The old CNW coaling tower still stands over the main line at Dekalb IL. There is also an exCNW tower in southwest Wisconsin out in a field where the tracks are long gone.
The exIC tower remains in Council Bluffs. All I’ve mentioned were built to last.
Jeff
Their description, not mine, if you wonder about semantics. I do not have the book immediately at hand, but IIRC the train was going out to one of those secret munitions locations in the desert, on reasonably flat track, the train was something like 24 cars, and the locomotive started the train without wild slipping and accelerated it to presumably modest speed. It was the fact they could do that at all with an 81"-drivered four-coupled locomotive that they found astounding, and it corroborates the locomotive performance capable of 223 miles ‘on one cisternful’.
Something that might be interesting is that ATSF rebuilt one of their 4-4-2s (I think with one of the 4-cylinder Vauclain compound arrangements, probably balanced) about 1923, and perhaps this mirrored what SP was trying to do with piston-valve 2-cylinder DA and feedwater heat… I have not looked this up in Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Trail and didn’t think to look for this while originally reading it.
More grist:
The A-3s were Harriman Common Standard engines – see detail here:
https://wx4.org/to/foam/past/less_traveled2017/pdfs/1905-6harriman_locos.pdf
Small, comparatively short-stroke cylinders fed through 12" valves, and one source (Ellicott) noted they ran out of power on grades. They also kept Stephenson gear. To me all this adds up to a design with comparatively low steam mass flow, but that could take reasonable advantage of superheating when it came in.
Applying the booster makes much operational sense, and the advantages of a good feedwater heater are not difficult to determine.
The locomotive referenced in the ‘trains of the Forties’ book was probably one of the two later A-6 conversions (1927-8) which were actually given Daylight paint. Significantly this was the same ‘formula’ of Delta trailer with booster and FWH as in 1922, but with slightly lower drivers.
Our route has a coaling tower over main track and a water tower at another location.
Forgot about the South Wind. The L&N tried to pull it the 490 miles between Louisville and Montgomery on one load of coal, and no doubt they succeeded once in a while, anyway. The 4-6-2 had a 12-wheel tender – 26 or maybe 28 tons of coal. Did any coal-burning engine beat that, anywhere?
Another unusual record: Pennsy Steam and Semaphores tells about Martin Lee, a PRR engineer. He and his fireman learned how to run a 4-4-2 for 50+ miles without adding any coal to the fire. His record was 67+ miles, Croydon to Jersey City; I forget how many cars in the passenger train.
The story I remember from Westing’s book was 37-odd miles without adding coal to the fire, made out of Jersey City and not inbound. The fire was carefully built before starting, and it would have been interesting to know the precise details of how the heel was built, etc. – there was probably some raking and shaking attention to the fire during the trip; just no coal added with the scoop.
Rebuilt L&N Pacific 295 was no more capable of taking the South Wind nonstop from Louisville to Montgomery than it would have been able to reach 125mph. Amusingly nearly every reference to its ‘enormous’ tender differs from the others either in number of gallons or number of tons. The ‘nonstop record’ mentioned by the only credible authority (Prince) is between Nashville and Birmingham, and is completely in line for what I’d expect the rebuilt locomotive to be able to produce.
The likeliest ‘gold standard’ for high-speed fuel economy was likely the projection for the New York Central C1a circa May 1945. I have not looked to see if this predates practical experience with PT-tender-equipped locomotives running the 900-odd miles through between Harmon and Chicago (not via CUT) with only one coaling stop (at Wayport), but the proposed C1a used an only-slightly-modified Niagara boiler, and 64T was intended to get it reliably between Harmon and Chicago with reasonable operating reserve at typical NYC passenger-train speeds. (Of course this would involve a relatively tiny cistern capacity, and frequent track-pan scooping… but even so, the 17,000 gallons I remember in the spec was only 3000 gallons less than what the railfans said the L&N was magically using for more than half that distance on a far slower and hillier railroad than the Water Level Route…)
Prince’s book says L&N tried to (and sometimes did) run the South Wind the 490 miles to and/or from Montgomery on one load of coal. (The L&N drawing in the book says engine 295’s tender carried 27-1/2 tons of coal. The drawing says “coal pusher” – that means the 4-6-2 was hand fired?)
