Was the Santa Fe 4-8-4 Northern a freight puller only, or did it also do passenger service ?. If so, what type of passenger cars did it pull ?.
Thanks in advance.
Tracklayer
The Santa Fe 4-8-4’s were ideally passeneger locomotives, and were delivered for this primary purpose. But of course they also pulled freight.
Common assignments included the California Limited, Grand Canyon, Chief, Scout, and many other Santa Fe trains.
In the later years many were used as extra power for San Diegans, and often used on the Del Mar trains (special trains for passengers going to the Del Mar horse track near the San Diegan line).
Passenger cars ranged from heavyweights to streamline cars.
Some 4-8-4s were even equipped with ATS (Automatic Train Stop) equipment so they would be allowed to travel at speeds in excess of 79 mph.
Hope this helps and doesn’t confuse you even more.
So are you in N-scale looking for something for your Bachmann 4-8-4 Northern to do? [:D]
As Southwest Chief said… They pulled everything that was around in their era. Even after the deisels took most of the work they did a few stints on helper service (when the 2-10-2s were unavailable) so one could have found them leading a set of E6s on the point of a crack passenger train up the Raton. The book “Santa Fe’s Early Diesel Daze” has some exellent photos of the 4-8-4s on the point of the Chief and in other duties.
Actually, I just wanted to settle an arguement between me and a friend of mine that has one in HO. He said that 4-8-4s only pulled freight, while I kind of figured it pulled both.
Tracklayer
In fact, the impetus for designing and building bigger, more powerful locos, on most railroads, was expressly for the purpose of getting the longer, heavier passenger trains down the tracks on time. Freight could always get another helper, but it was not in keeping with the image of a modern, powerful, and competitive railroad to have several smaller (older) engines at the head of a “limited” where business folks could see how you were struggling. The best foot forward from Pacifics was up to Hudsons for the NYC, for example. Later, even the Hudsons could not keep up to the demand to move lots of people on one single train, so the Niagaras came along.
And so on.
You won this one without breaking a sweat. [8D]
As for keeping up appearences - and please excuse me for going off topic for a moment, but I have a friend that’s in the roofing business. As long as he ran around in his old beat up truck, business was slow because people took it for granite that he must be lousy and wasn’t getting that many jobs, so he went out and bought a new heavy duty truck and had new magnetic signs made up for it, and within a couple of months, he was so busy he had to hire a second work crew. So it’s like you said selector, appearence has a lot to do with it.
I guess if railroads ran around in old beat up locos, people might get the wrong idea.
If you look successful, a lot of times you will be…
Tracklayer
THE Santa Fe Northern’s were designed for Passenger Service as were the predessor 4-8-2’s. They pulled freight in the motive pool mostly during the last day’s of Steam.
Santa Fe’s Freight steam engine’s were primarily 2-8-2 Mikados and 2-10-2 ‘Big Mike’s’ Their 63" wheels gave them traction.
The ATSF 4-8-4 on display at Kingman, AZ, has 80 inch drivers, which are great for rolling heavy passenger trains at speed but rather less desirable for handling freight on the grades of northern Arizona. A true dual service loco would probably have had 72 inch or so drivers, while all but a handful of pure freight haulers would have had 69 inch or smaller drivers. (The NYC locos were something of an abberation, but comparing profiles of the NYC and ATSF is like comparing a pancake to a roller coaster.)
Of course, the 70 inch drivered N&W J routinely rolled the heaviest consists on the line at 90 MPH, but that was a Roanoke engine.
I was at that old 4-8-4 11 months ago. What a monster! Good thing it is in the desert where it will corrode less quickly over time.
Yes the #3759 is in Kingman. It is the sister engine of #3751 of fantrip fame. The #3759 was the engine that pulled the farewell to Santa Fe steam in California in February 1955. I’ve got an HO Broadway Limited Northern for my Fast Mail train numbered 3759 to remember her by. [;)]