The T1 Trust posted a new video on their official YouTube channel a few hours ago. It is not about the progress of the construction but a 3D animation of the T1 5550 render what the engine would look like:
“It Can Be Done” by The T1 Trust
[C]
The Keystone over the years have well documented the T1. In one artical, and I can’t sight which one as there are too many in my collection (sorry) one T1 engineenman noted how folks would come out to watch T1s come through town. When the E units came, no one came down track side to watch the train go by. The video from T1 Trust just goes to show why people came down track side to watch. Just hope the big man above lets me live long enought to watch 5050 go by.
That video’s so damn realistic they almost don’t need to build a new T1!
Excellent CGI!
People will come trackside to see any steam engine go by! It’s almost primal!
Yes, I thought it was a scaled model the first time I saw a screenshot from the video. This is the first time T1 Trust release a much longer video of it. [D][:)] But we still need to build it since a lot of people want to take a ride on the train led by 5550. [;)]
They say 2030… no flippin way I make it that far.
Jeez, I’ll be 77 assuming I’m still around. I can’t imagine being 77.
Then again, I’m 65, and there was a time I couldn’t imagine that either.
Gotta think positive.
I may make it that far but somehow I doubt that the T1 Trust will make it that far. Realistically, interest will wane as time passes and the more enthusiastic members leave the endeavor. Also, a lot of the specialized fabrication required will only get more expensive or unavailable.
Should have started with something more realistic.
Such as a NYC ’ Niagara ’
Thank You.
It’s the real thing, ladies and gents!
Did anyone notice that 5550 has two different front-end arrangements in the video: (1) the as-built 3-porthole design and (2) the modified in-service arrangement with conventional ladders to the pilot beam? I wonder which one will get built on 5550. Great video regardless !!
All right! Feltonhill’s back!
Don’t stay away so long buddy, we need your expertise here, AND on the “Classic Trains” Forum as well!
Uh, no, I for one didn’t notice the change in front-end styling, I was too busy going ga-ga over the video.
Current plans are for the ‘final’ arrangement, with the loaf-of-bread radiator containing the small auxiliary light. To me, that’s still the best of the T1 arrangements as built.
I worked up a semi-elaborate plan to make the ‘three portholes’ fairing in one piece, and provide hinges that would allow the whole shebang to be lifted and rotated up for maintenance (like some of those hot-rods with one-piece faired front end treatment). Could still be built if there’s any great enthusiasm for having it, but it’s a bunch of extra weight for a dubious addition of wicked coolness.
Except that nobody feels inclined to prove the Niagara was an unjustly rejected failure. [:)]
Now, one of the things I hope will come out of the extended provisioning program designed for the T1 Trust is the availability of parts and knowhow for making the sophisticated parts of a Niagara, such as the Timken rods and their somewhat specialized bearings, easily available to anyone who cares to build a replica, or improved, Niagara. The design was certainly well suited to running economic-sized excursion trains that could stay out of the way of any train operated on any railroad it would be run. Until the present Amtrak ban on special moves is terminated, however, there isn’t any business model for using something – anything – that large. (How fortunate for the T1 Trust that none of its development effort is predicated on the locomotive ‘earning its way’ as a pure transportation-business proposition!)
You may be familiar with the somewhat earlier effort to build a replica Hudson, which proceeded well through detail design into production engineering at one of the Chinese factories (I believe Datong, not Dalien; what was the one that had plant largely located in a secret cave?). That one foundered, somewhat inexplicably to me, when the original people planning the replica found out what the ‘second production locomotive’ was going to cost anyone who wanted one. Shades of the BCR coal-turbine denouement!
