That would be a shameful use for such a nifty looking locomotive.
I like it pulling the varnish.
-Kevin
Ed.
My mom retired from GE when they closed and moved the Euclid lamp plant to China. She was offered Neala park but that was too much of a commute for her. 37 years was enough. The irony is that one of her best friends had to go to China to help set up the new plant. When she came back she quit GE and vowed to never buy anything that had GE on it. She said the exploitation of their workers would make a good horror movie. Safety and machinery guards were thrown out the window.
Who made that FF1? I would love one.
Pete.
[quote user=“SeeYou190”]
I like it pulling the varnish.[/quot
If you like your “express trains” running at 21 mph, with your passengers freezing in winter (no steam generator) " Three-phase power for the 4 massive motors was supplied from the single phase overhead supply via a large rotary converter housed in the body of the locomotive. Combined rated output of the motors was 7,640 hp (5,700 kW), but the converter could only supply a short term 4,600 hp (3,400 kW) or a continuous 4,000 hp (3,000 kW). With three-phase induction motors there was no way to control the speed of the motors; changing the wiring of the motor poles allowed for two speed settings, 10.3 and 20.6 mph (16.6 and 33.2 km/h), which were considered enough to drag heavy freight trains up and down steep grades."
Hi, Pete
Both my mother and my sister worked at NELA for quite a few years, finance and accounting. I put in almost forty years at Tungsten Road (Cleveland Wire Works) which was actually a ‘spin-off’ of Euclid Lamp when the E. 45th St. facility was getting too crowded in 1931.
I have booklets that GE produced to induce Asian investors to form ‘Joint Ventures’ but what actually happened was the technology was pretty much given away. Our plant produced miles of tungsten wire and molybdenum powders. Jack Welch was the epitome of ‘The man who broke capitalism’.
GE Shutdown Saturday 095 by Edmund, on Flickr
The Tungsten plant has been completely leveled along with several others this spring.
My FF1 was made by an outfit called Eisenbahn. They only made fifty of each paint scheme (150 total).
One showed up on
As I know, the drivers of the PRR R1 locomotives had a diameter of 80 inches. The diameter of the drivers refers to the size of the main driving wheels on a locomotive. In the case of the PRR R1, the 80-inch diameter drivers were relatively large, which allowed the locomotives to achieve high speeds and provide good traction for hauling heavy loads. The large wheel diameter also helped the R1 locomotives to negotiate curves more smoothly
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The R1 was an electric
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It had 62 inch drivers
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Driver size has no bearing on ability to negotiate curves smoothly, except whe they are so large as to cause an excessive rigid wheelbase, like, say eight 80 inc wheels.
Since you quoted the post about the T1, I assume that’s what you’re actually referring to, not the R1?
The T1 did have 80 inch drivers.
PRR had a dubious history of electric motive power design. The DD1 was almost an accidental success, demonstrating that a high nominal center of gravity could actually make for a good-riding locomotive… hinged in the middle. Then in the '20s, PRR threw all that out in favor of what has to be one of the most awful disasters ever built, the L5s. There is your 80" drivers for “high speed”, with a nice rigid wheelbase and the weight of the motors well outboard for polar moment of inertia… compensated with two-wheel lead trucks with anemic-at-best centering. Even retrofitted with one pan or two, these had no future.
Then we get PRR deciding to mimick its successful locomotive wheel arrangements with the O class (think bidirectional 4-4-2 Atlantic), P class (think bidirectional 4-6-2 Pacific) and L6 (bidirectional lollipop). You think the R1 had a long rigid wheelbase – look at the equalizers on a P5, and note that in most later pictures they are oriented at weird angles. In the Penn Central years, you could rely on one class to have beautifully shiny paint… on its underframe; the P5s regularly got it to mask the ever-increasing number of frame cracks…
The GG1 of course had the handicap of NIH; it was a New Haven design right down to the universal motors that could run on DC. A more correct version would have 428A motors (625hp each; 1250 per ‘twin motor’ axle) and the 62" drivers to use them… BUT with a proper articulated hinge in the underframe. That of course was the 5000hp DD2, stillborn only because the electrification to Pittsburgh didn’t ‘eventuate’ and the wartime need for more power went to GG1s. I will charitably not mention the P5b if no one else does.
