There is a video up on youtube of an O gauge Q2 pulling an endless string of coal cars, and someone commented that in real life, the Q2’s never pulled purely coal cars, is this true?
Because I sure like the look of it.
How about a link to the video?
Eh, voila!
More than likely yes. Rail Roads would use any engine they had if they need to get the freight rolling. I was talking to Ken at K-10 Model trains about this one time. He had some pictures of Santa Fe F7’s in War Bonnet colors dragging a freight manifest. He said it was not the norm, but the rail roads would use what ever they had handy to meet the timetable.
Ken
PRR used the Q2’s in merchandise freight and refrigerator car trains, based on photos. They may have been assigned to coal trains when required. The J1’s (2-10-4) were used in coal and lower speed service. N&W tested the Q2 in coal train service (1948), and they were not good at it compared to the N&W’s Class A 2-6-6-4s. They were primarily a high speed freight locomotive on a railroad that didn’t have much high speed freight.
I’m going to have to say Q-2’s on coal drags would have been highly unusual (though not impossible). They were built for horsepower at speed–and using them on a coal drag would have been mis-using them.
The facts regarding Santa Fe red warbonnet F units on freight trains are as follows: After they were thoroughly worn out in passenger service, and after both U28CG’s and U30CG’s were ordered to replace some of them, yes, Santa Fe red warbonnet F units ran out their final miles in freight service. This would not have been the case during the 50’s and even up through the mid-1960’s.
Once the mail contract was lost circa 1967, Santa Fe demoted the remaining operable Alco PA’s to freight service, as well as many remaining passenger F-7’s. A few ex-passenger F units lasted as late as 1978 in freight service–but they would have been a tiny minority in the huge Santa Fe roster–and definitely not an everyday sight (were mainly used in the flatlands of west Texas, and on eastern branchlines, during the annual grain rush).
John
All of the Q2’s were assigned to the main line from Crestline Ohio to Chicago and were all laid up in crestline by late 1952 and not used after that time. Some coal traffic could have gone towards Chicago on the mainline but coal was not the normal loads for Q2’s. These engines were slippery and tended to spin more than the J1’s so lugging on slow drags were not their strength. I got to see a Q2 in Chicago in 1948 when we visited the round house and yards there. The Q2 was impressive to see.
In HO however, you should use the Q2 for any service you want since model railroading should be about enjoying this hobby.
CZ
Does anybody have any real life archived footage of the Q2’s? I can’t find anything, anywhere.
Check out this youtube of T1’s and a Q2 about two thirds way into the video. The black and white is not so great, but it is a Q2.
CZ
Crestline to Chicago was the flattest, straightest part of the PRR system.
That’s where the HP at speed could do the most ROI.
This is also the same general area of most T1 assignments
Note that the referenced video indicates Q1, which was a 4-6-4-4.
I’s difficult to tell which is shown.
About the 4:50 mark, a Q2 is definitely visible coming toward the camera from the left, but not with coal hoppers in any quantity. He mistakenly calls it a Q1, but I count it out as a 4-4-6-4.
-Crandell
By the time the Q2 was designed and built the drag freight era was near the end. The rail roads finally found out running faster and shorter trains made more money then the old slow mile long drag freighters. The Q2 was built for just such work. They were built for the fast manifest freight and strings of perishable goods. Even though they were by far the best duplex drive locos built, because of high maintenance they had short lives. The 6,000 horse power was a bit much for some of the old equipment they were pulling. They could have been at the front of mile long freights and do 50 miles an hour but more than likely getting up to speed with a long freight not running snappers on the back was more trouble then it was worth. Shorter trains running faster negated the need for the high horse duplex and the road finished off the steam era running 2 cylinder locos more than twice as old as the Q2s.
That being said, there were drag freights still running but not the same scheduled drags as earlier times. Most of the drag freights were seasonal and run on lines that could be cleared easily for manifest trains.
Pete
Interesting. What about the M1a’s? Were they ever seen pulling long coal drags?
Yes, M1a’s pulled long coal drags. They perhaps were better suited to general merchandise (faster) trains, but they did pull coal trains.
Besides the more well-known images of PRR K-4’s running out their last miles on commuter trains in New Jersey, or to the beach, the last use of PRR steam was in the coalfields of north central PA, where I1sa 2-10-0’s (and I’m sure a few M1a’s) toiled away on coal drags at least well into 1957 if not later.
I may have read somewhere that the last run of a PRR steamer on the PRR (there was a single leased switcher that lasted longer on a shortline) may have been an M1a.
In the waning days of steam, and far from the management eyes of Philadelphia, the employees at the Northumberland, PA, roundhouse kept their excellent 2 man paint crew busy painting PRR steam power up to the very end. Then they parked what engines they could inside the roundhouse, with more outside, and left them there. Those few survivors, conveniently “missed” or “forgotten about” by the folks in Philadelphia, who would have surely scrapped most them, became what is now the nucleus of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania Collection. The one I-1sa ended up going elsewhere, but the rest of the collection is at the museum in Strasburg, PA.
An M1 variant is included in the collection.
John
I read somewhere either in a book or a Keystone magazine that the last steam engine to run a revenue freight mile was an H8 or H9 out of Altoona in the beginning of 1958. I remember it because I found it odd that they still used hand fired locos till the end. It is fitting that the last would be the forgotten work horse of the rail road. At one time the Pennsy had more 2-8-0 locos on the roster then most roads had locomotives. While most would be drooling over the big 4-4-4-4 and the 4-4-6-4, The J and I1s there were thousands of the little bread and butter consols pulling the bulk of the revenue work.
Pete
I’m certain that 0-6-0 locomotives pulled many more regularly-scheduled passenger trains than Q2 locos headed a coal drag.
Mark
hardly surprising, i’m sure there were a whole lot more 0-6-0s than there ever were Q2s.
Crandell
You are right about that Q2 being called a Q1. I never noticed it was labled incorrectly, but just saw it was a Q2 probably leaving Chicago. He does have the wheel arrangment correct.
CZ
Knowing the route that the Q2’s were assigned between Chicago and Crestline, I looked up more pictures than you could count. Maybe not that many, but a lot of pictures in a lot of books.
I did find a Q2 on a coal train at Plymouth Indiana in 1948 making good time with 111 solid coal cars. I can’t read the names on the cars but they might be N&W since they are larger than the PRR cars.
Page 27 in the Pennsy Q Class book Classic Power by NJ International Inc.
Well, the Q2 did pull at least one coal train and probably more during their short life on the main line run.
CZ
Awesome, thanks. Nice video too. I’m curious as to how the S1 whistle sounded. Lionel’s S1 sounds like a T rex from Jurassic Park, I wonder how close that was to the real thing? In that black and white video, the S1 looks like a monster. The video may be the only existing footage of the S1.