Hi Fellas,
Just thought I’d share one of my favorite pictures.
Someday I’ll get this picture framed and hang it in my train room.
Picture is of the New York Central 20th Century Limited vs the Pennsylvania Broadway Limited
takes place near Englewood Illinois where the tracks paralelled each other and legend has it the engineers sometime waited on each other and raced side by side.
This picture depicts such an event, era is 1946.
Picture is titled 'STEEL,STEAM and THUNDER II by artist Martin Milner.
I hadn’t heard the legend about engineers drag racing each other but the real competition was who could get to Chicago or New York first. It would seem strange to me for either engineer to wait for his competition to catch up. If they did they probably would be getting an earful from their conductor who was under great pressure to keep the flagship trains running on time. It’s a great picture in any case.
Beautiful picture! First time I’ve ever seen this version of the classic race.
There is another art rendering that also depicts this classic race. It features a streamlined J3a Hudson, like the one in the above photo, however the race is against a Pennsy 4-6-2 K4. In that rendering most would agree that the Hudson would have “smoked” the K4.
A really neat “apples to apples” match up would have been the Pennsylvania T-1 “Admiral” 4-4-4-4 against a New York Central 4-8-4 Niagra!
Pennsy had track pans also all along the Chicago-NY route. I believe speed through the pans was reduced to 45 MPH. That’s still an incredible amount of force applied to the scoop.
Until the fireman (?) forgot to raise the scoop and it slammed into the end of the pan… or he over-filled the tender. I don’t think either of those cases would have gone over too well with management at the next servicing facility, although over-filling would probably be less of a problem than ripping off the scoop…
The race was captured on film and can be seen on at least two of Herron’s videos - Pennsylvania Glory 3 and Reflections of the New York Central. On the tape, the Broadway gets a head start, but the Century, headed by Niagara number 6000, catches and overtakes the Broadway pretty handily. They don’t say what powered the Broadway that day, but doubleheaded K4s were often on the point, or it could have had a T1. The Century got diesels in 1946. They may not have accelerated as well as a Niagara. I wonder about that.
Both railroads used track pans to scoop water on the fly and saved time by not stopping. The tender capacity on the Niagara for coal was 46 tons, and the water was 18,000 gal. They would pick up water every 100 miles or so, but the 46 tons of coal was only filled once between Harmon NY and Chicago for the Niagara. Many of the Hudsons also received the larger centipede tenders to cut down on refueling stops.
The T1 tender is listed at 42.6 tons and the water capacity was 19,200. Both railroads configured the tender coal capacity to the maximum for tender weight and scooped the water in pans.
The race out of Chicago was a daily event and depending on who is telling the story, their railroad usually won.
I always wondered how the track pans worked for the second K4 since they ran double headers much of the time on the Broadway before the T1 were built. When you look at a picture of an engine taking water at 40 miles per hours or more, much of the water is tossed out of the track pan and it looks like the train is covered with water.
The picture below shows the five large water vents that are open to lessen the presure of the incoming water at speed. Much of the water was wasted by the overflow tubes but the tender was refilled in a matter of seconds. The NYC
Don’t dismiss the K4 so lightly while light on her feet she was a speedster and could out run the J3A at length. A K4 had 80" drivers while the Hudson had 79" drivers.
The Niagara actually beat a 3 unit set of E-7’s(6000 hp) to 80 mph.Two units were not even competitive.An L4 Mohawk I believe would beat a 2 unit set of E-7’s rather handily.That is just my opinion on the Mohawk though.
A T-1 versus a Niagara would be a great race.The Niagara would be ahead up to 80 mph but the T-1 developed more dbhp at 100 mph and the difference increased the faster they would go.Don’t have the exact figures with me.The Niagara was a great locomotive.If the diesel wasn’t at the back door I truly believe the T1 bugs would have been worked out and it would have had the reputation of the Niagara maybe even better.The top speeds were unbelievable with the T-1 and this was done on many occassions.
I was just reading up on 1361 yesterday, Dave - it seems the loco is really coming back together now. The boiler work is really progressing and the tender is too. The suggestion was that the loco would be running in the spring (although a year wasn’t stated ;))
That is a great painting of the race, but how did the race between the PRR and the NYC start?
Read the story below to get an idea of the race early on. Some history below on the early times of the race to New York.
PRR versus NYC from to .
The following story from one of the PRR books, The Many Faces of the Pennsy K4, Classic Power 6. The article shows a Pre War II picture of a J1 Hudson and a K4 just east of in the race to and the J1 is out in front by five car lengths.
I am glad to see several enjoyed the story. History is really interesting to me and both locomotives really played a big part in transportation from the twenties to the late forties in this country.