To start off, this topic is dealing entirely in the realm of conjecture. There was never any real-life proposal or plan to run a 2-10-4 on the NYC system, and the only ten-coupled engines to run on the system in reality were a few 0-10-0 shunters and the 10 members of the 2-10-2 Z-1 class which had a brief life on the B&A.
This is dealing with the post-WW2 landscape, and going with some sort of reality where designs of steam locomotives continued for at least a few years past what actually happened. Going with this premise, I wonder if the NYC, for a new fast freight locomotive would have tried to make a 2-10-4 design.
As much as I like the Mohawks, the 4-8-2 design most likely had reached its limit with the L4a/bs of 1943. As is known, the genesis of the Niagara was trying to make a new 4-8-2 design, but axle loading limitations lead to using a four-wheel trailing truck instead. While all the Berkshires used on the NYC system were low-drivered and used for slow goods/industrial service, it is crystal clear knowledge that by the mid-forties locos with two-wheel leading trucks could reach suitably very high speeds.
I think the NYC spurred on by the successes of the Niagara and the A-2 Berks, would have moved to trying either a high-drivered 2-10-4 or high-drivered 2-8-4 engine as its new premier fast freight engine, with all the advancements made in the mid-forties of course. If the NYC designed a 2-10-4 or high-drivered 2-8-4, they would probably be amonst the best designed, if not the very best designed of these respective wheel arrangements.
Could you see this theoretical path being taken, and if so, what would you infer this design would be like?
One important consideration on any steam railroad would be the turntable infrastructure. A 2-10-4 might require the expensive lengthening of turntables and adjusting the adjacent trackage at enough terminals to make their use viable.
The NYC was largely a 4-coupled-driver railroad due to the Water Level Route.
East of the Mississippi, 2-10-4 locomotives such as those used by the Burlington and C&O were used in coal-hauling service.
The Pennsylvania’s 125 2-10-4 locomotives acquired in WWII were used in fast freight due to their ability to pull up and over Horeshoe Curve and then run quickly with their train, but many of them also were used in coal-hauling service.
But an NYC 2-10-4 would have undoubtedly been good-looking power like the rest of the NYC’s modern power.
Problem with this is that NYC already had a medium-sized 4-8-4 with slightly larger drivers, a clone of the D&H and Rock Island engines. It rapidly improved into something world-class … and easily operated in a range of services.
Meanwhile, Dr. Leonard, Juniatha, and I all concur that simple changes that leave the 2-wheel trailing truck intact produce a perfectly good high-speed 4-8-2 (or even 2-8-2) for work that does not require 79" drivered Niagara speed.
What I suggest instead is taking the boiler (and cab) of the A2a and putting it over a higher-wheeled chassis, logically with the N&W deep-pocket three-axis lead truck given proper shear and hydraulic damping, or retaining the four-wheel engine truck for compatibility. Even at 69" you have, with modern balancing and lightweight rods, an engine of dramatic steaming potential; if 72" you have a true dual-service engine for everything not being dieselized. And you turn a virtual ugly duckling into a rather resounding swan.
What you do to fix the Frankenstein-monster front end, while retaining the ease of access, is another matter. I happen to be one of those who think Niagaras look almost obscenely undressed without their ‘final form’ smoke deflectors. Perhaps a little CP-style light semi-streamlining would help matters out…
… and at least think about keeping the P&LE green on the boiler jacketing…
Problem with this is that NYC already had a medium-sized 4-8-4 with slightly larger drivers, a clone of the D&H and Rock Island engines. It rapidly improved into something world-class … and easily operated in a range of services.
Meanwhile, Dr. Leonard, Juniatha, and I all concur that simple changes that leave the 2-wheel trailing truck intact produce a perfectly good high-speed 4-8-2 (or even 2-8-2) for work that does not require 79" drivered Niagara speed.
What I suggest instead is taking the boiler (and cab) of the A2a and putting it over a higher-wheeled chassis, logically with the N&W deep-pocket three-axis lead truck given proper shear and hydraulic damping, or retaining the four-wheel engine truck for compatibility. Even at 69" you have, with modern balancing and lightweight rods, an engine of dramatic steaming potential; if 72" you have a true dual-service engine for everything not being dieselized. And you turn a virtual ugly duckling into a rather resounding swan.
What you do to fix the Frankenstein-monster front end, while retaining the ease of access, is another matter. I happen to be one of those who think Niagaras look almost obscenely undressed without their ‘final form’ smoke deflectors. Perhaps a little CP-style light semi-streamlining would help matters out…
… and at least think about keeping the P&LE green on the boiler jacketing…
One of the things that I think has been missing from much of the discussion of the A2as (which share, like the PRR T1, what may be a highly unjustified reputation as shortsighted engineering failures) is what Kiefer thought he was doing in designing them.
