I know that the 4-4-0 went out of vogue right around the turn of the century, but were there any outliers? What were a few of the last classes of these engines built (in NA)? I feel like it’s so much easier to do research on British steam - there just seems like there’s no centralized source to look up American/Canadian/Mexican stuff :/. Any help is appreciated.
Here’s a good place to start.
Guide to North American Steam Locomotives - Revised Edition - Kalmbach Hobby Store
The Reading D11 class 4-4-0 was built by Baldwin in 1914.
It had a wide Wooten firebox, a combustion chamber, was superheated as built with piston valves and Walschearts valve gear, and was built with a rear cab. It was also the last 4-4-0 built for the Reading, with only ten locomotives built to the design.
The Reading had a number of camelback 4-4-0s, and some of these were rebuilt with superheaters, piston valves and Walschearts valve gear, but none were rebuilt with a rear cab.
Few 4-4-0s were built with modern features like the Reading D11.
Peter
The latest American 4-4-0 I can recall was circa 1928, and I think it was built for an ‘accommodation train’ in the South. From Baldwin, and reasonably modern in its construction details, in service that did not require three driving axles or the capability of a larger firebox (the firebox on a 4-4-0 can be quite deep for good radiant uptake and combustion efficiency if you don’t need a larger grate than will fit water-shielded between frames and axles…)
My suspicion is that most of the potential market for ‘new’ 4-4-0s in the United States was squeezed between the evolving motorcar, on the one hand, and the low-cost ability to use older power on the smaller or less-demanding consists that would be appropriate for an American type to pull. It has been mentioned that the advent of steel cars, first steel underframes and then full steel construction, spelled the doom of the unidirectional 4-4-0 in many services (in favor of 4-4-2 and then 4-6-2 on the one hand, and the 4-6-0 on the other, the latter in its turn going to the 4-6-2 as the benefits of deep and wide fireboxes became better understood).
It would be difficult to find an American rationale for a true modern 4-4-0 like the Schools class. Here even lightweight trains would get 4-4-2s, and those just as with glorified-motorcar streamliners would soon require ‘upsizing’ if they were at all successful enough to warrant the capital. (Something I find interesting to note is that nowhere do we see cost-effective use of ‘more smaller trains’ as in the proposed late-19th-century high-speed railroad between Philadelphia and New York. Interurbans of course tried that… and we see where it got them, even as early as the '30s; 4-4-0-hauled trains were always going to be labor-intensive if successful enough to command opportunity capital.
I also suspect the Depression put the kibosh on much “new” construction of anything a 4-4-0 would handle until MU-capab
I don’t remember the details, but I believe Baldwin did build some 4-4-0’s post WW2 for export to the South American market. Not many, but some.
Well, that’s one of the reasons the Jersey Central held on to the Camelbacks as long as they did.
Even after figuring out one of the ‘rightest’ right solutions for diesels running commuter service, right out of the box in 1947… [:-^]
Now imagine if CNJ had waited a couple of years and built the double-enders with turbo 608As, better electrical and ‘other’ systems, and Loewy-style noses… all in that original blue and orange style…
Well, if someone else had been willing to build the “Jersey Januses” they would have probably have lasted a lot longer. Not Baldwin’s best effort by any means.
Shrike,
it would be a funny idea to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era: with (I have to recalculate, but the internet helps) 70000 pounds axle load, 100 inches boiler, wide firebox overhanging the rear 70 inches driver and an eight wheel, no, a twelve wheel box shape tender. Later, one year before austed from service, replaced by a meanwhile superfluous Centipede tender, or one of these ground-scraping PRR sixteen wheels tender.
Serious: in later years, I believe the 4-4-0 would have been regarded as old-fashioned, it would perhaps become a 2-6-0 with driver diameter as fitting and an eight wheel tender.
Maybe someone has made a sketch for contemplation and could post it here?
Sara 05003
The lack of a trailing truck would in all likelihood kill a 4-4-0 superpower locomotive at the concept stage. Having said that, the British did produce a very modern 2-6-0 in the postwar era:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BR_Standard_Class_2_2-6-0
I wouldn’t in any way consider the above “super power,” but it certainly was modern.
EMD were happy to build them for export cusomers by 1952…
Henschel even built the strange, narrow KKs for Egypt which were effectively double ended E8s with twin 8-567C engines.
The next group for Egypt were just normal double enders with one 16-567C each.
Peter
This may help in investigating the American type: https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=4-4-0
Yep. Here you go. These three were the last, built in 1927. Chicago & Illinois Midland 4-4-0 “American” Locomotives in the USA (steamlocomotive.com)
I got my 1st train ride, at age 2, on the last C&IM passenger train. Manito, IL (home) to Havana, IL (where dad worked). The power was C&IM 4-4-0 #502. How many others can rightly claim their first train ride was behind a for real 4-4-0 operating in regular passenger service.
When Chicago’s electricity provider, Commonwealth Edison, acquired what was to be the C&IM their purpose was to move Illinois coal. But they did initially provide two passenger round trips per day between Springfield and Peoria. There were far better options (Illinois Terminal) for travel between those two cities. So, the C&IM trains served our little towns with passenger, mail and express service. Two car trains were all it took. One head end car and one coach. A 4-4-0 was more than sufficient.
The entire C&IM passenger car fleet was six cars. Built as an add on to a large South Shore order with the electric stuff left off. Three coaches, one combine, and two mail/express/baggage cars - along with those 4-4-0’s were all it took.
It’s a shame one of those engines wasn’t preserved.
