If you google 2-2-0, you will find a lot of interesting early steam engines from different countries, and strange photos like this:
[C][:O]
That’s almost certainly a converted 4-4-0, probably one of the pre-1850 or so engines with the four-wheel lead truck awkwardly under the cylinders instead of the Mason design with the wheels before and behind. That’s a perfectly normal main rod; what’s unusual is the longer piston rod and crosshead guide that allow drive on what was previously the ‘rear’ of the two axles; see the comparable arrangement on the forward engine of a PRR T1 that allows all four main rods to be common.
Interesting that with the wheels at the ‘corners’ the thing would ride as well as a Pullman car, and there’s plenty of deep firebox and boiler capacity for that pair of little long-stroke cylinders… balance those drivers well (and compensate somehow for the effect of surge) and it should show a surprising turn of speed.
Might need a better crosshead and crosshead-lubrication design, though!
Interesting Overmod, something I did not know. Converted from a 4-4-0 of very early design.
Some more food for thought just to remind us how far things railroading have been destroyed and removed from everyday life.
- Perhaps if you strolled deep into the woods of the Granite State you could find an old timer in a checkered shirt who can relate.
- A Lackawanna advert without Phoebe, extolling the virtues of their bread and butter … Freight! Yet another road needlessly wiped out of existence. Long Live the Lackawanna!
- “Keeping passengers in good humour and enhancing prestige”
Obviously boosters were very good!
- Alco and the mighty 3 cylinder steam locomotive! Just another fading memory of a great technology.
- Lima! Never gave up… always believed in steam… where are you Lima, where are you?
Where most useful things go…
http://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/2016/04/lima-oh-locomotive-works.html
…to oblivion in the name of progress.
So to our friends at Alco:
Alco_remains by Edmund, on Flickr
The building I circled in blue is, as far as I can tell, the only remaining structure.
Alco_site5 by Edmund, on Flickr
Presently occupied by a steel sales service. The remaining property is now a casino [+o(].
At least the distinctive “Cross” of the Baldwin Office Building, eddystone, Pennsylvania, still exists.
http://wikimapia.org/21018966/Baldwin-Tower-Office-Building
Anyone know the status of the EMD property at La Grange?
Regards, Ed
GMD London Ontario …shown is the listing for the property.
Typical GMD builders plate (mounted on wall panel).
Collection of Al Howlett
Apparently it is currently a greeting card and party balloons business.
Aerial photo showing property for sale. General Dynamics property to left.
CPR Galt Sub. main line at bottom including GMD test track former passing track.
Note: Most in-plant trackage dismantled by OSR.
Montreal Locomotive Works.
C. 1947. Click to Enlarge.
http://archivesdemontreal.com/greffe/vues-aeriennes-archives/jpeg/VM97-3_7P8-48.jpg
More Classic Days photos maybe worth talking about.
- The Baltimore and Ohio before the Capitol Limited, famous salads and an equally famous Monopoly square.
- Now this is how you do street running… big wide right of way and seperate lanes for street traffic … Irontown, Ohio
- Lot of talk on this Forum about Sunnyside Yard lately… so here’s a great aerial view.
- Conrail in its baby years, wearing baby blue and as the saying goes “using it up”. Pretty darn skimpy on the graphics … a simple small CR, common in its early days.
- UP Turbine… as stunning as the S1…
Look at all those axles and the length!
- Norfolk and Western and REA in an iconic scene that us Classics dudes sadly
miss… " don’t know what you got 'till it’s gone"
Thanks for fixing the spelling.
Ask BaltACD about salads, and ever so much more. His father oversaw the service for many years, and if you like Southern-type home cooking there was said to be no railroad that did better.
You do realize that in your picture of the UP turbine, you have less than half the locomotive visible? Each half was only 2500 nominal horsepower (I think this was at least in part condenser-limited) and while they could be operated separately you’d normally find them together doing the work of a good large 4-8-4.
There really aren’t “that” many axles under there; the wheel arrangement is not far different from that of, say, a GG1 if you put tankage between the underframes. (Note that later developments went to span-bolstered trucks, both for steam and gas turbines, which could lower the overall length… the N&W TE-1 was monstrously long for 4500hp but nowhere near what turbines 1 and 2 showed when coupled)
Much of the length involves those condensers – and they were probably too small for many requirements on the UP system. For something more amusing, see if you can find a picture of the actual steam turbine used in one … and compare its size to the exhaust plenum provided for it!
