a few questions:
anyone here ever saw it?
what was it’s official name?
How did this thing sound?
was it just an experiment or was it used for real jobs, and when was it retired?
did it burn oil or coal, and if it was coal, how did the coal get loaded?
I guess #2300 was the proper name, from class TE1(although it was the only one).
Jawn Henry was built by Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton during 1954 and had a tractive force of 175,000 pounds on a C-C-C-C wheel arrangement. It was a coal-fired steam turbine-electric which operated for about 60,000 miles before retirement in 1957.
Old Timer may have seen it and hopefully he will see this thread.
“Classic Trains” forum has a short audio/video clip of Jawn Henry running in the Roanoke yards. Clip narration covers up most of the loco’s sound, but you can hear it to a degree. Sounds like a big steam leak…
I think the C&O fieled at least one and maybe two of these steam turbine-electrics, similar in appearance to N&W#2300… About the same time frame ,in the late 1950’s, Popular Mechanics magazine did a cover story, and had internal diagrams for it also. And don’t forget the Pennsy’s more conventional liiking steam turbine, which was modeled by Lionel.
C&O 500-502 were steam-turbine electrics that were built to haul the “Chessie”, the streamliner that never ran. The wheel arrangement was quite different from N&W 2300 but the equipment layout was similar. Both had rearward-facing boilers with the coal bunker in front and an auxiliary water tank at the rear. The C&O power had a conventional boiler while N&W 2300 was built with a water-tube boiler.
Wasn’t one of the C&O turbines involved in an explosion of some kind?
The definitive account about N&W’s Jawn Henry has been written by Louis Newton. It’s a hard cover book which follows the project from design to final retirement, on a first person basis! It’s available from the N&W Historical Society from their website at nwhs.org. Really worth a read.
Don’t remember hearing about a C&O turbine exploding–they blew up an H-8 (2-6-6-6) and a T-1 (2-10-4), though.
C&O’s turbines were gone by the time the N&W’s Jawn Henry appeared.
AFAIK, Jawn Henry was a little bit unreliable and spent most of it life as a pusher on a grade near Roanoake. Thus, it was a short trip to the shops in case it needed some repair.
I am ordering a copy of the Newton book entitled “Rails Remembered, Volume 4, The Tale of a Turbine” which hopefully is the book to which you refer. At any rate, since I believe the idea of coal fired electric traction has merit for future development, have you read the book and if so, is it true that most of the problems associated with the Jawn Henry were/are easily mitigated with today’s technology?
An article I read some time ago mentioned that a major problem with the N&W 2300 was adhesion, with the coal bunker at the ‘front’ of the engine as the coal was used there was a concurrent wheel slippage problem. plus the boiler carried an operating pressure of 600# psi…which could be a potential problem under some conditions. Itr was pretty hot stuff for that 1950’s time frame.
Electro-ortcele asketh a few questions:
Yes. I did.
Class TE-1 # 2300.
Whoooooosssshhhhhhhhhhhh . . .
It was an experiment which was tested on real jobs.
Coal, loaded just as it would have been on a regular locomotive tender.
samfp1943 sayeth:
“An article I read some time ago mentioned that a major problem with the N&W 2300 was adhesion, with the coal bunker at the ‘front’ of the engine as the coal was used there was a concurrent wheel slippage problem. plus the boiler carried an operating pressure of 600# psi…which could be a potential problem under some conditions. Itr was pretty hot stuff for that 1950’s time frame.”
Sam, I don’t know what you read or where you read it, but none of these factors you mention affected the operation of the 2300. It had no adhesion problems, and none with the boiler pressure. It did have problems with fly ash cutting turbine blades, water pumps, etc.
If you want all the facts, get a copy of Newton’s book. He was with the 2300 from before it came out of the factory just about until it was retired, and has written a wonderful account of it.
Old Timer
Someone mentioned the Pennsy steam turbine. That was a very different design, in which the turbine was directly geared to the drivers of an otherwise pretty conventional steam locomotive. It was fine at speed, but the efficiency at low speeds was pretty horrible. Jawn Henry and the equivalent Chessie engines had the turbine drive a generator which drove traction motors – a much better concept. But not good enough in a variety of ways to overcome the advantages of the diesel.
IIRC TRAINS had a two-page spread with a large photo some years ago. One of the problems it had was that it was so large it wouldn’t fit on a standard turntable, so had to be turned on a wye. Wyes were not always convenient to places where it needed to be turned, which made using it cumbersome.
Jawn Henry could be uncoupled from its tender - all that connected it were water hoses since the coal was carried on board - and turned on a standard 115’ N&W turntable. No wye was necessary.
Old Timer
And how was the coal loaded? Same way as in steam engines or…?
Want answers?
BUY THE BOOK
You won’t regret it.
I think the book is out of print, so buying a copy may not be that easy.
The book, Tale of Turbine, is not out of print. Contact N&WHS at nwhs.org. You can order it from there.