I have been told that C&O would have been better off with a 2-8-8-2 than the 2-6-6-6s. Would a updated D&RGW L-131 with 140.000 lb TE and a speed of 50 MPH pulling at least 200 coal cars and with 2-10-4s as pushers. Or would something else been better. Gary
There is no doubt that the Alleghenys were first-rate steam locomotives. The common wisdom is that Lima built a fast freight locomotive akin to a large Challenger that C&O and VGN primarily used in drag freight service. It would be interesting to speculate on what UP might have done with such a design.
The irony is that C&O’s last new steam locomotives were compound 2-6-6-2’s designed and built for mine run service.
Of which the 1309 which the Western Maryland Senic Railroad is restoring to operation is an example.
The chief ‘problem’ with the Alleghenies on C&O is that much of their expensive (and ultimately heavy) construction was to facilitate making high horsepower at speed – something that was wasted when the engines were used predominantly for drag service. The ‘usual’ argument for 2-8-8-2s (rather than, please note, 2-8-8-4s or even 2-8-8-6s which are the more ‘logical’ alternative) usually ignores the point you make about the T-1 class 2-10-4s in service, which is that they could (and did) run at higher speed when required … one “answer” being to see whether a 2-8-8-x design of suitable efficiency could be made to run at comparable speed to one of the 2-10-4s with ‘beauty treatment’ balancing when desired (e.g. for what C&O considered fast or merchandise traffic’
As an additional consideration we remember that a 2-8-8-4 or 2-8-8-6 has the advantages of a deep firebox, while a 2-8-8-2 ‘perches’ its boiler and firebox over the driver wheelbase with the same effect on restricting permissible water-leg length that a Challenger has. This determines to a degree the maximum effective steam-generation rate for high horsepower … but this also affects the effective water rate, which in turn limits the practical real-world horsepower by restricting range between water stops and hence vitiating much of the effect of added speed. Meanwhile the 2-8-8-2 can be dramatically shorter and somewhat lighter, and has much more of its weight on drivers. (I do some handwaving over fitting an efficient steam circuit on a 2-8-8-2, but the job was effectively done by the time the Alleghenies were designed.)
I would arg
Lots of railfans like to think that. They figure the 2-8-8-2 could have pulled longer trains, which is true, and apparently they figure C&O didn’t know that. But C&O did know that, of course.
unless the C&O borrows a N&W Y-6 2-8-8-2 and borrows a D&RGW 2-8-8-2 along with that railroad engineers the when the C&O would have some real data, If the C&O does not the the C&O would not go near a compound. The C&O 2-6-6-2 would world simple going uphill. I wonder what N&W engineers would thing of that.Gary
Considering the length of some of the grades, I can’t imagine an H-6 running simple for very long on uphill portions before running out of steam.
Now of course the L-13x classes were simple articulateds, some of the earliest batches, so we can leave the compounding arguments aside for that part of the discussion.
I’d argue that the L-132 was a better class to use as a ‘starting point’ for the demonstration (look at the differences in boiler construction, reflecting evolution in steam-generation thinking at that time). How would you propose to get around what was by most accounts a tremendous gas and unburnt fuel problem with these engines? Have you actually calculated the corresponding water rate and checked to see if an uneconomical number of water stops would result?
Locobase points out that the number in these class designations is the ‘official’ starting TE, rounded conservatively down; they speculate that this reflects a use of .80 rather than the more usual .85 in the formula. Would C&O have tested them expecting a full 140K, or perhaps uprate the test pressure even further (with the assumption that ‘native’ 2-8-8-2s built to the test results would use welded boilers or otherwise benefit from higher pressure)?
These engines had a 63" wheel, which should be adequate with lightweight rods and better balancing (mainstream from the late 1930s on, in plenty of time for the advent of the Alleghenies) to get that 50mph speed referred to. Problem then becomes, in fairly short order, that the chassis is incompetent at that speed – it would need to be redesigned along the lines of the N&W A and Y7 or the Challengers, constraining the vertical component of ‘freedom’ of the forward engine. Not, perhaps, a radical change in terms of cost, but necessary if you expect to actually run the engin
On the subject of misapplication of steam locomotives, I still can’t get out of my head Wardale’s accounts of the C&O 614 tests by ACE written in the Red Devil.
