I have a question and I am NOT (I repeat…NOT) trying to start any trouble here!
I really don’t know much about the Pennsy, but I’m just curious why it is considered the world standard when roads like Canadian Pacific and Union Pacific have been around longer and are still going strong? Were they innovators? Were they more profitable? Better on time performance? What was it that made Pennsy so special?
(just asking a question…)
I don’t know much about them either, but yes. They posted a dividend for their shareholders for over a hundred years in a row, where the largest company on the planet at one point, and also at some point had a larger budget than the federal government.
In just one day on Pennsy’s 4-track mainline across Pennsylvania one could witness the passing of over 50 named passenger trains in the 50s… interspersed among 100 regular freights and coal drags.
Pennsy owned (and built most of) over 10,000 steam locomotives.
When Pennsy liked a freight car design (like the H21a hopper), they built 30,000 of them.
When Pennsy decided it liked the I1 class 2-8-0, it built or bought 598 of them.
Until its death in 1968 Pennsy owned 10% of the freight cars in revenue service across North America.
Pennsy bought and cleared dozens of blocks in midtown Manhatten and proceeded to build a 2-block-wide station and tunnels under the Hudson River… before 1910.
Pennsy operated the most electrified trackage in North America.
Pennsy owned the busiest commuter railroad in the world (the Long Island Rail Road).
Pennsy designed and built the GG1 and the K4.
Pennsy operated the first all-steel passenger fleet.
Pennsy operated over 10,000 route miles in the era before the mega-merger.
Pennsy’s Enola Yard (across from Harrisburg) was the world’s largest classification yard. Conway Yard, west of Pittsburgh, was the nation’s largest automated hump yard.
Pennsy was a pioneer in piggyback service, and started TTX Corp.
By the way, Pennsy pre-dates the UP and CP by a wide margin - 1848. It was, of course, merged out of existance in 1968.
Pennsy wasn’t the standard other railroads went by. Pennsy was its own standard. For example, the 573 L1s class 2-8-2s, 598 I1s class 2-10-0s, and 475 K4s class 4-6-2s shared identical boilers. PRR standardized everything… to itself.
Even today, the Northeast Corridor, America’s only high-speed rail network, is a vestage of Pennsy. Most of it was constructed 100 years ago! Back then, 4-4-0s and 4-4-2s routinely hit 100 mph on the Corridor.
Need
WOW! I had no idea they were THAT big! (or that old) Thanks for the info![tup]
Few q’s to Dave and other Pennsy fans:
can somebody explain why 4-track main was needed? From where it run? Was todays NEC from Wash. to NYC all PRR main?
so, those HO P2K Heritage 2-8-8-2 are accurate models of real PRR locos? Also USRA 0-6-0?
what is the general impression on Spectrum PRR K4 HO model?
So, 2-10-0 or 2-8-2 plastic model od PRR locos was NEVER produced to this day?!
Also, if somebody has link to this reefer PDF article… [tup]
Answers in italics above.
Sorry Dave, but the PRR did receive about 20 USRA 0-6-0’s and if remember without looking at my Pennsy Power II book, I think they were class B-28.
They PRR also received 5 or 6 USRA Mikes and they were class L2 and spent their days on the GR&I.
Rick
Oops!!! Sometimes I forget about Lines West.
PRR owned 30 of the superheated USRA 0-6-0, class B28s. They were certainly overshadowed by the B6 variants, of which over 350 were built. The USRA-types spent most of their lives west of Pittsburgh. After WWII, a few made it back east to the Wilmington area, but were rarely used and off the roster by the early 50s.
So yes, you’re correct. The Pennsy did have some USRA 0-6-0s. But PRR owned and operated over 900 0-6-0s of various designs, of which the USRA type totalled only 30. A much more representative Pennsy switcher is the Belpaire-fireboxed B6sb 0-6-0 from Bowser.
The Pennsy also owned USRA 2-10-2’s (class N2?) and leased RDG T-1 4-8-4’s in the mid 50’s.
Older brass HO Pennsy models are usually fairly reasonable on E-Bay.
Dave H.
True! But all the N2 2-10-2s were rebuilt prior to WWII with Belpaire fireboxes and PRR-style smokebox fronts. So while the frames, boilers, and valve gear were USRA, the N2 looked Pennsy:
The PRR was also a collosal bureaucracy, and its entrenched management style was one of the factors in the failure of the Penn Central…
They also weren’t widely known for customer service. The Alphabet Route, a patchwork of 5 railroads between New York and Chicago, of which the Western Maryland was a part, could move freight faster and more efficiently than the PRR, often making a point to point delivery in the same time it took PRR to classify a car in one yard.
Sorry to be the turd in the punch bowl!
Lee
So the L1, I1, and K4 all shared a common boiler? So the GHQ kit would be a good starting point for any one of these locos?
Yes and no… You’ll have to check the location of domes, etc. Also, the firebox length varied slightly.
But Max used the GHQ kit for his I1sa 2-10-0 with the stock firebox and cab. He did need to relocate the sand dome.
Actually, the I1 was a larger boiler than the K4 and L1, and was shared with the two K5’s. The H8, H9, H10, G5 and E6 also shared a common boiler. I am not sure where the M1 boiler fits in with the all of these.