Prince says “If the fuel was of the finest quality and the engine steamed well, no coal stop was made. However, upon arrival at the Louisville Union Station with an empty tender, there would often be barely enough steam pressure left in the boiler to take the engine back to the South Louisville Roundhouse under its own power.”
Fortunately, Prince didn’t say the 4-6-2 could do 125 mph.
A coal pusher is a device on the rear slope sheet of the tender, usually a compressed-air cylinder driving a linkage, that moved coal at the rear of a long bunker down to where the stoker auger could pick it up. These longer tenders could uncover the front section of the long (sometimes in multiple sections!) worm – some engines had plates to cover the front, for safety – which could make it dangerous for the fireman to climb back to rake sticking coal forward.
I will see if I can find some good illustrations.
So “coal pusher” doesn’t imply hand fired? Did lots of stoker-fired engines have them? Why did some need them and some not?
Water for locomotives was a significant issue on the Santa Fe west from Belen- Albuquerque. The volcanic history dictated that well extraction was sporadic. Therefore dams were created to capture runoff from rain and also from snowmelt.
At locations where water was needed for normal station operations and housing for employees water was hauled in tank cars from locations where Santa Fe dug wells and were either temporatevely stored on sidings or emptied into built storage tanks.
Coal-Pusher by Edmund, on Flickr
Both. Some roads found more value in ‘added accessories’ than others did. Pretty much up to the Superintendant of Motive Power as to which engines got the ‘bells and whistles’ so to speak. The advertizement below explains more —
Coal Pusher DA Type by Edmund, on Flickr
Regards, Ed
Thanks, Ed
These could be steam or air actuated, on either hand-fired or stoker-equipped engines – the ‘general rule’ probably being that the bunker size or shape made trimming from the rear difficult.
The story I remember is about 67 no-shovel miles from near Croydon to Jersey City. Anyone got a copy of Pennsy Steam and Semaphores to confirm that?
(Don’t recall whether it was before or after the 1911 Bristol line change – probably before?)
An MKT 4-6-2 averaged 10 gallons of oil per mile pulling a 15-car passenger train St Louis to Oklahoma City
#110 - Railway age v.75 1923 Jul-Dec. - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library
So I guess a 10-12 car Santa Fe train could do 600+ miles on one load of oil – lots of their tenders could hold 6000 gallons.
(But maybe the MKT train was wooden cars?)
My understanding is that the first generation of road diesel from the FT’s through the F9’s had a fuel economy of 2 gallons per mile at max loading, thus making diesels more fuel efficient than steam.
Bunker 5 is a little over 8.4lb/gal, with no water and only about 0.1% ash content. 10gal/mi works out to a little over 24 miles per ton. (This was in the era that MKT took care of its equipment, and it had stack lights and knew how to use them).
Presumably if this is 1923 the locomotive would be one of the then-new Lima H3d Pacifics, whose tenders had 10,000gal water and 4033gal oil. That oil is essentially 17tons. Remember these specs ‘for later’.
The coal ‘equivalent’ would depend on the rank used, but I’d expect no more than 80-85% overall heating value, with water content and unburnt fines and lumps detracting from that. The 295 got special coal, which would lessen the effective difference, but it remains to be documented by how much.
Meanwhile, that 6000 gallons would be a little over 25tons in the bunker; a ‘coal equivalent’ could be figured if desired. Big ATSF engines had 7000gal or a little over, and Farrington’s ‘Santa Fe Big Three’ has extensive data on how far locomotives could reliably run nonstop with this capacity (timz mentioned on another forum an instance, on the ‘east end’, that one of the 4-8-4s averaged over 79mph for over 200 miles).