I guess a coal-fired anything is anathema these days, but the idea in the early 1980s Oil Crisis was that if you could get a steam locomotive thermal efficiency into the range of making synthetic fuel from coal and then running a Diesel, you were ahead of the game. Or at least that is what Wardale and Porta were pinning their hopes on.
Wardale tries to “correct the record” claiming good performance from 614 by explaining that the tests were a disaster. The BTUs per ton mile (or MJ per metric ton-kilometer – Wardales insistence on metric units in that book) was anywhere from a factor 12 to 16 worse than a contemporary C&O coal drag using a pair of 6-axle EMD diesels. The test runs, by the way, were where C&O used to run Alleghenies.
Wardale tries to explain in part the poor showing of 614 to three factors – a leaking firebox that increases the water rate substantially along with the coal needed to evaporate that water, a poor exhaust system and removal of the feedwater heater. I think Wardale is only partly correct about the feedwater heater because I read the J3a “Greenbrier” was said to have an exhaust-steam injector, not a feedwater heater as on the J3 class.
I think Wardale is missing the forest from the trees in applying a Northern (OK, Greenbrier) to a coal drag. OK again, the compromises in its shallow firebox and its “booster” valve, but in a fantasy universe, a Y6b may have been a much better comparison to the Diesels in this application. If you can deal with the condensation problem in the LP cylinders, a coal drag is a good application for compound expansion where you need to generate near maximum tractive effort for hours on end. A compound can get some semblance of expansive steam working under those c
I think the criticism that the C&O built a fast freght locomotive and used it in drag freight service is a bit overdone. I think the C&O needed a high capacity freight locomotive that could keep coal trains moving fast – not at passenger speeds, just fast enough to keep the road fluid. I think it got a super locomotive. Of course there were alternative designs that could have done the work but I think the C&O knew what it wanted and obtained what it needed.
With diesel-electrics and how current affects traction motors being operated at slow speeds - there is a ‘minimum continuous speed’ to prevent overheating the traction motors account being required to handle excessive currents at slower speeds which then generate more heat.
I never had the opportunity to work in the vicinity of steam engines being used in revenue freight service so I am not totally familiar with their operating characteristics when loaded to maximum tonnage other than to know that a maximum tonnage they will move slower than if they were not loaded so heavily.
I don’t know what kinds of speeds steam locomotives handled their maximum tonnage trains over a territory when compared to a diesel-electric locomotive handling its maximum tonnage train. The minimum continuous speeds for diesel-electric were on the order of 11 - 12 MPH. I have no first hand knowledge of the speeds of steam under similar circumstance, however, I suspect steam engines designed for ‘drag’ freight speeds were operating in the 5 - 6 MPH range when loaded to maximum tonnage on the ruling grades. The C&O mine run engines 1300 series with the ‘small’ 56 inch drivers would personify a ‘drag’ engine.
To correlate that to the
The issue isn’t what C&O could have done with the Alleghenies; it’s that – repeatedly and systematically – they used them for services well below the horsepower range for which they were designed, rather than ‘as intended’. That would not have been as severe a ‘waste’ had the engines been eight-coupled.
I have always thought that the Alleghenies represented a kind of Procrustean design, a complex and ultimately heavy design for ‘one and a half’ fast Berkshires that Lima flogged around looking for customers. They clearly found a willing one in C&O, but I have to wonder whether the rhetoric used by Lima’s salesmen accurately matched what the locomotives could deliver if ‘abused’… much the same as Baldwin repeatedly touted the design that became the N&W TE-1 as being able to run 65mph when it was woefully unable to do so with even an approximation of a useful number of trailing tons actually being pulled.
