Bear, it’s more direct than that. The first – use of the rail engine directly in an automobile – is quite well known, and I have to worry people think this half is a trick question – it isn’t. Some people seem to think it was the other way 'round, with the car engine so ‘big’ it was used in railcars, but that is not how I learned the story.
The other one is more interesting. It was a very modern engine, in a very modern vehicle, at the time. And it is (perhaps unlikely Wolseley) a purpose-built luxury-car engine, not an internal combustion engine that could be used ‘after the fact’ in automobiles or railcars interchangeably.
Note that in neither case does this involve ‘adaptive reuse’ as with the Geese and other vast numbers of unsung ‘critters’ made from automobiles in that era. The engines were new and, in the latter case, very carefully chosen.
As a hint, there might have been a certain ‘conflict of interest’ in the latter case as the engine-builder had made certain investments in an alternative form of rail vehicle very shortly before…
During the Great Depression, the French automaker Bugatti had a hard time selling his very expensive automobiles, so he began building railcars, using the engine of his top luxury model Bugatti Royale.
(Picture from Wikipedia)
Incidentally, the streamline form was later used in the design of the fastest steam engine of the world - the Gresley A4 Pacific.
Ulrich has the first half, although it should be checked carefully in Molsheim records whether the engine was originally specified and designed for prospective railcar use, with the Royale being ‘sized to fit’ as an opportunity, as I understood the story to actually be. (Naturally the engine was a ‘good fit’ for the high-speed streamlined railcars that would follow later, as I suspect would be the V16 steam motor Bugatti worked on at one point…)
(Incidentally de Dietrich developed a sophisticated steam plant for automobiles and built at least one complete installation using a Bugatti chassis for road testing – we have found and now published the archive of detail drawings, so with a little work you could reproduce one for a better-than-Doble experience.)
Now what about the other way? That’s the real meat of the question.
I wish I could pose the question of dirigible engines in successful main-line diesel-electric locomotives … but the engines concerned are as I recall only adapted from lightweight airship construction, not actually ‘flyable’ versions. It does make a good story, though, and I suspect Kettering was mindful of at least some details of those engines when working on the ideas that would become the 201.
Yes, It was Richard Dilworth… Mr. Dilworth was EMD’s cheif designer. He did not like either the BL1 or BL2 neither need the sales or the mechanical departments… Looking at the sales records neither did the railroads.
His “ugly duckling” GP7 turned into a swan in the sales department.
Obviously Mr. Dilworth knew what he was doing. The fact that the GP7 was an ugly duckling is exactly what made it a hit. A machine that’s simple and reliable is always better in my opinion.
Keeping with the “Geep” theme, in what year did EMD build its final GP60 s
That’s related … but not directly… to the second one.
The first one was the Bugatti that Ulrich was discussing.
Now what rail vehicle was particularly designed for a luxury-car engine? The Stout Scarab had Ford engines, but those were not luxury. The engine in question had as many cylinders as a B&O W-1.
Speaking of GP60Ms, Conrail cancelled an order for what locomotive to order those GP60s? Extra points if you know why they ordered GP60s then… and why the order was for 26.
I was actually thinking more about the sort of thing Muttley would say: “Sassafrassarattendratten&$#*@&$…” … but apparently they figured out how to get performance out of them in Indianapolis. As far as I know there was little actually wrong with them that wasn’t equally wrong for more ‘successful’ NYC modern steam in the ‘new’ post-1948 reality.
Just looking for the name. The original NYC 2-8-4s, of course, were Berkshires.
While we’re on this: everyone knows that the famous NYC 4-8-4s were named Niagaras. But there was an earlier 4-8-4, a strangely conceived high-pressure ‘freight-only’ one, the H S-1a (yes Virginia, there’s a space in the cab lettering). What name did NYC give that locomotive type ‘officially’ at the time?
OK, still not entirely convinced I’ve got it, but here I go again.
If I’ve correctly taken the B&O W-1 hint, (now that would have been a real piece of kit, had it ever been built!!), I saying that the engine in question is a Besler Brothers adapted Doble steam car engine used in The New York, New Haven and Hartford’s Streamliner No. 9610, “The Blue Goose.”
“But there was an earlier 4-8-4, a strangely conceived high-pressure ‘freight-only’ one, the H S-1a (yes Virginia, there’s a space in the cab lettering). What name did NYC give that locomotive type ‘officially’ at the time?”
The Besler railcars had the same number of cylinders as ONE of the W-1’s engines.
And Doble and the Beslers in their wildest moments would not have built a car with… well, really with more than two cylinders, which they figured quite good enough for ‘scalded ape’ acceleration without a multiple-gear transmission. I still can’t quite figure out the Bugatti point in using all the cylinders they seem to have been tinkering with; the de Dietrich system in 1938 was far less complecticated but certainly got the job done.
The engine in the ‘rail vehicle’ in question was used in some of the most undeniably classic cars built. Not esoteric ones, either.
And the company that built the vehicle (and hoped to sell many of them) was not a household name in passenger transport, but very familiar for a different kind of transport equipment…
Certainly wasn’t a failure (yet) when they gave it its official name. Which is a name just as good as ‘Mohawk’ or ‘Hudson’.
Much of the ‘failure’ of this engine was the implicit idea that high fuel economy and three-cylinder power were the ‘future’ of freight service. Not higher speed, not lower capital cost, not better or lower maintenance… and if crews didn’t like that huge baleful dial with 850 staring them in the face, they could suck it and see; no, there was no likelihood something like that would lead to passive-aggressive sabotage or worse like in England, was there?
A mere 3 or 4 years later this might have been built with better running gear, slightly taller drivers and modern balancing, and used for things like M&E where its advantages might mean more. But as it stood you had an awful lot of maintenance and an awful lot of tinkering, very similar to me like PRR designing the Q1 as “5/4 of an M1”, for relatively little extra in usable, reliable power.
The thing seems to have run in hump service reliably well (of course with the wacky complications removed) – just no point in making more instead of improving Mohawks. The fundamental idea of a better 4-8-4 was of course ‘nailed’ 15 years later…
I don´t think this is the answer, but the Waggonfabrik Wismar in Germany built a railcar with a Ford Model A engines at each end, also using an automotive gearbox.