Rick
True 'nuff! PRR was deeply mired in too many layers of management. Also, because it had been such a corporate success for so long, it insisted upon paying stockholder dividends at the expense of maintenance and reinvestment. Once upon a time, Pennsy was the epitome of innovation. By the 1950s it was a slow beast with cancer. Yes, it did spawn TTX, but that was too little too late to save the giant. Loss of passenger traffic to airlines, LCL freight to highways, and loss of demand for coal was a 1-2-3 punch for the Pennsy.
By the 60s, the lack of re-investment in infrastucture was obvious. Tracks were weed-grown and locomotives were failing. It viewed merger with the New York Central as its only hope for survival. Instead, the merger hastened its death.
She was great in her heyday, almost without equal on the planet. But WWII ran her into the ground, and she never really got up again. The bureaucratic lethargy and corporate short-sightedness saw to that.
Still, we mourn the Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad. Nothing like it in the world…!
On this thread, we also have indications of something else the PRR (and it’s fans) is famous for: hubris. [:)] Hang out at The Station Inn in Cresson, PA sometime and you’ll see what I’m talking about. [;)]
Dave V.,
The PRR did have more electrified milage than anyone, but it was based on the New Haven’s AC high voltage practices and experience (since 1907).
The PRR could not come up with a satisfactory electric loco design until they borrowed some New Haven EP-3’s with their 2-C+C-2 wheel arrangment. Oddly enough, that’s the same wheel arrangment of the GG-1. Hmm…
The PRR was not a TOFC pioneer. They were, in fact, a latecomer. The Chicago Great Western started modern TOFC service in 1937. The New Haven sent observers to the CGW to see what it was all about, and within mere months started their own TOFC service (“Trailiner”) also in 1937 based on CGW patented practices. CGW stopped TOFC service, and then restarted it the next year. The NH, however, was the first RR dedicated to TOFC in the USA, and was the #1 TOFC RR until the SP got into it in 1953. PRR’s TrucTrain service didn’t start until 1955…almost 20 years after the CGW and the NH.
The NEC’s only true “high speed” operation (over 125 mph) takes place on former New Haven RR tracks in Mass. and Rhode Island.
All this reminds me of a trip I took to Steamtown in 2006. The backshop tour’s quide (a Park Ranger) was talking about the K-4 that was undergoing restoration at the time. He said, “Do you know why the PRR had so many K-4’s and kept making and using them for so long? It’s because every time they tried to invent something to replace them, it didn’t work.”
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
L:
Yes, they were big. Big big big. If you model practically any era besides the very early days or the(somewhat poorer) years since the keystones started fading, you need PRR cars, especially if you’re modeling the East. This includes hoppers. I’m not sure how much PA coal made it south and west, but it certainly went all over the Northeast. I think it’s hard for us, in this oil and electrically-powered age, to realize just how many single or few-car shipments of coal went to factories “back in the day”.
d:
25 MPH isn’t too bad as drag-freight engines of that era go, of course (some of the compound mallets were real creepers), and the upgraded I1sa’s could go faster, 35-40 mph. I understand the ride was rough.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the N1 2-10-2’s were a lot slower than the I1’s.
An article dealing with kitbashing an (N Scale) L1s using the Minitrix K4s shell and Atlas 2-8-2 frame was written up in [RMC}(?) sometime during the 1970s. I encountered one of these things gathering dust on a layout in the San Diego area sometime during the '80s. If you applied the three-foot rule it looked real good; the rail at this particular layout said that the Atlas mechanism, however, was a real dog - all steamers and most diesels beyond the Con-Cor/Sekisui/Kato PA were dogs in those heady days of yesteryear - and I don’t think that it was ever a popular conversion among N Scalers.
As Dave V. has said, if you want it you need to figure out how to create it because you ain’t likely to gitit from the manufacturers. Of course the unique thing about Pennsy is the Belpaire firebox, therefore it seems to me that if one could create a satisfactory - observe that word; I did not say perfect although that should be our aspiration - master then one could then cast duplicates in a silicon rubber mold. My experience with this is limited but most of that has been that duplicated parts have simply not been needed but I don’t find the process particularly difficult nor tedious if you pay attention to what you are doing. RTV/resin casting techniques have been written up in the press frequently over the course of the last twenty years or so.
ADDENDUM:
Paul3, Dave V. did not state that Pennsy had more electrified mileage than anyone else; what he did say was that Pennsy had more electrified trackage than anyone else. Picky-Picky-Picky but there is a difference.
Nope, nope, nope! Not gonna do it! Not gonna get in an argument! Nope! Nope![:-^]
…except to correct you on a minor point. TrucTrain service began in 1954, not 1955.[swg]
My love for the Pennsy flows not from the many superlatives one can attach to it.
I grew up on Long Island, a long-time Pennsy ward and built to PRR standards (i.e., position light signals and keystones everywhere) and have family in Lancaster, PA. I also went to Penn State near the PRR Middle Division, Bald Eagle Branch, and L&T Secondary.
My exposure to steam was primarily during our annual pilgramage to Strasburg, PA where PRR 1223 and 7002 ran regularly, or to the East Broad Top, which met the PRR at Mount Union, PA. I also spent loads of time at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
So to me, real trains were Brunswick Green and had keystones on them![:)]
No 2-10-0s produced, even in N scale ?