" N&W. Since the electrics could only run on the ex-Virginian, their utility was greatly reduced. N&W had barely retired steam before the VGN merger. The VGN's 1955-built GE EL-C class (by then N&W EL-C) went on to become New Haven EF-4 class, then PC and Conrail E-33 class, eventually operating on almost all electrified trackage extant when they were built.
VGN's 1925 Alco-Westinghouse EL-1A and EL-3A equivalent of N&W's "Sqareheads" were retired in the mid 1950s after the arrival of the EL-Cs. VGN's huge motor-generator EL-2B units were scrapped without resale.
In the meantime, how about a quickie?
There was a second example of de-electrification that would have very likely have been run with steam if implemented even a couple of years earlier, less than a decade after the N&W's Elkhorn Tunnel project. It was run with comparably very modern power, unlike the N&W's clunking squareheads; in fact one of its classes of locomotive had more lives than a cat on a fairly amazing number of electrified railroads elsewhere. So no lack of either utility or distinctive competence led to the abandonment.
Where was this, and what were the specific reasons for it?
Waiting for South Shore's question.
You are correct. In addition bto eliminating a tunnel operation, was not there also grade reduction?
And the next question is yours.
That would be Norfolk & Western. N&W did a line relocation around the area of Elkhorn Tunnel which eliminated the need for electric operation through the tunnel.
Without your saying so, I trust you want me to ask the next question, I've picked a very easy one, but a detailed answer should be interesting to just about everyone and may remove some myths.
The diesel locomotive revolution spelled the end of numeruous existing electrifications and put the end to some planned ones.
As far as I know, however, there is only one Class One North American railroad that replaced a major electrification with STEAM!
Explain, who, where, how, why, results.
Technically C&O of Indiana was a different company but it and PM were always considered part of the C&O system. C&O of Indiana trains used a joint station (with the Erie) in Hammond. Locomotives and gas cars were serviced at Nickel Plate's roundhouse near 95th st. inside the Chicago city limits.
Pere Marquettte/C&O used the New Tork Central from La Porte Indiana to Pine Junction in East Chicago Indiana to reach the B&OCT for access to Grand Central and later North Western's CPT. As a result B&O and C&O trains went through Gary Indiana on different tracks. The PM/C&O trains did not stop at Gary Union Station due to a limitation in the trackage rights agreement.
Chesapeak and Ohio, who returned to downtown Chicago with purchase of the Pere Marquet (Sp?).
Before that, its remaining train from Cincinnati terminated at Hammond, with passengers expected to use the South Shore.
Passengers on the three important trains, George Washington, Sportsman, and Fast Flying Virginian, werre routed to use the NYCentral between Cincinnati and Chicago.
The stations it used at the return were Grand Central and then Northwestern.
This railroad's passenger trains bounced around Chicago's stations perhaps more than any other, missing only Chicago Union Station. In the early years its trains could be found in Central and later Dearborn, before a cutback druing the depression required passengers to change trains near the city limits. Re-entering by merger after WW II, it was a tenant at yet another station for 20 years before moving with its landlord to its last pre-Amtrak station.
Waiting for RC's or Overmod's next question. Thanks.
As soon as I saw the West Side &Yonkers terminated at 30th St. I thought about Mike's question about Lincoln detraining at 30th St. on the NYC West Side line.
I can't get to NYPL to read the 1870 report, but it occurs to me that the 'Yonkers' might have been reached that way, a bit like a NYW&B in reverse.
The current corridor route was used from Jersey City to Philadelphia (United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Companies). Both today's main line and the Camden & Amboy were part of UNJRR&CC but even then the direct route would have been preferred. The Philadelphia Wilmington & Baltimore (today's Corridor) was used to Baltimore, including a ferry crossing of the Susquehanna River. In Baltimore the car Lincoln was in was drawn through the streets (President St and Pratt St.) by horses from PW&B's President Station to the B&O's Mt. Clare station, today's B&O Museum.
Amtrak's New York Division mileposts are measured from Jersey City. PRR built its Baltimore & Potomac line in 1872. B&O built its line to Philadelphia in the 1880s after PRR got control of the PW&B
Abraham Lincoln used the Hudson River RR terminal on the way to his inauguration, traveling by train from Illinois. He took a ferry across to New Jersey, and someone else can tell me the rail route to Washington. If I recall correctly. there was another change of stationd, either Baltimorer or Philidelphia, with great secrecy observed.
The north terminal of the original Harvey cable elevated was at West 2w9th Street and 9tyh Avenue. The Hudson River vRailroad's southern passenger terminal was the block 29th-30th Streets 11th-12th Avenues. Most arriving passengers probasably wished to go to the then-rxisting business ares, near vthe Broom Street and Greenwich Avenue southern end of the Harvey elevated,
The passernger terminal continued in vuse in NYCentral days until about 1933, with two west-side locals down in the morning and back to Spuytin Dyvil in the evening.
The original Harvey elevated was extended north after conversion to steam and some strengthening and rebuilding.
Do you have a question RC?
The Harvey section was extended a bit north after conversion from cable operation. The Hudson River RR had terminal near the north end. B&O had a freight house nearby served by car floats.
daveklepper... where was the northern terminal of that first elevated? And which steam road's terminal was near at the time?
Good. You got the first part of the answer, and where was the northern terminal of that first elevated? And which steam road's gterninal was near at the time?
That looks remarkably like the first 'elevated-railroad' proposal in New York -- Harvey's -- that unbelievably lightweight system that used a cable looping down through the supports at the end with all the traction machinery under the street.
It made better sense than Ely Beach's idea... but it was no match for the real elevated railroads that came in the 1870s... including the somewhat rickety-looking Phoenix Bridge construction as on Suicide Curve.
That looks remarkably like the first 'elevated-railroad' proposal in New York -- that unbelievably lightweight system that used a cable looping down through the supports at the end with all the traction machinery under the street.
Preceded the London Circle Line and the London District Line. its developed state mostly abandoned pre-WWII, and remnent of its extension in 1957.
Is this the trick question about the London 'circle line', which only during construction had 'two endpoints' -- the two lines building toward these on two different routes, and running a common service afterward...
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