note: unusual ‘whale back-style’ or, to others, it was called a ‘turtle-back’ (?) tender.
These ‘Santa Fe’ Class engines were numbered 3000 to 3009 and built at Santa Fe Shops in Topeka, Kansas in 1911.
In today’s terminology, you could say they were ‘kit-bashed’ using existing 2-10-2 locomotives, although thses engines were’ decopod’ style they were built on chassis that were 2-10-0 from the builder. [They had been built originally by Baldwin Locomotive Wrks. (nee: Burnham, Williams & Co) to be modified at the Santa Fe Shops with addition of 2 wheel trailing truck]. Baldwin supplying the 'low pressure units for the conversion.
Over their ‘life’ this class of some 87 #9000 numbered engines were ‘reworked’ ny shop forces to try and improve their persormance.
In the end, the 10 #3000 engines were unsuccessful, and were reworked in 20 engines of 2-10-2 wheel arrangement.
For those of you who are a fan of these poor misgotten creatures, there is ONE known source of video of the Santa Fe 2-10-10-2’s- only one known to exist. Is was the star of Peril’s of Pauline serial from 1915 and featured in the episode, The Leap From The Watertower. These were 10-15 minute episodes. A DVD of the episode is available. Enjoy!
Sam, it’s very clear both in the margin of one picture and in the sign depicted in another that it’s 1911. If that didn’t give it away, women did not dress that way in 1944.
Of course, scrolling down past the last of the pictures gives you a long, full discussion of the situation, including what happened after 1918. In that discussion is a link to a very good picture of 3751 taken in 1991, not 1955 – it wasn’t dated right either.
Those were yet a different take on a ‘sectional’ boiler. The Jacobs-Shupert people were referring to the ‘sections’ of the firebox that were riveted together to resemble an old hot-water radiator.
Baldwin’s sectional boiler, sometimes flexibly ‘hinged’ as NDG indicates, was another thing altogether. Here is the famed Catskill Archive Web version of the 1912 Baldwin explanation – see the very detailed drawings:
The rear section was the ‘boiler’ proper: the part forward of the hinge had other functions, including feedwater heating. Baldwin had at least two ways of providing the ‘hinge’ between barrel sections (and all the associated steam and water piping).
Note that the actual contribution of radiant section (firebox and chamber) and of good circulation was greatly underestimated in these designs, as in Henderson’s multiplex locomotives. Compare this with the contemporary designs for the PRR’s K29 and K4 Pacifics and E6s Atlantic, and Woodard’s large fireboxes and grate areas not too much later. Some of the basic idea of the Baldwin sectional was realized in the Franco-Crosti experimentals … not much more successfully.
The 2-10-10-2’s were one of the reasons that Santa Fe soured on articulateds and stuck to rigid-framed steam locomotives except for some N&W Y-3’s in WW2.
Alfred Bruce, Director of Steam Locomotive Engineering at American Locomotive Company ALCO comments that the first Mallet compound articulated engines were constructed in the United States in 1903 and 1904 by ALCO for the Baltimore & Ohio. This was 16 years after the European railroads which developed and used the Mallet compounds in considerable quantity.
Baldwin Locomotive Company built its first Mallet compound in 1906 as a 2-6-6-2 for the Great Northern Railway as a road engine. The 2-6-6-2 was by far the most built articulated engine in American railroad history. So popular that it was built until the end of steam locomotive construction in 1949 when C&O 1304 was constructed new by Baldwin. C&O 1304 is currently under restoration by Western Maryland Senic Railroad today.
Baldwin followed this design with the 2-8-8-2 for the Southern Pacific in 1909. This was also to prove to be another extremely popular locomotive wheel type. Not to be outdone with these successes and the articulated compound Mallet craze, Baldwin built for the Erie Railroad in 1914 several triplex engines. The infamous 2-8-8-8-2 type 6 cylinder tank locomotives of which only 3 were ever built.
In the midst of this Mallet compound craze in America the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe jumped in with both feet in 1909 with the construction of “Prairie Mallets” from Baldwin of which were two 4-4-6-2 passenger compounds and two 2-8-8-2 helper compounds. Santa Fe touted the long rigid boiler, 73 inch drivered speedsters as the “largest and most powerful passenger locomotives in existance.” First numbered ATSF 1300-1301 this was later changed to ATSF 1398-1399.