I’d want to know more about speed and contemporary curve and grade before assessing performance, and we should be able to determine the type and weight of contemporary MKT cars (perhaps by asking over on RyPN for knowledge or sources). The problem for railfans, of course, is that unless you have Ophelia Todd at the throttle you won’t get between St. Louis and Oklahoma City in less than about 500 miles – and that’s on the comparatively-direct and modern Interstate 44; I somehow doubt MKT in 1923 had as direct and perhaps well-graded a route…
Trudging through the reference (which as usual opened nowhere near the page of interest for me) reveals the actual item, at the bottom of p.82 (#110). The distance is
Plot thickens on the L&N South Wind – I’m going to commission someone with access to find a contemporary (probably 1940-1941) account in the trade press of actual ‘unrecoaled’ runs of 295 all the way in either direction. If we take DPM (in November '52) as an authority, he noted the ‘big tender’ was to allow nonstop running between Louisville and Nashville (205 and a fraction) rather than Nashville and Birmingham (in the earlier reference here).
As background: this was a seven-car Budd lightweight coach train, one of three similar ‘every third day’ trains scheduled and timed to give daily service between Chicago and Miami. As the South Wind had the longest route of the three, it had to maintain a faster average speed – the early schedule had the 490 miles covered, net of all stops and slow orders, at 9 hours 15 minutes. The large tender was not the only thing done to facilitate running; Jeff Polston and others note that the coal was carefully picked (from eastern Kentucky) and prepared… it would be interesting to see the criteria used and the resulting equivalent rank and characteristics!
Jeff Polston has a note that the 490 mile operation ‘often’ resulted in the engine arriving with an empty bunker and ‘reduced steam pressure’ (from what was already low for an engine running at high speed, regularly in the high 70s according to Morgan, and considering the restricted ‘unrefilled’ cistern capacity: 210psi) and having to ‘run for the house’ ASAP after being cut off the train.
Morgan mentions a further practice that likely has a bearing on this question. In the years after the Wind was introduced, it turned out that there was too much weight on the rebuilt K-7’s lead truck, so 277 (the one streamlined for the Dixie Flagler) and a rebuild and shrouding of 275 were used to ‘cover’ until a proper roller-bearing truck could be applied. Whichever engine was assigned to the South Win
Where, and in what years, did Santa Fe provide those water-treating stops that would filter and treat ‘otherwise-bad’ water and pump it into an associated cistern tank (with capacity to refill more than one locomotive in a short time)?
While I have had no personal experience with this I respond because I, as Right of Way Agent, had to deal with selling some of these sites after they no longer served their original purpose.
Water that was captured from rail and snow runoff did not need treatment. in fact most of the wells in the western portion of the Santa Fe had “good water” because it had come from infiltration of the snow and rain.
Yes, there was some treatment needed and I have no specific info about those sites.
See the linked site @ https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=4-8-4&railroad=atsf
FDoir years I have hears tales of how far the Santa Fe opoerated its passenger steam locomotives. The above linked site is pretty illuminating.
I had also ears some tales aout how the NYC& PRR operated their fast oassenger trains (water troughs, and high capacity coal tenders,etc.)
Ther information, in regards to on Santa Fe’s Northern’s is amazing, IMHO:
.FTA:“…These locomotives burned coal and had 73” drivers. They were later rebuilt by the AT&SF to have 80" drivers and were converted to oil burners. The first was rebuilt in 1938 and the last in 1941. This group was known as Class 3751.
The AT&SF used its 4-8-4s for passenger service. Since its main line stretching over 2200 miles (Chicago to California), the AT&SF had a real need for excellent motive power.
Convinced that the Northerns could handle its needs, AT&SF ordered 11 more in 1938 with 80" drivers (known as Class 3765 and included road numbers 3765 through 3775) with another 10 ordered in 1941 (Class 3776, including road numbers 3776 through 3785…"
Also gere is another linked site on the Santa Fe “Borthern Class”
linked @https://traintrackshq.com/santa-fe-4-8-4-steam-locomotive/
FTA: [ quoted from 2nd sire link ] "…
The Santa Fe 4-8-4 locomotive was first introduced in 1937, and it quickly became a favorite among railroad enthusiasts and engineers alike. It was a massive machine, weighing in at over 400,000 pounds, and it boasted a maximum speed of 100 miles per hour.
The locomotive’s was inspi