Sara, that’s a pretty funny April Fool’s post. It might be interesting to see a 4-4-0 that was the equivalent of those early diesel Rabbits that were supposed to have coast-to-coast nonstop range… although there is the question of ash handling…
Actually, these narrow-firebox arrangements were likely more efficient than a wide-grate but low-volume radiant section would be. See Chapelon’s discussion of his express 4-8-0 conversions, and English experience (as constrained by their loading gage) with good 4-6-0s vs. Pacifics.
While it is technically no longer April Fool’s Day: how about a Garratt of two 4-4-0 chassis flanking an actual SuperPower-style deep firebox and the large-diameter and fairly short boiler shell that could be typical on Garratts? (See the interesting Tasmanian express locomotives, double four-cylinder (!) 4-4-2s, for the inspiration, perhaps?). Then give that an extended water-bottle ‘tender’ that pumps its contents to the water tank over one engine unit to keep adhesive weight controlled… we could call it Concorde technology.
Of course this is now getting into actual divided-drive SuperPower country that would support well over 6000ihp with no worse adhesion than a PRR T1, and Stroudley among others knew what could be done to get stable running without a lead truck…
Shrike, I invite you to read my post carefully again, here is the crucial sentence:
it would be a funny idea to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era:<<
…to have a 4-4-0 built in the Super Power era! Not that it is a Super Power by itself!
But, so much I have learned: if you want a Super Power you must have a four wheel truck behind drivers. Ok, then let’s turn the thing around and make it an
0-4-4.
How is that? not super running but Super Power! I can imagine it wheelspinning along fantastically. Never mind, it’s only fun.
Sara 05003
Hi Overmod,
ok, ok - you sure come along with a suitcase of suggestions, what stuck out to me was this “double four cylinder” Garratt. No mentioning of compound, were they four cylinder simple? that would be the apex of … what would you call it? parallel working cylinders? Tasmanian railways … I didn’t even know they existed, surely they are some narrow gauge, no?
Now, seriously, the 4-4-0 would have been turned into a 2-6-0, I’m prettty sure of. I saw a sketch of one such later era 2-6-0 three cylinder type with eight wheel bogies tender, the European ‘standard’ tender wheel setting at Juni’s.
Juni why don’t you post one or the other of your designs?
You guys should make a proper inquiry, sometimes it takes a little coaxing for her to start, to get out of the shed, just like with this long Pennsy S1.
Sara 05003
Sara, the Tasmanian Garratts are one of the finest flowers of English locomotive design at near the high-water mark of British world predominance. Yes, nicely-balanced four-cylinder simples, relatively high drivers, nice fit and finish. To me they’re up there with the Algerian Garratts as the high-water mark… and they were almost the very first Garratts built.
Since most of the ‘first-generation’ SuperPower engines were still relatively low-speed by later standards, a ‘greatly enlarged Stroudley Gladstone’ might not be a complete April Fool joke. The problem is less getting the chassis to ‘guide’ as to make a boiler short enough to fit without sticking out in front far enough to need carrying wheels…
… and I can think of a couple of quirky Belgian engines that might almost qualify as exemplars; there is one design of Pacific they had with almost spookily long ‘front porch’ appearance…
There were interesting ‘tricks’ used on the Gladstones to make them far less unstable than you might expect – thinning and specially shaping the flanges and tread on the lead driver pair, for example. There is at least one published record that discusses their stability in reasonable detail, which I can likely still find in the college library where I first came across it.
In America we did not, for some reason, embrace the idea of the Krauss-Helmholtz bogie, which would give a nominal 2-6-0 the guiding stability of a locomotive with four-wheel truck. That in turn might justify use of the three cylinders in a ‘smaller’ engine…
Overmod, sorry: I googled for Tasmanian 4-4-0 + 0-4-4 Garratts and I didn’t get any. Most were 0-4-0 + 0-4-0 and any other. No 4-4-0 + 0-4-4. None of them all looked anywheres interesting or was good looking in some way. Sorry to say. But with British flowers it is perhaps as with thing generally in Britain: they are different. The Algerian 4-6-2 + 2-6-4 are more notable locos:
detailed description and data table
!https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/fileSendAction/fcType/0/fcOid/34513893724946021/filePointer/34795416126061364/fodoid/34795416126061358/imageType/LARGE/inlineImage/true/Algerian%20Garratt.jpg
The loco has Cossart valve gear and the tanks are rounded and fit to the boiler.
If you can, would you post a link to photos of one 4-4-0 + 0-4-4 Garratt?
On the SNCB: >>… and I can think of a couple of quirky Belgian engines that might almost qualify as exemplars; there is one design of Pacific they had with almost spookily long ‘front porch’ appearance…<<
I believe it is the series 10 you a pointing to? Later they built another four cylinder simple Pacific the series 1:
Overmod, sorry: I googled for Tasmanian 4-4-0 + 0-4-4 Garratts and I didn’t get any. Most were 0-4-0 + 0-4-0 and any other. No 4-4-0 + 0-4-4. None of them all looked anywheres interesting or was good looking in some way.
The Tasmanian Garratts in question were 4-4**-2**+__2-__4-4…
Try:
Garratt Locomotives (railtasmania.com)
and: RailTasmania.com - TGR outline diagram for M class garratt locomotive
These were taken out of service fairly early since the track was not up to the standard required by these fast and heavy locomotives. The boilers were the same as the L class 2-6-2+2-6-2, and the M class boilers were used on the L class during WWII.
Peter
Oh, thank you, Peter for the information!
Funny: the ‘rear’ single idling axle is closer to the driven one than the first driven axle. It looks like they would even interfere in certain suspension moves. Hmm, the type looks much like the other types, I don’t see anything especially elegant or fitting in them. A variety of rectangular shapes around the boiler. Well, tastes are different. In general I don’t see Garratts as quite so good looking locos. They will have been fitting for the job, but they are more of a work horse than an Arabian, no?
Sara 05003