All he was saying is that there were clear designs of locomotive that could have fulfilled the mission C&O actually required of their engines most of the time, while still being capable of running ‘fast enough’ to make time when used in practical fast freight (or M&E) service, again as C&O would have required.
It is not my particular opinion that C&O actually had enough fast-freight traffic to justify large and ultimately heavy locomotives for the range of trains too large for one Kanawha but too small for two. Except in the same artificial wartime conditions that
Probably C&O wanted coal trains to be doing 15 mph or less on the 0.57% to Allegheny, so a 2-8-8-2 or 2-8-8-4 would have done just as well, far as us fans know. But C&O got 2-6-6-6s, which us fans can’t explain – as usual, we don’t know why RRs did what they did, since we don’t know the costs for the alternatives.
We fans can explain it damn well: there was this thing called the AMC that worked out at least part of the idea.
It might be interesting to see if there was a kind of ‘institutional memory’ that remembered what an advantage even the original T-1s were over the slightly earlier ‘first-generation’ simple-articulated 2-8-8-2s, and had a prejudice against relatively low-drivered simple-articulated power from that earlier epoch without realizing fully how the technical world had advanced, notably in terms of rebalancing, in the intervening years.
The real question is what transpired when Lima started fleshing out the idea, and it got heavier as it got more complex; I think somewhere there came to be a disconnect between what a heavy modern six-coupled articulated could do and what was expected of the corresponding capital investment in motive power.
I have not yet seen a full discussion of the sordid aspects of the ‘overweight’ cover-up; it has always seemed to me (outside the loops) that there was conscious intent to cheat on the crew arrangements. It was interesting to see how C&O implemented the Virginian’s “savings” on the late-Forties batch…
Part of what idea?
Found the Poultney article on the tests of 1608. With 141 cars, 11623 tons, two H-8s ran Hinton to Alleghany in 2 hr 09 min; with 144 cars, 11606 tons, an H-8 and an H-7 took 1-59. (Just under 50 miles.)
With 70 cars, 5826 tons (and no pusher I assume) time was 1-43; with 70 cars, 5760 tons, time 1-48. Don’t have the whole article – dunno if he explained why the single (?) trains did better.
The idea of a truly fast Super-Power articulated. (With the implicit understanding that six-coupled engines gave the peak horsepower any high-speed reciprocating steam locomotive in fast service could use).
It was my strong opinion that some of the folks at Lima got a bit of target fixation over beating the N&W at its own game; I think it was Hirsimaki who reported on the general glee and gloating when the early high dynamometer results were observed…
Some part of this involved C&O’s permissible axle load, which was substantially high (at what I recall to be 42T per axle at the time).
That’s what us fans can’t explain – why C&O chose “a truly fast Super-Power articulated” to haul coal to Alleghany. Some fans like to think C&O knew it was a bad choice, but ordered it anyway (and re-ordered it a few times).
0.57% in the world of real railroading is not much of a ruling grade. Yes any grade required more power to move tonnage up it than to move the tonnage on level ground. That being said, the eye has a hard time visualizing about 7 inches per 100 feet of change in elevation as being a grade.
B&O and N&W on moving their coal trains to Tidewate terminals had grades of over 1% and into the 2% range as their ruling grades - grades requiring seriously more power than the C&O did over the 0.57% grade of moving their coal. Not all the territory is grades, and the 2-6-6-6’s could probably maintain close to track speed in the ‘non-grade’ territories. East of Clifton Forge the C&O operated coal loads over the James River water level grade to Newport News. The empties returned from Newport News to Clifton Forge over the North Mountain route - a route that had over 1% grades. Two single track alignments operated as double track for their most important commodity.
According to Mr. Krug, each 0.5% increase in grade requires a bit over 3X the horsepower to maintain track speed. 15 mph isn’t much of a speed, but even a drag would want to stay pretty close to that speed up a mere 0.5% grade.
You are proving my points - B&O & N&W needed 3 to 6 to 9 times more power to move the equivalent tonnage over their ruling grades.