So… Did PRR design an E8 similar to Milwakee’s “A” class atlantics? The timing on this would put it near either the 1933/34 Chicago or 1939/40 New York world’s fairs. I can’t come up with anything government sponsored in the right era. The Milwaukee’s A class was pretty successful - enough so that the traffic outgrew its capabilities and it was replaced in Chicago-Twin Cities service by the F class hudsons. Even at that the A class remained in service on the Midwest Hiawatha until replaced by diesels. I suppose a high speed New York-Washington train may have been thought of, but powering it with steam surely was dropped once the decision to electrify was reached in 1933.
Both B&O and Canadian Pacific had 4-4-4’s intended for high speed service, which were at least somewhat successful.
The EMC model I presume is Rock Island’s TA, a single unit 1200 HP power car for Rock Island’s very lightweight prewar streamliners.
100% correct. Yes, the PRR proceded to dsign a high-speed Atlantic for the NY-Washington service, (Manhattan Transfer - Washington) after they learned of the Burlington’s plans for the Pioneer Zephyr and the UP M-1000. The only item you missed is the USA Federal anti-Depression Reconstruction Finance loan for electrification, which also cancelled serial production of the K5, which would have run head-to-head with the Central’s Hudsons. The CP Jubilee 4-4-4 was a similar approach, as well as the Milwaukee’s modern 4-4-2 that you mentioned. And these were successsful for their intended purposes. I think the B&O 4-4-4 never got beyond one prototype, but it did get used. Dieselisation was early on the B&O.
Of course I knew that PRR’s electrification was RFC financed - I just didn’t connect the dots.
Going from small to large… In 1911 the largest locomotives built up to that time were built in company shops, the series one of only two of that wheel arrangement (the second came later for another railroad, and was larger still). Not particularly successful, all members of the class were cut down to a different wheel arrangement of an obvious name in this case. The other series of the original wheel arrangement was successful enough to last to dieselization.
Name the railroad that built the 1911 series (and the shops, if you can), and the type to which they were rebuilt. The name of the other railroad owning locomotives of the original wheel arrangement is optional.
ATSF rebuilt 2-10-2s into 2-10-10-2s in Topeka in 1911. The other road which had the same wheel arrangement was the Virginian. Those were constructed new by Alco.
If I am correct please ask another question as I will be off line for a while.
You are correct. AT&SF’s 3000 class 2-10-10-2s were under-boilered for their large cylinders. The earlier tandem compound 2-10-2’s they were rebuilt from were nearly as powerful. All were rebuilt back to 2-10-2s (Santa Fe type 3010 class, of course) during the late teens. VGN’s larger AE class 2-10-10-2s were fairly successful in coal service, and performed adequately in drag freight service east of Roanoke in later years. Final replacement by FM H-16-44 and H-24-66 diesels.
New question (now that DS-4-4-1000 isn’t around…) Looking for the wheel arrangement of the first mallets with a four wheel lead truck.
Was it not AM-1? In any case one of the two original Baldwin cab-forwards for the SP, one a 2-8-8-2 Mallet, the original AC-cab-forward. and the other the 4-6-6-2 Mallet that you are requesting. Later ACs were not truly Mallets, although many SP people called them Mallets. And there was just one series of ACs that were coal-burning originally and were not cab-forwards and were 2-8-8-4s. I think most were converted to oil. I do not think the 4-6-6-2 was replicated in any quantity. Since AC stands for “articulated consolidation,” I assume AM stand for “articulated mogul.”
No problem in giving FF the opportunity to ask the next question.
SP’s were the second group, leaving out the question of what really is the leading and trailing truck on cab-forward… This pair belonged to a different railroad.
Wizlish has found AT&SF’s 1909-built 1300 class 4-4-6-2 passenger mallets. The pair of them were considered failures, with the 38x38 low-pressure cylinders on the front drivers doing little more than causing them to spin. As with almost all of AT&SF’s 1908-1912 mallet experiments, the boiler was too small anyway. They were rebuilt into pacifics within a few years at Topeka, lasting until the early 1950s.
Are you referring to an overseas, non-North American locomotive? Possibly the British (L&NE, I think) Atlantic that was converted into a 4-4-8-0, with the eight driving wheel group partly under the firebox, partly under the cab, and partly under the tender. Or a 4-8-8-4 Beyer-Garrett.
Looks to me like I killed one of the better threads on this forum.
As a hint: The answer to this question is more than a little ironic when compared with rcdrye’s previous question (which inspired it). That’s part of why I thought it was ‘fun’…
So tell us the answer! I don’t know about the other guys, but I don’t mind being stumped every once in a while. I looked in a lot of places and couldn’t find anything. Then ask us another!
Mr. Klepper said he was still very, very interested in answering, but was still not finding the answer.
I think if I asked this over in the ‘Locomotive Quiz’ in the Trains Magazine forum we would have an answer in minutes rather than hours. It’s been the subject of answers before.
Remember the question was “The wheel arrangement of the first Mallet with a four-wheel engine truck was 4-4-6-4. What was the wheel arrangement of the first simple articulated with a four-wheel engine truck?”
The answer is highly amusing and more than a little ironic: it is the same.
There have been arguments over the years about the usefulness and stability of a Bissel two-wheel engine truck on high-speed locomotives. The LS&MS seems to have used them successfully on 2-6-2s, or at least some people think they did. Wilgus put them on the early NYC electrics, and they had a serious wreck within two days of opening. And so we come to the first approach to true high-speed Mallet-style articulation, necessarily (in the United States, at least) involving simple expansion, built by Baldwin in 1930. I think of these as direct predecessors of the N&W A class, and they shared with that design the use of 70" drivers (not very far, in fact, off what ATSF had used on their ‘high-speed’ Mallets back in the previous question). The wheel arrangement used was 2-6-6-2, and you’ll have no trouble in identifying the classes and construction details involved.
I do not know enough about their detail design to know whether the engine truck as designed had some high-speed instability problem. Evidently, however, the owning road had enough of a problem to rebuild one of them with a four-wheel engine truck as a test. Now, fitting a four-wheel truck at the forward end of a Mallet-style chassis is going to lengthen the hinged chassis length … and probably involve substantial redesign
My guess is that it was a UP experiment, leading to the development of the Challengers, after they decided that the 9000s were a bit hard on the track structure and required more than their share of maintenance because of the inside valve gear for the third cylinder.
B&O’s KK1 class 4-4-6-2 7400 was modified from a 2-6-6-2 simple in 1932, from one of a pair of experimental 2-6-6-2s built in 1930. Equipped with 70" drivers (same as the AT&SF 4-4-6-2 mallets) the lead engine did not track well, and the water-tube firebox was not particulary successful, either. It was rebuilt back to a fire-tube 2-6-6-2 in 1933.
From “Perfecting the American Steam Locomotive” by J. Parker Lamb.