Except for Santa Fe, why no Western railroad wanted to buy Berkshires and/or Hudson steam locomotives ,why the two are not popular in the West.
I seemed to recall that SP, had acquired some second hand Berkshireâs, and SteamLocomotivedotcom, states that late in World War Two, the B&M âHelped the War Effort â by selling 10 of their Berkshireâs to the SP, and 7 to the Santa Fe.
From what steamlocomotivedotcom said, the B&M was less than impressed with their Berkshireâs, and were Happy to do their âPatriotic Partâ by selling those locomotives 
Doug
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Keep in mind that ATSF had a considerable number of their own Berkshires, a rather portly design that was really more like a âHeavy Berkshireâ to go with their initial âHeavy Mountainâ 4-8-4s. These were used in the same general region as the Hudsons, the relatively flat parts of the railroad in the East. There were relatively few places in the West where a high-speed Berk would have been preferred to a 4-8-4, and six-coupled locomotives with heavy fireboxes to eight-coupled and then diesels.
Many of the 84"-drivered Hudsons in both the Midwest and on ATSF other than the raceway turned out not to be very useful at actually running at high speeds requiring only six driversâ worth of rods. SP and ATSF and GN all went straight to 4-8-4s, and I suspect most other roads with 4-6-2s would leapfrog just the four-wheel Superpower firing arrangement to get something that could actually use the better steam generation.
A more interesting question is why the Erie/AMC style design for high speed (culminating in the Big Emmas on L&N) did not prove attractive. My guess is that the late âgoodâ single-axle lead trucks were not worked out before diesels were a preferable alternative in general (or the WPB would not allow their use).
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The western roads had heavier, longer grades, and except for the Santa Fe, bought more articulated locomotives.
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Whatâs ironic is the Santa Fe Texas types had more horses and tractive effort than some articulated types also.
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As did the C&O T-1 that was the source of the PRR J-class (that was the functional equivalent of a Q2 on a 50mph freight railroad).
Incidentally the 5001/5011 classes also had a longer rigid wheelbase than the Q2 duplex, which was a kind of honorary articulated in cylinder arrangementâŚ
I am not sure where ATSF was going to run their oil-fired cab-forward 6-4-4-4 duplex (which iirc was going to have 84" drivers like the 3460s). That locomotive was going to use the original B&O 5600 arrangement (like the Q1 and the ACE 3000, with the cylinders at the âcornersâ of the driving wheelbase). The One-Spot Twins etc. were the better answer to that.
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The Burlington also had Hudsons, but I donât know if they went as far as Colorado and Montana.
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B&Mâs Berkshires, which were actually used in the Berkshires, had articulated trailing trucks for some Boston-area operational reason. The major side effect of these trailers was that the firebox twisted, causing leaks and broken staybolts.
SPâs first venture into Super Power was the GS class. SPâs 4-8-2s, 4-10-2s and cab-forwards met the requirements for freight power at the time.
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The original Super-Power use of that articulated trailing truck was imposed on them by American Arch, which owned the patent and had some sort of controlling interest in Lima at the time. It was a cute idea as long as you were going forward and didnât really care much if improper overbalance yawed the truncated rear of the chassis around. True high-speed guiding would have to wait for the Erie, and later the AMC.
The arrangement of bearers on the trailing-truck frame was not really that impossible; the true bad news came when you had to back it up. (With far more horror if, say, crossovers were involved and you were pushing a trainâŚ) All sorts of parts were pushed in various directions, few of which would be geometrically correct or even particularly desirable, and no few of which were in planes that contemporary track might not be designed to have resistance.
Meanwhile, a fundamental piece of the geometry was that the articulated truck had a hinge pivot, two axles (one of which might be boosted) and a drawbar pivot. This wasnât always going to satisfy the Bissel formula to keep the two wheelsets precisely orthogonal to the railheads in curves.
The early answer to the agony of the articulated truck was to go to a 2nd-style Delta arrangement, with the truck having a long wheelbase to keep the bearer loads per axle as designed. This turned out not to guide very well (probably a huge understatement!) so a very curious approach was used circa 1927. The truck frame was considered like a very long 2-wheel truck, with the rear axle located to match radius, and restoring force through rockers or gear segments angled to match the radius of swing back there â all as in modern practice. But this meant that the forward truck axle would bind like hell⌠so they arranged for it to float laterally with as little resistance as possible, using extended pedestal width and a pair of hardened steel lateral rollers per side! The only purpose of that axle became bearing the appropriate weight.
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The Burlington Hudsons are interesting â they are chunky-looking (including in Big Aeolus the Goon âstreamliningâ and had comparatively small drivers, but one was supposedly dynamometer-tested at 112.5mph which is up there with the best of actual (vs. hyped) steam locomotive performance.
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Canadian Pacific ran Hudsons, including the famous âRoyal Hudsonsâ, all over their lines including the west. CN had a few, not sure where they ran?
Milwaukee Roadâs 4-6-4s (âBalticsâ) ran as far west as Montana.
I believe C&NWâs streamlined 4-6-4s were sometimes used as far west as Omaha, taking UP trains to Chicago.