I believe that George Henderson actually did apply for patents on the quadruplex and quintuplex locomotive designs. I would surmise that they would have run out of steam before they could move much further than their own length.
Also note that Santa Fe’s Big 3 all fell to the FT and its successors.
Not directly relevant to this thread, but potentially interesting: Bruce goes on (in The Steam Locomotive in America) to describe the ‘revolution’ in articulated design that started at Baldwin in the very early Thirties – the use of the simple articulated as a high-speed locomotive. A very small amount of this made it into Wiener – which is one reason we need a ‘second edition’ of Articulated Locomotives so badly – and Bruce takes credit for one very important development in this (the control of the movement of the forward engine so that vertical accommodation is in the equalization and not via vertical motion at the ‘hinge’). This came as something of a surprise to the N&W designers who had implicitly included this in the A several years earlier … but it is certainly true that it was a critical reason for the success of Challengers in so many places.
Note that the use of many of the early six-coupled high-speed articulateds followed the premise of minimizing augment. Here was ATSF with a locomotive only marginally smaller than a 2-6-6-4 but with higher drivers than such a locomotive could practically use, and by the time it became clear that high-speed balancing of eight-coupled locomotives had arrived, the need for ‘fast articulated power’ had shifted to diesel-electric units.
Brasher also mentions something I had not realized before – Arizona had a 70-car train limit through the period we are considering, so any train pulled by a large articulated would have to be broken and hauled by appropriate numbers of ‘rightsized’ power anyway. With Raton being largely passenger- and grain- only after 1907, much of the rationale for sustained high power out of a single engine that, say, made the SP cab-forwards so necessary was not as prominent.
In Bud Jeffries “N&W Giant of Steam” he writes of the demise of the proposed Y7, that in 1937 federal legislation was introduced to limit train length to seventy cars leaving no need for a locomotive of this capacity.
I sometimes wonder about Baldwin and their direction concerning articulated compound locomotives. Their solution to providing steam to all four cylinders when starting was far inferior to the one ALCO developed. Did Baldwin decide that they weren’t going to pay to use the ALCO system and just drop out of the “Mallet” game? Or, did they (along with most other RR’s) not want to spend the money and time to develop the breed and went the cheaper route with the “Simple” articulated? Which brings us right back to the car limit theory.
Perhaps the Arizona 70 car train length limit partially explains why the three cylinder 4-10-2 Southern Pacific type supposedly found a home on the Sunset Route after proving a bit hard on the curvature of the Donner Pass route and after development of the Cab Forward (though they also were used in the San Joaquin Valley to some degree also).
…check out that LFM main driver replacement! Note the very light and open ‘spoke’ structure, combined with so large an external counterweight. I’d like to see a balance book or hear a detailed explanation of how SP rebalanced these engines in the ‘modern age’…
I snipped the reference to the Y7, but to me the most important and intriguing point is that, after the Federal union-kissup train-length boondoggle was dead, the N&W never built so much as a prototype of the Y7, even though subsequently dropping a great deal on fairly unworkable turbine experimentation. Part of this is something only N&W did with compound Mallets, that imho could have been taken further with little additional difficulty.
I don’t think the effectiveness of a starting simpling system is of much practical importance in the economic advantage of simple over compound in high-speed service. Baldwin’s system was – I think – supposed to give better control over producing proportional effort from LP and HP when the intercepting valve was open – no one just feeds steam indiscriminately to all four cylinders at starting and ‘hopes for the best’ that the more lightly loaded forward LP engine isn’t going to slip like crazy.
The 4-10-2 “Southern Pacific” Type was reportedly built first for the Union Pacific as the “Overland” type - but it was the SP order that gave the name to the type that stuck - go figure! Union Pacific did get its own named type with the 4-12-2.
I saw the SP 5021 when it was in the Southern Pacific freight yard back in 1967 and appeared to be fairly close to operational. Oddly it was given to the local railway historical chapter who kept it “out of the way” in the SP rail yard. To my young eyes it looked very operational - albeit with a beautifully chrome plated throttle lever which seemed very loving of whoever took the time to chrome it.
