Greetings:
Here’s a question for you New York Central fans and history buffs. The century ran from 1902 until 1967,ending with the merger of the New york Central and Pennsylvania Railroads. My question is what was the last year the central used the shrouded hudsons to haul her.
Rm2
Don’t know for sure, but I remember when they introduced the Budd-built stainless steel version in the early '50’s. Power for that was diesel, back-to-back A units.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the shrouds on the hudsons were a WWII casualty, for ease of maintenance and improved availability.
I think the WW2 guess is probably a reasonable ball-park timeframe. Experiments with Mohawks (4-8-2) and then Northerns (4-8-4’s - NYC called them Niagaras) replaced them near the end of WW2, but I would not be surprised if the shrouding was gone from the Hudsons by then anyway due to the reasons listed above. The Hudsons found other duties to the end of steam.
Dreyfuss designed one of the streamlined shroudsin 1938, but I do not know the exact dates of their use.
That was one good looking locomotive… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NYC_Hudson
Andrew
Not sure, but 1945 seems to be close.
The streamlining fell victim to WWII scrap iron demands. The same thing happened to the streamlining for the Empire State Express which made its inaugural run on December 7, 1941. Something else important happened on that day.