Hello everyone, I’m trying to find a 2-6-0 that could be used on a short line layout. Something a little more modern than what you’d imagine your typical 2-6-0 to be. I’ve found that most 2-6-0’s where typically of the smaller type with small drivers and Stephenson valve gear but I’m looking for something a little more unusual for my layout, as I like to model strange motive power. What I mean by modern is something with Walschaerts valve gear, large drivers, and lanky boiler. Essentially the North American equivalent of Britains Southern Railway U Class. Is anyone aware of any such locomotives existing? I’ve included a rather crude photoshop of a Delaware & Hudson G-5s made into a 2-6-0 with Walschaerts to try to illustrate what I’m trying to describe. Any help would be much appreciated, Thank you.
Look into the Canadian National units or the Southern Pacific units. CN 89 is still running at Strasbourg today. SP 1455 is also running in California. Both were late Moguls made in North America. Also don’t overlook the Ten Wheeler type by this time this engine on class one service was being replaced by Atlantic and Pacific types.
I would get a picture of a 2-6-4 suburban tank locomotive and turn it into a tender one.
BOSTON & ALBANY RAILROAD - TANK
Remember that high drivers didn’t necessarily imply high speed – see Golsdorf’s admittedly very fast-looking 2-6-4 Adriatics from near the turn of the 20th Century. These had large drivers and dramatically short stroke to hold down machinery speed and cylinder filling times.
Just putting high wheels on a 2-6-0 to get a higher ‘diameter speed’ will make the engine increasingly top-heavy and slow to correct after heeling. This also aggravates the poor combustion-gas travel and radiant efficiency from a firebox, be it ever so wide, that has to be carried above driver level.
The LS&MS made gravy for a while with a low-firebox ‘improvement’ on a 2-6-0, the Prairies, which were among the ‘fastest locomotives in the world’ in their heyday. There was interesting politics involved in the NYC abruptly converting the Prairies into rather defective Pacifics at or around the time of the great fiasco when the electrified service to Grand Central was initiated with the Wilgus 1-D-1 S-motors (with guide trucks similar to those on the Prairies) – anyone looking at a ‘fixed’ S-motor will be struck (if not exactly impressed) by how they shoehorned those four-wheel trucks in there after the fact…
If the modified engine has to exert any sort of horsepower at speed, it will likely nose unpleasantly, with the result being Mr. Toad’s wild ride in the cab cantilevered out there at the back. See how the PRR I1 ‘hippos’, which had 50% fixed cutoff initially and were able to spin easily above PRR’s freight speed limit of 50mph, actually behaved at that speed, even with a much longer rigid wheelbase.
The European 'and Japanese ‘fit’ for this problem was to move the actual drawbar attach point forward in the locomotive frame, and extend the tender frame and front truck forward so that the pin pivot of the truck might actually be ahead of the coal gates and tender front wall. The same sort of angled rockers or gear segments used to ‘steer’ the back of a four- or six-wheel Delta trailing truck can be used between locomotive and tender extension to keep the rear of the locomotive from dancing, at very little if any added weight and a certain amount of Jacobs-truck-style ‘articulated’ guiding of the tender into curves. .
Funnily enough the Philadelphia & Reading Adriatic tank engines perfectly fit the bill for a conversion into a 2-6-0 tender engine of my description. Only issue is I’ve already modeled one of them in tank engine form for my short line.
So? New Chief Engineer came on the property and changed the standard.
Your railroad extended the range of its commuter trains as new neighborhoods were built further and further out. But not enough traffic, or competition from the PRR, to actually electrify…
Don’t forget to put proper lighting and a pilot on the rear of the tender, and cut away the corners for better visibility, if you can’t afford a turntable or wye at the outer end…
The use of a suitable steam rail motor like the LSWR and Canadian Pacific when passenger traffic is low would also be a good idea.