Since then like most park engines the outdoor storage has taken its toll on SP 5021 - the last survivor.
Regarding the LFM - UNIVERSAL center driver, it would appear as an attempt to deal with the inherent trouble with 5 coupled axle designs and 63 inch drive wheels common to the Texas & Pacific 600 2-10-4. The balance issues of these small wheels were manifold. Alfred Bruce has the photo of SP 5000 the prototype engine showing a spoked center driver with a truely massive half circle counterweight.
It would be easy to assume the LFM - UNIVERSAL driver is an addition in an effort to increase the low operational speed designed into SP 5021 or was it rather really just a drive wheel structural problem.
The SP 5000 engines were three cylinder locomotives so the addition of the UNIVERSAL drive setup with three rods would not have been to “dynamicly balance” the engine - three cylinder drive was already fairly well balanced.
The 2-10-4 "Texas"designs were two cylinder and the 4-10-2 “Southern Pacific” types
Union Pacific “Overland” 4-10-2 in three cylinder configuration - third cylinder can be seen below flattened lower edge of smokebox - 63 inch drivers equal to the UP TTT 2-10-2 class…
Union Pacifice “Overland” 4-10-2 after conversion to two cylinders - enormous cylinders and cylinder casings…
Union Pacific “TTT” 2-10-2 for comparison purposes…
Union Pacific “Overland” 4-10-2 builder’s photo…
My pair of sixes beats your pair of fives - Union Pacific “Union Pacific” 4-12-2 aka a “Nine” - a big notch up from the “Overland” 4-10-2…
Overmod, Dr D, et al, I learn a lot from your posts and always enjoy them. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Thereupon hangs the tale. The 5000s had divided drive, with the inside cylinder angled down so the main would clear the first axle and driving on a cranked second axle using lower stroke (28" vs 32") So there is less need for rotating or recip balance in the outside mains … but it and cross balance will be at weird angles. So I suspect that the large outside counterweights are more large cored areas in the driver castings, with some of the internal space not actually weighted. It’s the rod inertia, not the ‘balancing’, that causes most of the pin and bushing problems.
Bruce said (p 301) “… the use of three cylinders permitted the power to be delivered directly to two driving axles with good balancing conditions in the 63-in driving wheels. The outside piston and main rods were unusually long but produced no ill effects”.
We should keep in mind here that this is with 25" cylinders vs the 27" for the Nines,with comparatively low pressure (225#) so the weight of the longer rods was unlikely to be “that much” of an issue. If anything it would
I agree with you wholeheartedly! The SP 5021 4-10-2 when I saw it was in the SP yard like Ron Ziel said in his Twilight of Steam glad to hear it found a home at the fair grounds.
Regarding the Southern Pacific 5021 4-10-2, - that both it and Union Pacific 9000 4-12-2 constitute a remarkable historic pair of locomotives. Unlike any other American mainline freight engines. Truely titans of their age that served long and noble histories in the West, and unlike many more modern steam power. These three cylinder giants went a good 30 years. These were titans of steam power!
And to think both reside in Southern California “land of fruits and nuts.” Why I have only to travel from Pamona and to the Fairgrounds to visit the greatest and to regard the entire rail history we have been so heroicly discussing.
I did also hear, that Union Pacific put so many years of successful maintaince into the UP 9000 4-12-2s that they worked out an “anti friction” bearing set up for the Gresley Congegated Valve Gear that worked the center cylinders - thus much improving the speed and performance of the large six drivered engines. Apparently they also had “lateral control” on the first and sixth axle that allowed over 2" of deflection of the drive wheel sets “side to side” for going thru curves and yard switches - which is in itself remarkable when you think of those massive drive rods deflecting across that length. So also is the 60mph speeds Union Pacific regularly achieved in manafest freight operation with an entire fleet of UP 9000s - of over 90 engines. UP ran them enthusiastically for a 30 years.
I would say the UP had a winner and it would be nice to see the railroad restore the remaining UP 9000. Sometimes the oldest&nbs
