Also, if my memory is correct, Penn Station itself had station steam only on a few storage tracks west of the station, mostly in the open area. Or possibly I just never saw steam elsewhere used? Sunnyside yard had plenty of tracks equipped to supply steam, however. All long-distance passenger trains operationally did not use Penn Station as a real terminal station. Except for the through trains over the Hell Gate Bridge, Sunnyside Yard was the real operatonal terminal. Except for swapping New Haven and PRR power, very little switching of any kind was done at Penn. And the LIRR through trains, with DD-1 power, actually ran in reverse, with conductor with the backup hose, back through the East River tunnels all the way back to Holban Yard in Queens!
Of course a vast majority of LIRR trains were MUs, and they reversed as new scheduled trains on the tracks where they arrived. Ditto about half the PRR New Jersey M Us, using the low-numbered stub-end tracks on the south side of the station. The other half of the PRR MUs still ran to Exchange Place for a ferry and H&M connection to New York, and the commuter fare structure encouraged that use.
I did ride as many as fourteen privare-car trips in and out of Penn Station, once out and back to Chicago with PRR 120 and Dover Colony on the Broadway, about six times with LV 353, twice to Colonial Williamsburg with the car continuing to Newport News and back, and seven times with Mountain View, once also to Williamsburg, and several times to Pittsburgh. Only once was the PV added or substracted at Penn, and that was on a NY - Boston trip, where the PV was tacked on the rear of a Washington - Boston train. Otherwise the PV was on the train between Sunnyside and Penn.
I can’t get at my Complete Collection, but I suspect we have semantics here. “Steam Generator” usually refers to the Vapor-Clarkson kind of device, as exemplified on the GG1s, with oil as the fuel for energy density. The devices discussed in 1914 are flash boilers, and while ingenious their capacity is not great. It would be interesting to see how you could shoehorn something like an OK-4620 and its tanks into a DD1 (no need to bother for L5s!) but it’s overkill for most DD1-hauled LIRR trains on the historical electrified portion west of Jamaica.
Still trying to find what was running the steam generator on that towed GG1 that went to the fair. Suspect a small diesel or gasoline genset.
GG1 boilers were oil fired and worked without AC power. There’s room in the DD1 body between the control stand and the motor for a small flash boiler and water tank. I have looked at a fair number of DD1 photos since this was posted and can only find air, signal and equalization hoses in any of them. The equalization hose is only found on DD1s that were expected to operate in MU, a rare occurence in later years.
And then back to Penn in the afternoon, with a trainman on the backup hose again? What was the speed limit?
The June 1946 timetable shows nine trains each weekday afternoon from NY Penn beyond third rail: one to Greenport, two to Montauk, two to Speonk, one to Patchogue, two to Port Jeff and one to Oyster Bay. First one left NY Penn at 3:50 EDT, last at 5:36.
My Vapor-Clarkson OK schematic only indicates LINE + and -, which indicates DC to me; the Elesco version (when in an EMD) requires connection to the auxiliary generator of a running 567, but the OK cleverly uses 100psi air from the brake system to run the burners, so its electrical power requirements can be lower. Someone who has access to a PRR publication 192, which is the 18-page manual for the specific application to the GG1, may find specific instructions on maintaining steam heat when off catenary.
RC: Where and when were your photos taken? Important to know what service they represented. There may have been a time after Penn Sta. opened when trains were regularly attached to station steam at Penn, unlike later years.
Possibly only the LIRR-assigned DD1s were equipped with the electrically-heated boilers and not the PRR’s?
How many of those flash-GE boilers were built, compared to how many DD1s built? How many DD1s were assigned to LIRR?
There were four choices the PRR had: No heat, electricall-heated boilers, coal-fired boilers, building the new steel cars and Pullmans also, for electric in addition to steam heating. They rejected the last two. I assume the first two were both applied, some with and some without.
Lots of MUs had both electric and steam-heat capability. Many New York Central, and those of the PRR, IC, and DL&W that were originally hauled behind steam. (After WWII, PRR converted some P54s to MP54s. These could be identified by their aluminim windowframes.)
The P54s were built, like the Erie suburban Stillwells, for easy conlversion to MUs.
The 1914 GE Review article said that 12 of the flash boilers were built, and the initial order for DD1’s was for 24, i.e. 12 pairs. It is plausible that each pair would get only one boiler, but no mention was made in the GE Review article of any of the boilers being installed in a locomotive.
I agree that the Vapor OK-45xx requires a supply of electric power. There’s a water pump, combustion blower, ignition transformer and fuel pump all requiring electric power. The Elesco has similar needs. Both makes I have information for call for 74 V. DC.