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[quote=âwjstix, post:11, topic:412222, full:trueâ]
Canadian Pacific ran Hudsons, including the famous âRoyal Hudsonsâ, all over their lines including the west. CN had a few, not sure where they ran?[/quote]
The CN Hudsons were racehorses; aside from the 3000 series of Jubilees they were the fastest locomotives in Canada. Note the outside frame around the firebox, the booster-equipped trailing truck, and the outside-bearing lead truck. I think CN went straight to 4-8-4s (see 6400) and the âbullet-nose Bettyâ type 4-8-2s to do the sort of job CP used their Hudsons for. (Incidentally, two of these locomotives survive in preservationâŚ)
Here is a Bud Laws picture of one:
This gave me quite a start until I realized you meant the F6 class â the real âfirst of its kindâ design. These were a bit weird-looking, gangly engines, but as with the C&O rebuilt F-19s they were fast and capable as hell.
Chicago to Omaha was the only line heavy enough to take the E4 axle load (and this on the railroad that made the class H 4-8-4 famous!)
I am not sure I quite agree with the official railfan pravda that these engines were already considered obsolete (vs diesels) when delivered. But they sure proved to have their woes!
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Steam was the world of âHorses for Coursesâ. Diesel-electrics have become the âutility horseâ one horse that satisfactorily performs many jobs.
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To which great credit needs to be given to Dick Dilworth, who determined the original idea of common construction of âunitsâ on capable trucks that could be MUed into an effective locomotive of any size which would not be seriously curve-limited. You saw Baldwin peddling custom configurations, including Centipedes to replace R-class 2-6-6-4s and individual steam-style construction changes and design revisions on a per-unit basis⌠it did not help them survive.
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No what killed steam out especially west was the simple one. Diesels donât require water to run all the time. Santa Fe and the UP along with the SP ran across some of the driest terrian in the USA and what little water there was to be found most of which wasnât safe for boiler use unless heavily treated.
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This is certainly true⌠but ATSF made an enormous investment in water-treatment plants for late steam. Many of these are actually still in place, too expensive to cut up and remove. I donât think many people appreciate just how important an investment that was in an era where most railroads were doing water treatment by dosing tenders and using auxiliary tenders to cut down the number of standpipes needed.
Of course social changes as early as the late Forties left railroads in a position where large mainline steam was limited in profitability with no upside prospects⌠other than stranded cost and the promise of tax benefits from sufficiently aggressive rebuilding.
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Actually the Santa Fe literally treated the water at one location then hauled it to wherever it was needed in fleets of tanker cars and then brought back the empties. They did this after steam ended to provide towns on the line with drinkable water.
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It was my understanding that there were many zeolite-type treatment plants, built to a more or less common plan, with a service, treatment, and storage tank and a little building for mixing chemicals, built extensively in the postwar period. There used to be articles on the Web about how they worked, but all I can find now is modelers building them.
There is likely some interesting information here:
http://azarchivesonline.org/xtf/view?docId=ead/nau/AHS856.xml;query=;brand=default
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I lived in Garrett, IN 1959-1962. After Steam. I donât know what kind of conditioning was applied to the water B&O used for steam at Garrett. What I do know of the water that was supplied to the public water system for the town was heavy on the smell of Sulphur and turned every piece of plumbing it touched to rust colored artifacts with iron it contained.
With our familyâs connection to the B&O Dining Car Dept. We got a delivery of the B&Oâs Deer Spring water bottles every week; eight gallon jugs to the case, one case a week with the empties being returned. Our family moved to Garrett in March of 1959 and managed to keep from drinking from the public water supply until I started participating in High School football in the fall of 1959 - two a days on 90 degree August days and you will drink ANYTHING, anything that is wet, no matter how it tastes or smells.
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I think there are a number of reasons why Hudsons never made much of a dent on Western railroads. By the time the benefits of the four-wheel trailing truck and large firebox were well proven, it was the early 1930s and the railroads werenât buying many new locomotives. In Kratvilleâs âThe Mighty 800â, his history of the FEF class of Union Pacific northerns, the railroad considered a 4-6-4 wheel arrangement when developing what became the FEF-1 class around 1936. They decided they could not get the power and capacity they were looking for in a 6-coupled wheel arrangement. The AAR organized locomotive tests in 1938 to determine the performance of various locomotive types pulling a 1000 ton passenger train on level track (with the arbitrary goal of hauling that consist at 100mph). Of the three types tested (two PRR K4s 4-6-2âs, a C&NW 4-6-4 with 84" drivers, and a UP FEF-1 (77" drivers), only the UP 4-8-4 was able to haul the train at 100mph. Starting tractive effort was also an important consideration in the West, and most of the railroads had significant grades to overcome. This only highlighted the disadvantages of a 6-coupled locomotive, compared to an 8-coupled locomotive.
As for Berkshires, many of the Western railroads had already leapfrogged 8 driving wheels for 10, or 12, or articulateds for their freight needs when the 2-8-4 wheel arrangement emerged. Berkshires just didnât offer enough capacity to meet the Western railroadsâ needs for speed and power.
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