It was on April 1, 1943 the Pennsy agreed to accept eight UP Challegers as part of the war effort to provide more power to move supply trains over the mountains. The locomotives are 4-6-6-4 types and will be classed on the PRR as GG-2. This is addition to the R-2 4-8-4 and P-6 4-6-4 from the UP.
You might also know that the 6 Challengers that were assigned to the D&RGW did actually run on the PRR on their way east to the Clinchfield. There is a picture of one of those 4-6-6-4’s in the PRR East St. Louis Rose yard before it went east in 1947.
You might also also know that PRR was operating 4-8-4s in 1951 … extrememly attractive 4-8-4s, I might add. There are a couple of shots of one in Sunbury in one of those PRR-in-color books.
Supposed to be 2-8-4s leased, too – what class would you assign THAT to? J(4/5)?
I found the picture in a book. It is one of the quarterly type books they used to publish. It shows the Challenger at Rose Yard in E. St. Louis. I had heard about the large articulated locos going past Effingham on the PRR from one of the guys working at the coaling station, but never realized what he was talking about until I found the picture.
And said ‘no’ definitively to high-speed articulateds, again. (The HC1 could not have still been rankling them at that point in time!) See the HH1 (from about this same period) for an example showing PRR was not averse to articulateds ‘in their place’. And yes, it would have been more or less a waste to use a class A over the mountains…
Part of the reason I think PRR rejected building As was the impending electrification that was ‘coming’ for that part of the railroad, after which there would be no cost-effective use for an articulated anywhere else on the PRR system in preference, say, to a properly-debugged Q2, which made more horsepower than any of the practical articulateds in service at that time, or the V1 turbine, which definitely made more horsepower at usable speeds than any practical reciprocating articulated.
Remember that this was during wartime, and PRR needed an ‘existing’ design [the Q1 emphatically not being the right answer] so they picked one of the best of the nonarticulated designs (which did most of what the articulated could, with a rigid frame and no steamline issues). Amu
And there is that other thing, the “P6”. Can you please point me at the UP prototype from which PRR is supposed to have derived this design? (ATSF might be a better example, but that class would never have been made to fit PRR clearances, and already was no faster than a K4…)
I believe P5 was called that by analogy with L5 for ‘contemporary’ electric power. I am not sure that PRR would ‘letter’ new steam consecutively (even though we have the L6 as a potential counterexample). Probably be P1 to go with T1, J1 and the other ‘new’ class lines.
Where would PRR use a Hudson? They developed what was essentially a contemporary Hudson in the K5s, but found they didn’t effectively need the extra power (on just 6 drivers). The M1 was already recognized as THE right answer to K4s being too small – the only issue being that PRR had bought so many K4s in the Twenties, before (1) they realized a 4-8-2 was a better answer, even if it had had the original 80" driver spec, and (2) the Hudson, and the other Woodard-inspired stuff, could make an impression on motive-power policy.
By the time active consideration of new passenger locomotives came up, there was already a ‘better’ answer: two Lindbergh locomotives on a rigid frame under a common boiler. And that is probably true. A P-class Hudson wouldn’t have been much more than a K in PRR service, and was CERTAINLY not going to be competition for the T1 anywhere the T1 could be run… and this even before we start looking at rigid-wheelbase considerations (by 1947, the T1 had essentially ZERO in the usual sense (there was lateral on all four driving axles, according to the elevation drawing I have, so ‘rigid wheelbase’ is truck wheelbase).
And of course the follow-on to THAT was turbines, with Bowes drive, which is a better answer almost no matter how you’d slice it. (Assuming a welded boiler with proper steel selection and bette