This web site is where I first found that photo and it deals mostly with the DD1s that were eventually turned over to the LIRR.
I’d love to be able to go through the DD1 at RR Museum of Pennsylvania and do some industrial forensics to see if there was any remains of the possible installation, even if for only a short time, of the GE flash boiler.
I’ll stop by again if I discover any new information.
Glad to know a DD1 has been saved. Maybe someone can get permission to go inside and check on this? The boiler probably wonl’t be there, because the one saved is probably one that served the wire train, but there may be evidences of the former installatin when in LIRR service.
11 seems the right number, with one lacking as asssigned to switching service. Each pair would only need one boiler.
I looked at photos from both the PRR and LIRR eras dating from about 1910 to the 1940s. The equalizer hose could be mistaken for a steam line, but its purpose became clear when I saw a side shot of two (pairs of) DD1s in MU. The equalizer hose is used to connect the independent brake reservoirs of MU’d electrics or diesels, so that all of the “independents” work together.
On the GG1 - it had 74v batteries for auxiliary functions. Since the power required for steam generator controls would be minimal there was probably enough battery life off line to be workable.
You know, it’s like everything else. Whether they had steam generators or not probably depended on time, place, and what those DD1’s were being used for.
There’s probably no right or wrong here.
All who’d like to see one running again raise your hands!
How could they have possibly provided the service they provided on the LIRR without them? Manhattan Transfer to Penn was about ten minutes, but Jamaica to Penn a good half hour, with delays from cnflicting traffic possible.
Often forgotten was that they also handled New Haven trains until the catenary from Trenton reached that coming from the Hell Gate Bridge.
The DD-1s that I saw on the LIRR as a youngster were lettered for the LIRR and not for the PRR. From pictures, how were the two pairs for the wire train lettered?
Perhaps a better answer to Mr. Klepper’s question:
This is how ‘the last’ set of wire-train engines appeared in 1969, shortly before retirement to the historic collection. There is some online confusion (which I can’t rectify from memory) regarding when this collection passed to RRMPA – I think around 1978 – but the historic designation is Dec. 17, 1979.
What might be of some amusing interest is the replacement on the wire train, which I would not have predicted even for PC. I would be interested in learning exactly how the shoe question was addressed.
(Replacement on the wire train for this locomotive, which survived as late as 1979 at Wilmington, of all places, was a pair of ex-LI MUs.)
Oh, wouldn’t Mr. Edison be impressed to see how far his moving picture technology has come in 125 years [sarcasm].
However, looking at the — ahem, video — you can see from about :23 > :29 seconds, a protrusion on the roof of the trailing unit. When compared to the model I believe this protrusion is somehow related to a (former) steam generator, probably the GE flash boiler mentioned above.
The model shows two additional details that would certainly mimic a pair of safety valve outlets:
I’d sure like to see the data that Alco Models used to produce this locomotive. The “perky” looking domes are the sand fill hatches.
My estimate would be that the flash boiler was in one unit and the second unit contained a water supply. It really wouldn’t take much room to place a pair of vertical water tanks in the back corners of the enclosure.
This photo shows part of the roof where it looks like the pipe outlets can be seen:
Two notes: first, I see not pipe but what does appear to be at least one dome relief valve in the stated location; this is particularly clear using the zoom feature provided for that picture (it worked with the scroll wheel on my mouse and a little judicious panning of scroll bars). Second, there is a fitting just under 3967’s end door, which I don’t see present on 4780. This would seem to be a perfectly sensible location for ‘added-on’ steamline connection for a locomotive of this construction.
I have yet to see any picture of a DD1 that shows a steamline connection between the two units, which would at least appear to indicate that ‘both halves’ would get their own independent steam generator setups (and this would be reinforced as a conclusion by the doubling-up of the roof safeties, if that is what they are). That would seem more expensive than providing a connection and through-pipe to the “non-generator end”, and while I suspect that all evidence of such a connection has probably not been erased from the surviving locomotives, it will be impossible to determine other than by carefully looking at them ‘up close and physical’ with some expectation of what to look for and where it would have been.
Yes, you would need a steamline connection at both ends, as the engines were not turned at Manhattan Transfer; there is probably a difference in the expected lb/hr of steam generation, however, as incoming trains would be steam-heated right up to within a couple of minutes of the DD1 being attached, with a short and direct trip to passenger discharge, whereas an outgoing train might be off Sunnyside house steam fairly
But an incoming train from Jamaica to Penn could be delayed. The LIRR would have enough to cope with the ire of delayed passengers withour their also being cold!
