The glory ‘few months’ of the T1’s. Beautiful scenes of running a T1, #5540. Lot of incredible scenes and information. How about those container cars!
This is undeniably a pinnacle, perhaps 1946 being the crown after the war years. The Pennsy, and everyone else sure had their act together. Niagara s, T1’s, S2, C&NW rebuilt Zeppelin’s, N&W J’s all pointed to an exciting, solid and foolproof future that was an illusion for the railroads.
Mysteriously, to me anyway, is how Pennsy reported their first ‘loss’ in that year.
By the time Sputnik sent shock waves the railroads were in full freefall, shopworn, deferred track maintenance, massive layoffs, considered outdated and old fashioned, the respect turned into ridicule.
How it all went from 1946 to that point can be debated endlessly.
For a very brief moment they sure had the confidence and ability to face the future little knowing the deck was stacked against them.
Totally agree with you! I consider 35-46 was the golden years of the fallen flags, sadly part of the reason is because of the World War II boosted the traffic, and because of World War, Aerospace science and technology had a great leap forward and the federal government probably thought that spending as much as effort and resources to develop Aerospace was the most beneficial thing for the country and the world in long term (not going to talk about the “1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident”, that would gone too far and off topic [:P]) thus the railroad industry “probably” became a secondary thing in the federal government’s point of view and they milked all railroads as hard as they could by heavy taxes. The fallen flags had no chance.
Keep in mind that 5500 was the only locomotive to my knowledge equipped with Franklin type B-2 gear, the importance being that this was a conversion adapting rotary-cam drive (much simpler than ‘nightmare boxes’ driven by midget Walschaerts) to the free-breathing eight-valve-per-cylinder layout that T1 type A provided. The stock Franklin type B valves, as refined by Vernon Smith et al., were not specifically designed to optimize high-speed admission or release at high horsepower, although type B worked quite nicely as a system for reducing steam consumption and some of the need for high steam quality at speeds up to 100mph or so, I suspect that with three valves it would not be much superior in practice to the piston-valve-converted T1a at achieving ‘super speed’. (One of the great advantages of the T1a was in automatic reduction of pure high-speed high-horsepower slipping if that proves to be an operational difficulty with the T1 chassis, but that’s another story.)
It may be important to recall that as late as April 1945, the ‘future’ of New York Central high-speed passenger power was the C1a, a locomotive that shared many details with the T1 (including very short stroke and ultra-lightweight rods) but which from the beginning used a correctly-sized firebox (albeit fired more economically to take advantage of the nominal lower water rate) and right-sized Baker gear. I believe it is clear that the 64T version of the pedestal tender would give full Harmon-to-Chicago range for the C1a, but not alternative designs which is one reason you never saw the design tried on Niagaras.
You have written extensively on the major problems with Baldwin Diesel locomotives. Now they had good data and success with E7’s on the Detroit Arrow early on. There is no doubt they held a loyalty for long time friend and ally Baldwin. The orders for the Centipede’s and Bp20 Passenger Sharks were not massive but they were substantial. It’s easy to see the trust was there beforehand but in reality they rolled the dice and lost.
Hey here’s a thought. What if the PRR had hired Paul Keiffer right at the start instead of the New York Central?!!! Now that could be some interesting alternative history.
Thank you Overmod and Miningman! I never expect that I can learn so many things from this forum, I really appeciate you guy’s generous sharing! Speaking about the T1s, if I was the leader of PRR, I would have agreed with Baldwin’s suggestion, or you could say a warning, to not risky using the Franklin poppet valves on the first 50 T1 order. It is proved that Baldwin was right and the first order was the one and the only one order for the production version of T1.
Despite the glowing test reports of 6110 and 6111 from the test plant, the operational performance of the production version was far from satisfactory. I do agree with some people’s view that Franklin poppet valves played an important roles to "encourage” PRR to ditch reciprocating steam locomotive, but I never think it was Franklin’s fault, it was probably just a result of mismatch and misuse (T1 was often used to make up time by excessive speeding) and T1 really came too late. I wonder if PRR set a speed Limit for T1 at 90-95mph would help or not, (the average operational speed between Chicago and Pittsburgh, PA was 66.9mph in 1938.) Beside speed, I don’t understand why the front end of T1 were not made “foldable” /removable like a front-end cover of a automobile or German DB Class 10 / BR 10 001, 002(it was built a few years after T1’s retairment though), how could the leaders of PRR approved
32V is what you get from 16 lead-acid cells in series, a very common voltage used in RR passenger cars, farm generating plants (Delco was a big producer of these beasts), and windchargers for farm use. A lower voltage filament was a lot more rugged than the equivalent wattage at 110VDC.
Back in the 1920’s & '30s, there was a significant market for 32V appliances, toasters, mixers, refirgeators, etc. This was a time when many apartments in the downtown sections of big cities had DC power, utilities running anywhere from 25 to 133Hz, so making 32V appliances wasn’t much of a problem.
Overmod:
Keep in mind that tungsten filaments have a positive tempco for resistance, so the brightness scales with voltage with a power somewhere between 1 and 2. Carbon filament bulbs had a negative tempco, which meant that brightness scaled with a greater than 2 power of the voltage. Part of the production process with carbon filament bulbs was to put a bunch of bulbs in a box and vary the voltage to determine the rated voltage for the individual bulbs - IIRC, the bins were 5V wide.