I continue hoping, more and more dimly, that someone took notes on how the bugs in these locomotives were worked out during their WWII service on GN, and that the notes will come to light. These were interesting and seemingly well-designed locomotives, and when built were sensible alternatives to early diesels.
There are books that could be written about the inability of REA to ‘switch paradigms’ and survive against UPS in the post-passenger-train world… in fact, I think there have been.&nb
Yup, fixed the spelling. I thought much the same about the number of axles, not that many but it just goes on and on. REA RIP, great logo and brand. Maybe in some alternative universe it’s still flourishing and all is well. Thanks for the reply and the discussion.
“Capital” vs. “Capitol.”
A lot of Americans get that one wrong too!
“Too big to fail.” As far as I’m concerned there’s a corollary to that phrase…
“Too big to fail can also mean too big to succeed.” Think about it.
REA could have (and should have) evolved into a door-to-door intermodal delivery subsiduary. Sort of like what CNTL does now, but for all the railroads.
Ask the big old GM about being too big to fail…
That’s even funnier than you may know! [;)] The Linndale roundhouse property became in part the world headquarters of the American Greetings greeting card company! [(-D]
Now that you mention it, I wonder if that old steam dodge of slanting the board in the darkroom has been used on that picture. You know how some old pictures of articulated have those egg-shaped wheels… ?
We could take some measurements and see.
Strangely, their CNJ map shows neither the L&NE nor the L&HR … wasn’t the latter a key part of the Reading Combine? I wonder why? I also wonder what the ‘most direct route to Chicago’ consisted of in the late 1860s … handover to the Philadelphia and Erie? Someone should trace this out and map it!
Interesting that out of all the photos I’ve seen taken of the Aldene station, this site has the first one that indicates where the Garden State Parkway crosses.
It’s hard to imagine the ‘net savings’ from that simple little ramp up to the LV. Remember that Jersey Central had an enormous four-track bridge across Newark Bay (see the post August 17th) … no need for it any more. C’paw and E’port … don’t need them much, either.
Pity parent B&O got kicked out of Penn Station before the days of the Bullet… might have been interesting to see the timing by way of the two Penn Stations, and later via the Aldene Connection if it had lasted that long …
It would never have paid.
Look at the history of small intermodal ramp service (a thread spun at some length over on the MR forum) for some of the reasons why not.
REA “worked” as long as it did because most of the package arrivals were already ‘bulk-broken’ and highly LCL, coming straight off the local (or express) train to storage, then delivery, in the closed package vans reasonably common to all the stations. (I wince for the tires in some of the published pictures of REA vans backed up across team tracks for ease of access!)
For intermodal, you would need some means of either handling swap-bodies or parking cuts of flats with loads … and the chassis and trucks to handle them. No benefit whatsoever in adding a fancy intermodal anything, as it already comes off the baggage car or RPO or out of the vestibule directly.
And let’s look at what handles the putative REA trailer or container when it gets to East Pudknock … not only does it need to reside on its ‘new mode’ chassis; it needs some sort of specialized truck to pull it. Perhaps even specialized yard-tractor equipment like a hydraulic fifth wheel or near-zero-turn steering. Which is essentially worthless… decidedly unlike a parcel van… at any time there isn’t an intermodal load (inherently a very large fraction of a container or van load) to be drayed.
And this begs an even further question: how is the bulk in the van or container subsequently broken, and what time does it save doing that? There wasn’t, and in most cases still isn’t, enough business in most of these little towns to justify even 20’ units on the legacy service frequency. So you wind up with the idea of intermodal to distribution centers, where the bulk is broken and the l
[quote user=“Penny Trains”]
Where most useful things go…
http://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/2016/04/lima-oh-locomotive-works.html
…to oblivion in the name of progress.
[/quote
I should have said something earlier, but those “before-and-after” shots are so heartbreaking I just don’t have the words.
Especially when I think of the works of absolute genius that came out of the Lima Locomotive Works! It’s like finding Michaelangelo’s studio intact and then demolishing it for a disco! Well, almost.
Ah, what can you do? Big antiques like “The Locomotive,” that’s what Lima residents called the shops, have to earn their keep in one way or another or they just don’t stay around very long.
Might have made a helluva “wedding factory.” Or something.
You want heartbreaking, I’ll give you heartbreaking – Livio Dante Porta setting foot in the works near the beginning of the ACE project and saying ‘gentlemen, remove your hats, we are standing on holy ground’.
Would that it could have been different.
Ah yes, Maestro Livio Dante Porta, a genius himself and a true Spanish gentleman of the old school. (OK, I know he was Argentine, but you know what I mean.)