Thanks, Stix. I noted yesterday that only one of the 4 portholes of an FT had hinges: First porthole on a A-unit; last porthole on a B-unit. All the remaining windows were fixed. On a F2 the middle porthole was the only one hinged.
Tom
Round portholes were used on trains and ships.
I even saw some on beach houses in Newport CA.
One reason for portholes not yet listed was that the hinged porthole was the right size for a piston and connecting rod to be passed through, the used one on the way out and the new one on the way in.
This was still pretty important in the days of the FT, but the need to change such things became less as engine reliability improved and later with the adoption of “power assemblies”, the liner piston and rod were changed together.
Peter
This isn’t a true statement. EMD’s FT booster units with the 5th porthole could be found on the ATSF 165 units, Southern 22 units, D&RGW 6 units, MP 6 units and SSW 4. units. By my count there were 203 FT boosters with the 5th porthole for hostler use. Cotton Belt rebuilt their six drawbar FT booster units with a 5th porthole in 1955-56 at their Pine Bluff Shops. The calculation is 203 5th porthole booster units out of 541 FT boosters built or 37.5%.
And before that …Buicks (although they call them ventiports)
“before”???
Ventiports: 1949
portholes on EMD FT’s: 1939
portholes on KcKeen gas-electrics: 1905
Ed
Perhaps I should have said “very few FT B units were delivered with the hostler’s fifth porthole”…?? I suspect many of those you note were added later.
But as Winston Churchill said, *“*In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.”
[(-D]
They predate even ships, at least ships that travel the ocean.
And UFO’s had them as well.
As with the Buicks they copied, they were designed for venting hot air.
Thus they were not really portholes.
Ed
No Stix every single one of those FT Booster units I cited was built with the 5th porthole. You should have said that 37.5 percent of FT Booster units were built with the 5th porthole and that the 5th porthole was added to additional units when they were undrawbarred during rebuilding. There are a number of EMD as-built drawings that show the 5th porthole as original equipment. I got mine from Preston Cook! Don’t cite books, cite primary source documents.
[quote user=“wjstix”]
SSW9389
wjstix
By the way, only a relative few FT B-units had the fifth porthole on one side for hostler controls. FTs were designed to run in A-B or A-A sets with a drawbar between them. The original design didn’t even include doors between the A and B units. Only railroads like ATSF that later got FT B-units with the EMD’s makeshift coupler replacing the drawbar would have need of hostler controls.
This isn’t a true statement. EMD’s FT booster units with the 5th porthole could be found on the ATSF 165 units, Southern 22 units, D&RGW 6 units, MP 6 units and SSW 4. units. By my count there were 203 FT boosters with the 5th porthole for hostler use. Cotton Belt rebuilt their six drawbar FT booster units with a 5th porthole in 1955-56 at their Pine Bluff Shops. The calculation is 203 5th porthole booster units out of 541 FT boosters built or 37.5%.
Perhaps I should have said "very few FT B units were delivered w
Just came across this older thread, and I find it to be an interesting discussion.
Walthers Proto, and its predecessor Life-Like, produced a somewhat lengthy roster of EMD E7 units. Some had a series of square windows, while others had the window openings plated over, apparently to comply with the FRA requirement.
I just find it interesting to see a roster of E7 locomotives with the same roadname by the same manufacturer, some with windows and some with window openings plated over.
Rich
Rich, just sent you a PM.
Mike.
[swg]
Since we’re picking nits in this thread, I’d point out that the early-phase F3s used the same body as the F2, so had three evenly spaced windows. By the later stages of F3 production, they had changed to having two windows like the F7 would have.
Many of the difference are one of two things:
A: Don’t care - lesser manufacturers don’t worry about prototype specific details and just make them all the same and slap all the road names on the same mold.
B: Modeling the same loco but at different points in its life. One manufacturer might be building the loco as delivered, antoerh might be doign the same loco but years later after some appliances were changed, the paint scheme changed, and other things were updated. or maybe the loco from one manufacturer represents that model loocmotive as aquired by that railroad, and the release by another manufacturer (with a different road number) represents the same type that was originally aquired by a different railroad which has now merged witht he first railroad, or where the first railroad bought additional of that type fr
Randy, those are valid observations, but what I find interesting is to see a roster of E7 locomotives, for example, from the same manufacturer under the same road name, some with window openings and some with window openings plated over.
I will give you this example, a C&NW E7A diesel locomotive first produced by Life Like and later carried on by Walthers Proto following its acquisition of Life Like.
Life Like produced two C&NW E7A locomotives, both with 5 rectangular windows on each side of the locomotive. Following the acquistion of Life Like, Walthers Proto reissued those same two locomotives with the same two road numbers and included the 5 rectangular windows on each side of the locomotive. Walthers probably used the Life Like molds for this purpose.
A few years later, Walthers Proto produced four new C&NW E7A locomotives with four different road numbers. These four locomotives once again included 5 rectangular windows on each side of the locomotive.
Subsequently, Walthers Proto produced two more series of E7A diesel locomotives a few years apart. Each series consisted of three locomotives, all with different road numbers, and none of these six locomotives had the windows. Instead, the window openings were there, but plated over and painted to match the yellow portion of the locomotive.
My conclusion is that either a new mold was used or, more likely, these locomotives had window openings plated over to reflect the FRA requirement mentioned earlier in this thread.
Any other opinions about this change?
Rich
Yes, they probably mad new tooling - although dependign ont he exact shape of the feature being replciated, it can be possible to modify the old tooling to change said feature, instead of creating all new tooling. But of course you can’t go back. No idea of this is what Walthers did or not, it’s been a long time since I worked in a machine shop, and I never worked with injection molding tooling, so no idea, even if I looked at it.
But, this is pretty much exactly what I said, all the previous releases were the originals, with the windows, no plating. Maybe some of the lettering or paint schemes were wrong and should have had some windows plated over, but 100% accuracy is another story. Those later ones represent those units later in life, once the windows were plated over. Again there’s always the issue of, are the numbers and the paint scheme correct for a unit that, at some point, had the windows plated over? Manufacturers have been getting a lot better at getting such details correct these days.
There’s really no great mystery. One of the rules is that if a piece of equipment is on the locomotive or car, it must be maintained to applicable standards - which is why steam generators were often removed from diesels once passenger service ceased. If the boiler equipment was on the loco, then it had to be inspected and maintained per FRA rules, even if it wasn;t being used. So for a unit now used exclusively for freight service, it was an unecessary expense. Even before special glass was mandated, there most likely were rules related to maintaining the windows on the carbody locos. Fewer windows = less maintenance time. ANd once the safety glass was mandated - far less expensive to weld a piece of sheet metal over the window than to buy and install the proper glass.
The model makers are just offering as accurate a model as they can, balanced against cost of tooling - it’s why specific steam locos are still less common in plastic, you can’t j