Stuff after the War was weird – you’ll notice there were no repeat orders for the various experimentals, and the E44s were much more a GE thing than a PRR one. There were drawings for a grand follow-on electric… b
The DD1 was the result of an extensive test program, hardly an “accident”
"The Pennsylvania Railroad constructed the two locomotives in its Altoona Works as testbeds for larger locomotives to come. Both were of B-B wheel arrangement in the Association of American Railroads classification scheme; each had two trucks, each with two axles an
Pity you left out the ‘almost’. Or the point of what I was saying.
The initial PRR use of the 4-4-0 with comparatively high drivers came after the failure of the original electrics that were tried, including the early New Haven-style “plunger” version of quill drive on relatively low wheels. It was designed by analogy with a steam 4-4-0, and the higher CG of the very large motor (providing all the power of the four individual axle quill or Batchelder-style drives) was acceptable as a tradeoff for eliminating the severe horizontal moment acting only a few inches above the rail (which spiked track of that era only poorly withstood). That the prototype was an ‘odd’ class should have tipped you off that it wasn’t a planned production engine, and indeed PRR certainly didn’t learn the importance of an articulation in the middle of the driving wheelbase, as they quickly got rid of it, the four-wheel guide truck, and a great deal more in less than a decade of further ‘design’ and ‘testing’. To their sorrow.
One interesting feature of the PRR using the same classification for steam and electric locomotives was the allocation of numbers for the electric locomotives.
Whoever allocated R1 and GG1 for the electric locomotives didn’t expect any steam 4-8-4 or 4-6-6-4 types to enter service any time soon.
It seems possible that the PRR might have ended up with Challengers (GG5 ?) during WWII had the C&O 2-10-4 design not have been available…
However, the class P5 suggests somebody thought that a P1 Hudson was at least a possibility…
Peter
Material at the Hagley indicated that the ‘revised’ direct-drive steam turbine derived from the S2 6-8-6, which would have had the Westinghouse planetary transmission and been light enough for 4-wheel leading and trailing trucks (although this was amusingly fudged in the Westinghouse catalog in 1948!) would be assigned class R2. Part of the discussion (by Cover IIRC) about the results of the N&W J testing was that any use of the design would involve ‘higher wheels’ for PRR passenger service – it appears many people think this would have been 80", and that would be supported in a way by New York Central going directly from 75" to 79" on the Niagaras (and avoiding any further development on the C1a), but it could easily have been the 77" used on the Q1 as the “improved version of a M1a”. He doesn’t describe a prospective class, and by that point PRR was firmly in the grip of divided-drive mania…
No. If PRR had decided on an articulated engine, it would have been the superior N&W 2-6-6-4 that would have been the starting point, or else the “equally-available-through-the-WPB” 2-6-6-6 Allegheny. (Not only did PRR control N&W at the time, but its 50mph freight speed limit could be easily accommodated by the N&W engine’s evolved two-wheel pilot truck.) Challengers were just awful in the arrangement of their combustion spaces relative to an engine with a proper deep firebox (like an Allegheny or a Q2) – where you needed the ability of a pin-guided lead truck to make a sort of "4-8-4-and-a-half’ in minimum length they had a sort of appeal, but they were anaemic in almo
According to “Black Gold, Black Diamonds” Page 112-114, the PRR considered the WM Class M-2 4-6-6-4’s, the SP’s AC-9 2-8-8-4’s, the DM&IR’s 2-8-8-4 and the UP’s Big Boys. But decided “No”, probably because they were articulteds. The PRR also considered the 2-6-6-6, but eliminated it from the competition early and decided not to test it. As for the Class A “It had two strikes against it 1) It was an articulated, a breed the railroasd had little interest in, and 2) It was a high speed runner illl suited to lugging on the hilly mainline east of Pittsburgh.” and after testing “The A could move freight fast, but seemed to have excessive apetite for coal and water. Also, it’s ability to haul freight at speed was negated by the railroad’s fifty mile per hour speed limit for freights”. So, the PRR was not impressed by the Class A and would probably have chosen another articulated if they went that route. The C&O’s T-1 was “A locomotive in the Pennsy mould, huge and powerful…and it haul a train almost as fast as an A. A T-1 was economical to operate and ideal fot its needs”