It seems clear to me that these are intended as just the same kind of evolutionary step ‘up’ that the original Berkshires were, with at least the tacit understanding that modern balancing methods could substantially increase their practical road speed. As I recall the Classic Trains analysis in the early 2000s, there was comparatively little attempt to go beyond the provision of 63" spoked drivers – and perhaps this was justified by the absence of disc mains, as in the T&P 600 series conversions that were so successful in the Thirties – to assess the relative augment, even though there was considerable invocation of the ideas of low-wheel balancing in other contexts (including the ACE 3000, which is somewhat less relevant due to the conscious use of Withuhn conjugated duplexing)
There appears to be very little film of A2as actually moving, but it is highly interesting to observe them in Indianapolis near the end of their career when we appear to see them accelerating very quickly with little fuss. I understand this may be an artifact of that particular film recording or playback, but other things like evolving steam plumes lead me to think this was real.
I do think that something as simple as disc mains, true inline lightweight rods (perhaps not as expensive as the passenger rods on the Niagaras) and perhaps Glaze’s counterbalancing methodology as used on the N&W Js (admittedly a 'red team
We know that; NYC was even more committed to diesels by that point. (Hence the ‘Fictional’ he put in the thread topic… although the A2as had a particularly long service life for NYC steam, nobody willing to go on record really seems to have wanted or appreciated them.)
Of course, I have to suspect the ‘fix was in’ in the same way it was for the PRR T1s and the Duke of Gloucester: the locomotives ‘had to fail’ if the financial consequences of buying them could be somehow reduced or avoided.
I haven’t read Polarowitz’s book (yet) but I suspect the timeline for the A2a development was substantially before the widespread first-generation rush to dieselization, probably a follow-on to the detail design of the Niagara and C1a as they share a visual design language. If I remember correctly the A2as were only ordered at all because no builder could supply power of the kind the P&LE needed at the time – someone with access to the Classic Trains article or the book can probably comment on the politics involved at the time.
We’re talking more about a kind of ‘alternate history’ in which NYC continued evolving steam power through the late 1940s, or continued using it in ‘coal-centric’ regions. There are a number of interesting alternatives, one of which hasn’t been mentioned yet but may be highly relevant: Chapelon’s postwar ‘light’ 2-10-4 that Riley Deem so loved. From what I’ve seen of that design it would have been highly useful on most NYC lines; Deem’s North American Locomotive Company was apparently actively promoting an ‘Americanized’ version into the 1980s.
Is there properly a hyphen in the type designation? It certainly should have one if it foll
But has been said many times, the Niagaras were likely too powerful for what the NYC actually required, and definitely so for a fast freight or dual-service engine. What this is sounding like to me is that the actual most likely successor for fast freight is an L5 of some sort. Since the extensive series of Mohawks are my all-time favourite American steam locomotives, I’m definitely not complaining. [:D]
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To my knowledge NYC didn’t have the overhead clearance to do the PRR-style ‘beauty treatment’ that put the headlight all the way up and the generator within reach from the front platform; it might have been interesting (although DECIDEDLY not much better!) to try the Pyle sealed-beam lighting as the South Africans did their late headlights, in a relatively small box, high up on the smokebox with the generator neatly underneath…
It’s been said many times, but by people who are more or less ignorant both of the Niagara’s origin and of how the locomotives could be and were used in service.
As Tuplin noted, it was perfectly easy for a Niagara to do the work of an H10 on an H10’s budget of fuel and water. Presumably any intermediate quality of work would be more or less proportionally achievable, although obviously some further experience with the theory and practice of sliding-pressure firing and perhaps more data on the maintenance consequences would be required to make it more formal as an operations modality. One might add that even an ‘inertial-guidance’ version of a GIS database of approaching grade and load changes would greatly assist both the firing and ‘Valve Pilot’ assisted cutoff and throttle control needed for this kind of operation.
Naturally (as Dave Klepper has suggested in a different post) the true high-speed Timken roller rods might have been less ‘cost-effective’ applied to a slower dual-service or fast-freight engine. On the other hand, a somewhat heavier lateral section in these rods (to limit buckling tendency or progressive cracking) and less use of severe inertial-mass reduction like the hollow piston rods and lightweight pistons might have given a Niagara-size engine perfectly adequate performance at much less cost, with ‘all the rest’ included too.
The late Lima designs of large-firebox engines rely substantially on increased radiant uptake for their steam generation. That is fine if the engines are expected to perform much of their traffic close to maximum efficient output, but it implicitly implied that most of the engines’ life would be in NKP-style fast bridge traffic with minimal idle time, or NYC-styl
It is somewhere on his site in the discussion on Mohawks; probably several years since I last looked carefully. Your best bet is to contact him directly at the address given on his ‘pages’ and ask directly.
Does anybody with the ‘full’ version of the NYC film know what he’s talking about in the truncated first few seconds? That wouldn’t be the HS-1a with its infamous main steam gauge, would it?