If I were going to build a replica Niagara it wouldn’t have the Frankenstein-monster Selkirk smokebox-door arrangement, and a bunch of the detail design would be radically different. (In other words, almost as much of a ‘science project’ as a historical replica build). The problem is that at the end of it all, you have a locomotive most people wouldn’t be able to functionally distinguish
On Facebook I was going through looking at the UP steam page and someone that’s having a live steam 2.5 inch gauge 844 model built had a very interesting background of her driver picture. The T1 trust has had another 2 drivers cast and machined at for the engine. I think that brings them up to 4 driving wheels.
Remember that it is very likely the mains, and probably the other 2 sets, will have to be recast with very different cores and machining by the time the locomotive actually undergoes high-speed testing. Think of the ones produced so far as experiments producing valuable know-how and experience, and as fund-raising tools.
These were cast from the original PRR drawings and specifications plus they’ve found a foundry that can replicate the steel in the original drive wheels in compistition. From what I’ve heard again from my friend at the UP steam shop this same foundry is about to get another large order for 12 drivers for the 3985 16 for 4014 and 8 for 844. Plus more than likely the main axle orders.
Which did not, and do not, include any provisions for instrumenting the wheelsets, as FRA will require to run the locomotive at Pueblo.
To Mr. O.,
Thank You for all the data previously regarding the NYC Niagara!
Read most of it.
What a Locomotive! Sorry I missed them.
Amazing mileages every month, and the speeds, every hour, every day.
Think Taking Water on the fly in sub-zero and dealing with Winter around Buffalo!
Was there in the Central Days and wandered the ’ Station too Far '.
Every type of Diesel built, almost, on hand, before DSG was released.
Water Level Route West to Erie, and beyond, almost all 244, in gaggles.
Sorry I missed the Niagaras, and the Hudsons, and the Shays and the Tri-powers and the Articulateds.
( Ditto Centipedes, but, thats another story?? )
NYC passed the end of our street in the Forties and Fifties. ( Repowered C- Lines, occasionally. D&H Sharks at least once, over Napierville Jct. ex Rouses Point. )
How would have the Niagaras and the PRR T1s fared had the Diesels arrived 20 years later??
Long time ago.
Thank You.
Another man I know passed yesterday.
Hearses carrying Green.
New snow on the Mtns.
As well as can be expected.
All the ‘remaining’ issues of the T1, apart from the control issues inherent in high-speed slipping, would have been solved by the 1948 detail revisions. I have solutions for the other problems, using nothing more than technologies and equipment available in the late Forties, and I have little doubt that PRR would have come to use these increasingly with the adoption of rotary-cam conversions to the valve gear, which I think would have been likelier than widespread implementation of the T1a conversion to piston valves.
The chief problem, which I think is seldom described enough, is that in order to make the heroic mileages the Niagaras developed in service a railroad needed a large number of long, fast, passenger and M&E trains, together with an infrastructure that sometimes thumbed its nose at employee safety in serious ways to get the locomotives ‘turned’ for long, fast return service. Since the success of diesels turned almost directly on increasing crew costs and rising crew quality-of-work demands through the latter half of the Forties and onward, for the development of some form of practical diesel to be delayed 20 years an enormous amount of social and industrial change in those years would need to change also, and it is particularly difficult to imagine a world preserving the particular pride in achievement that marked, say, CP’s continuation of steam into the 1950s in the more widespread world of Robert R. Young’s meddling with NYC and subsequent adoption of Al Perlman’s economies, or PRR’s different emphasis on operations after having lost money in 1946 for the first time.
The Niagara had the advantage of being an explicitly suitable fast-freight engine, in fact well-suited for implementation of the various kinds of Flexi-Van service NYC was planning. Lik
Overmod brings up a lot of valid issues and factors inside and outside of railroading that contributed to the demise of the steam locomotive. Also consider that the diesel locomotive got its foot in the door in 1925 and became practical for yard and passenger service by the mid-1930’s. Practical road freight locomotives were just a matter of time.
Food for thought: N&W and VGN were already quite profitable hauling coal behind steam (and electric) locomotives. Could their bottom line have been improved if they dieselized by 1954?