Agree with you. IIRC Centipede’s was supposed to perform as good as GG1 toghter and BP20, PRR had high hopes of them and assigned them to haul their prime train The Broadway Limited, that is probably one of the reason the order was not really big. Turn out, in terms of performance, they were even worse than T1s and got relegated after a few years in service. They were some very good looking and interesting early diesel engine but I do believe that Baldwin really pissed off PRR HQ in this case. [:D]
Imagine PRR adopted the N&W J class with larger Drivers instead of wasted tons of money to buy untested early diesel f
Not certain about U.S. Regulations but 32 Volts is regarded as 'Low Voltage, for safe workplace and non-qualified staff to attend in most countries. More than adequate to do the job. ‘Hydro Man’
C&NW Class E4 4-6-4 Super Hudson probably had the greatest number of headlights when built.
Before 1956, headlight can be switched off before sunset according to the States regulation.
On the CNW E-4, looks like it has two headlights, most likely one main headlight and one Mars light - similar to set-up on passenger diesels. What appears to be a third headlight on the top of the front of the engine might be a red emergency light, but since it appears to have some sort of grillwork where the light would be it might be a protective housing for the engine’s horn.
Thank you for your respond. Before the renowned Twin Cities 400 being dieselized, there un-streamlined locomotive, quote from wiki “The steam locomotives were upgraded to feature a 45° lamp on top of the boiler just ahead of the smokestack. These lights were intended to announce the approach of the train and could be seen for a great distance in rural areas. In 1937, one locomotive was equipped with a prototype Mars light**, the first ever put into use.”
I don’t know why only CNW and MILW, served on similar market or route had this special treatm
Union Pacific had vertical headlights on some of the early Streamliners, the idea being similar to the angled headlights – the projected fast-moving searchlight beam supposedly acting like spotlights at a Hollywood premiere to arrest the attention of nearby motorists and get them to Recognize High-Speed Death Is Near while still far away from crossings.
I have never seen a reference that said that it worked as expected, on any road that tried them. To my knowledge all were removed or disabled early; whether or not this was due to ICC/FRA regulations requiring them to work all the time if installed I do not know.
Picture of an E-4 Hudson in Chapelon’s LLAV (I use Carpenter’s 1952 translation) appears to confirm that the ‘upper’ feature is, as I would have expected, the red light C&NW used to show a stop or emergency-brake application to facing trains on double track. (I believe NYC tried implementing this at the very end of steam, with the little indicator in those Pyle double-sealed-beam headlight arrangements, but don’t know that for sure.)
You do know there is a painting of the ‘critical moment’ when the main pin failed – and it’s linked in some posts on these forums!
Not to my knowledge. And even with “7200hp” not particularly likely.
Not a chance. Those rods just connected the gear-driven axle sets to the outer pairs.
What you need for this kind of catastrophe is an extended main pin, with dicey web thickness between pin and axle fits in the driver center (as you know, the T1 had the ABSOLUTE thinnest measurement here that Baldwin considered feasible, for the reduced piston thrust of short-stroke “Atlantic” size cylinders, this with driver centers sized for 80").
Part of the ‘secret agenda’ with duplex drives was that the thrust of many modern engines with Timken lightweight rods got up into the range that main-pin stress raisers got established and propagated. As I’ve said, I suspect that kind of catastrophic failure would become more and more documented as the urge to decrease rotating and reciprocating mass and lateral offset became greater (assuming big steam remained popular past the late Forties).
Add to this the fun, and perhaps unsurprisingly functionally under-documented, note by Chapelon in LLAV that if you subtract the lateral play observed in rod bearings from the permitted lateral, the ‘logical’ conclusion is that the rods are flexing laterally with every revolution. While conveying substantial stress, and while the stress in the pins is all one way with rotation, that in the rods most certainly is not…
NO ONE expects the main pin failure! Its chief effects inspire fear … fear and surprise, surprise and fear, in attempting to provide ruthless efficiency…
and perhaps an almost fanatical devotion to Porta? [;)]
Nice summary, in the spirit of things a-la Monty Python. Thanks.
Perhaps one day real jocularity will return.
I recall an issue of ‘Trains’ featuring a page with an Ariel photo of Crestline and the commentary running North-South column style alongside the picture outlining what it is we actually see. At first glance it appears all is well, lots of steam about but upon further investigation it is revealed that we are seeing dead and whitelined locomotives. I cannot remember the particulars exactly but I do recall the S1 being there, the ‘Big Engine’, I think perhaps the S2, some T1’s , perhaps Q2’s. One of the reporting sentences goes on to say that,( I think it was the S1, but someone here will recall correctly), that the main rod had let loose and flayed the entire side of the locomotive and here it was waiting for the bitter end. That the entire post war fleet of duplex drive and experimental locomotives were failures, now merely stored here and the era was over.
I have the all time Trains issue Disc but will have to wait until I get back to my ‘real’ computer in the classroom and at my desk in my office. Someone can beat me to the punch. I’m just not certain which locomotive it was that had the flayed severely damaged side.
Yes, the UP GE steam turbine locomotive had such vertical headlights on the roof of the driver cab, a very strange design in my book.
Yes, this drawing is still in my MILW pics folder [:P]. IIRC NYC’s Super Hudson and MILW F7s used Baker Valve Gear and Walschaerts Valve Gear respectively. I cannot remember the details, but the official explanation o
