Why did Pennsylvania Railroad 4-8-2s pulled only freight trains and not dual service, passenger and freight. Why no PR 4-8-2s on passenger trains.
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I suppose, since steam was custom built for specific applications, the PRR built their 4-8-2’s for freight service. My casual observation of Eastern carriers was that most passenger engines were built with 80 inch diameter drivers. The larger the drivers the easier it was for the engine to sustain high speeds.
Engines with smaller driver found it easier to move increasing amounts of tonnage.
Observably the PRR passenger engine philosophy morphed from the K4 to the T1
Hello,
the Pennsy mountains were originally built to be dual service engines. According to “Pennsy Power”, by Alvin Staufer, after the electrification east of Harrisburg was completed in the 1930’s, many K-4 engines were displaced. these K-4’s took over the passenger assignments handled by the M-1’s.So, they got bumped to freight service exclusively.
The M-1’s handled some passenger work in the 1930’s. There are shots of M-1’s in passenger service on Sunday River’s “Steam on Horseshoe Curve, part 1”. Black and white footage from the 1930’s.
Paul
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The surviving documentation in the Hagley indicates that passenger locomotive design, all the way through the T1 design and the analysis of the 610 J high-speed testing, had a fixation on ‘high wheel’ engines rather than lower augment and reduction of reciprocating mass, etc. You see this perhaps most vividly in the design of the Q1, which was explicitly designed as the 5/4 larger ‘replacement’ for the M1 and M1a as a dual=service locomotive – not only did this have divided drive, but 77" drivers – sorta like the pre-Eksergian formula for diameter speed.
The New York Central certainly got adequate passenger speed out of locomotives with 72" drivers, but interestingly thought their “5/4s replacement for Mountains” ought to have only slightly higher drivers, at 75". It was soon understood and agreed that a full 79" was worthwhile for high speed, and no production Niagaras were built with 75" or downsized after the Dieseliner era as they could easily have been.
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