Another thing is the USATC S118 class of WWII. I don’t think there are any technical reasons why the class couldn’t have been built during WWI.
The US government did design a standardized narrow gauge locomotive …but in the '50s. The regaugable diesel C-C locos developed for the US Army and tested on the D&RG and White Pass lines are the closest we’ve gotten to a USRA standardized loco for narrow gauge. They were deemed a failure but believe it or not they still exist. There’s one stored away at the Carrizo Gorge tourist line based in Campos.
Yes you’re dead right Andre, though for the sake of the discussion I limited myself to what I knew was available pre WWl.
I can’t find any exact information as to what the South African loading gauge was, but it was certainly far more generous than NZs.
Of course loading gauge would have had a big influence on USRA narrow gauge designs.
Cheers, the Bear.
That is a good argument and I had thought about that when I was speculating. The reason I didn’t choose the EBT designs was because of the numbers and simple statistics. When there is only 1 loco in a class as a base line it is a lot harder to determine if it is reliable or not. Even if one considers all the pre-WWI EBT’s 2-8-2s there are what only 4?, that is harder to justify the reliability statistically compared to the D&RG’s and 15 of a single class of locos.
The D&RG Consolidated class is even an easier case to make as there were 67 of them.
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Loading gauge has a big impact on any design. IIRC, British loading gauge limits heights to around 13 feet give or take and widths of 8 1/2 feet give or take. The larger South African engines would barely fit from what I’m able to gather. Well, whaddaya know. Ask and Google shall provide: http://tinyurl.com/kawe4sc
The USATC 0-6-0T ( “Dock Tank”) had to able to operate anywhere, including the UK. A number of these were used by the Southern (later Southern Region of BR) during and after WWII. As for the USATC S160 2-8-0, the design was such that they could be used in Britain as well as on the Continent. Here’s a preserved example on the West Somerset Railway http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K80xeChTfuE Hornby/Rivarossi has released the 0-6-0T
To each his own, Andre…[D]
But I’ll bet that SAR loco looks awfully tippy to someone used to getting up and down the mountain in a “Sport Model.” It looks like it grew legs compared to a Rio Grande Mike. Maybe legs like that look good on a model (the female kind), not so sure here…[swg]
I don’t think that anyone would disagree with that. The point is that we are looking at this as if we are USRA facing WWI crises. We don’t have time nor money nor even interest in experimenting making something new.
Who here knows what the USRA design process was? I think I read that they were new specific designs, even if they were based on experience learned from the prior 10-15 years (once the trailing truck was common on new construction). Since they even shared boiler components such as firebox, either directly or using lengthened or shortened versions, between engine types, they could not have simple used existing designs. In light of that how much more would a 2-6-6-2 or 2-8-8-2 been experimental than the standard gauge ones?
I could see a light and heavy 2-8-2 with outside frames. Possibly a Very Light 2-8-2 with inside frames, for light rail and narrow clearance would be included. 2-6-0 and 2-8-0 would cover switching duties, if needed. A 2-6-6-2 would be the forward thinking big engine.
Didn’t USRA designs use a conical boiler, or was it a mild wagon top? Who can confirm what was used?
In order to make sense of that scenario, you’d also have to assume that there was some fairly extensive and relatively heavy duty narrow gauge railroading going on, which wasn’t the case. What narrow gauge lines that existed didn’t have enough impact on the war effort to be a problem in search of a solution.
In any case, there was no need to “re-invent” the narrow gauge wheel as the major US builders already had experience building narrow gauge locomotives for overseas as well as the US and already had designs that could have been adapted had it been necessary. There would have been no need to experiment as the engineering is pretty straightforward.
It’s not that big a deal as long as you know the limitations of loading gauge, rail weight and bridge strength. Like I said, the meter gauge East African 59th class Garrats were substantially more powerful than the standard gauge NSWGR AD60’s, which were about as powerful as USRA Heavy 2-8-2’s, but needed the weight spread out to operate on rather light rail.
36" gauge track is 64% the gauge of standard. 64% of a USRA Heavy 2-8-2’s T.E is 38,400. In order to get that tractive effort and not violate the 25% rule (T.E. <= 1/4 of weight on drivers), the locomotive would need to have at least 153,600 lbs on the drivers or an axle load of a shade over 19 tons. You’d end up with a locomotive weighing somewhere around 200,000 lbs. 48 to 51 inc
I did not make that assumption. Doing so then puts the scenario into the realm of re-imagining the entire USA railroad infrastructure. Doing that really opens the box to do what so many people do with their model railroads and just “do what ever I want because I want to”. For which there can be no meaningful debate nor discussion because the assumptions compound into infinite possibilities for which everyone is exactly right.
You may not have made that assumption, but the fact was that there was no need for the USRA to ever get involved in narrow gauge locomotives. There were already extant narrow gauge designs that would have served the purpose quite adequately since narrow gauge lines represented such a small part of the US rail infrastructure. Baldwin and Alco (including the constituent companies that became Alco) had extensive experience in designing locomotives for various overseas systems of various gauges. not to mention US narrow gauge lines, and there would have been no need for any experimentation.
There was no experimentation with the standard gauge USRA engines. They were designed based on known best practices of the time and were so good that many railroads not only had USRA originals, but also copies. The USRA light Mike was such a good overall design that locomotives based on the design were being built in the 1940’s (AC&Y, KO&G - Midland Valley). If steam were still