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I was reading about the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 steam locomotives, first built in 1941 and used for about 15 years before being replaced by diesel locomotives (although there remains one, still operable, still on the locomotive rosters, in the Union Pacific shops in Cheyenne, Wyoming).
The strongest steam locomotive ever made.
Anyway, the book said "7500 horsepower."
Okay, I know what "horsepower" is, and that my own motor vehicle has nothing like 7500 horsepower, far from it, but I can't "relate" to 7500 horsepower.
What's something that one commonly sees in civilian (or even military) everyday life at least "sort of" the same as 7500 horsepower?
I know it's a stupid question, but I never alleged myself to be especially bright.
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Some of the largest rock trucks used in strip mining that gross about 700 tons loaded approrch 3,000 horsepower.
Funny thing about steam and electric locomotives. A steam engine will pull more tonnage than it can start off. A diesel/electric locomotive can start off more tonnage than it can pull.
Don't quote me on this because I'm just repeating what someone else said and I haven't been around dragsters in years and years. He said nitro burning rail dragsters now put out around 8,000 horsepower. They broke the 300 mph barrier in a quater several years ago and have shorten the tracks to 1,000 feet now. And now they break 300 mph on the shorter tracks. Now that's getting from point A to point B in a hurry.
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Class 8 tractors (what you seeing pulling trailers down the interstate all day long) usually have between 300-700hp. The torque number is what is important on these engines, though. One engine we put together at work, the a 7.6L straight six has horsepower numbers anywhere from the high 100's up into the mid-200's, but the torque number on even the smallest horsepower engine is over 1400ft/lb.
Funny thing about steam and electric locomotives. A steam engine will pull more tonnage than it can start off. A diesel/electric locomotive can start off more tonnage than it can pull.
I always understood steam power acted on the engine, rather than being created by the engine. Maybe the parts of the steam engine will break before they can move the load from a stop, where a diesel can gradually apply power? :confused:
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Here's what I consider a reasonably good picture of a 4-8-8-4, although really it doesn't do justice to the sheer size of the thing.
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/bigone.jpg)
I've never seen one in action, only one just sitting there doing nothing.
The main wheels are more than 6' tall.
Among other details, they were 132' long--I dunno if that includes the tender behind it, though--weighed over 600 tons, carried 28 tons of coal and 25,000 gallons of water.
The book says they were "under-used" by the Union Pacific, without explaining how. They were used mostly within Wyoming, with sporadic forays into Nebraska on one side and Utah on the other side.
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I always understood steam power acted on the engine, rather than being created by the engine. Maybe the parts of the steam engine will break before they can move the load from a stop, where a diesel can gradually apply power? :confused:
You have the general idea. It's a matter of traction and a gradual pulling force on the load. Steam engines will break loose and spin, that's why they had sand tanks to put sand on the tracks when they needed more traction on steep grades etc.. The diesel/electric will ease the train into motion but after a while the motors get hot and trip out. That's why you will see several engines on a long train. All the engines aren't pulling at the same time....they're unionized...1/2 are on break at any given time. :-)
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I doubt anybody here's old enough to remember.
Would 28 tons of coal be enough to heat a house during the winter?
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My father is old enough to have burned coal. They burned pea coal and anthracite coal (Pennsylvania winters), and said they averaged 15 tons per winter.
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"I loaded 16 tons of #9 coal......"
You know, as far as I'm concerned, Jimmy Dean should have stuck with loading coal, his sausage bisquits in my opinion leave a lot to be desired.
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Frank,
Did you ever read up on the Peppercorn class locomotive they rebuilt from the original plans in the UK (60163 Tornado)? They scrapped all the original ones, and never bothered to save even one. Then, somebody came across the original blueprints, so they recreated one. What a beautiful machine.
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Did you ever read up on the Peppercorn class locomotive they rebuilt from the original plans in the UK (60163 Tornado)? They scrapped all the original ones, and never bothered to save even one. Then, somebody came across the original blueprints, so they recreated one. What a beautiful machine.
No, I'm not familiar with that.
There's lots and lots of picture books of steam locomotives here, and hundreds of personal photographs of steam locomotives in the family archives, as my older brothers were steam fans--it was easy for them, late 1940s, early 1950s, and living on the main line of the Union Pacific (and curiously, both my father and my mother too, in New York during the 1940s).
I'm too young to have known anything other than diesels.
The only steam locomotive I myself have ever seen in action was back when I was 10 years old, and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy ran a special passenger train through the Sandhills, a one-time deal. It was, if memory serves me correctly, a 4-6-2, and the passenger cars were from the 1920s, before streamlined ones.
I actually saw that engine huffing and puffing, but again, being 10 years old, I didn't pay attention.
There seems a lot of steam railway fans. I'm assuming their main attraction is, unlike diesels, one could actually see the working parts working, nothing's covered up. I know I myself am that way with other things; if I can see its guts working, I'm attracted; if the working parts are all covered up, I'm ho-hum and go on to something else.
I suspect steam locomotives were more human, more "living things," than diesels appear today, and that that's part of their attraction too.
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I doubt anybody here's old enough to remember.
Would 28 tons of coal be enough to heat a house during the winter?
Enough to do probably most of my neighborhood.
I have a pretty good-sized house, and most winters I can heat it for 400-500 gallons of heating oil. For those who don't use heating oil, I give you the following:
Table 1 – Average Btu Content of Fuels
Electricity:
1 KW 3,412 Btu/hr
Natural Gas:
1 Cubic Foot of Natural Gas 1,030 Btu’s
1 CCF = 100 Cu Ft = 1 Therm 103,000 Btu’s
1 MCF = 1,000 Cu Ft = 10 Therms 1,034,000 Btu’s = 1.034 MMBtu’s
Propane:
1 Gal Propane 91,600 Btu’s
1 Cu Ft Propane 2,500 Btu’s
Gasoline:
1 Gal of Gasoline (mid grade) 125,000 Btu’s
Ethanol:
1 Gal of Ethanol 76,000 Btu’s
Fuel Oil:
1 Gal of #1 Kerosene 135,000 Btu’s
1 Gal of #2 Fuel Oil 138,000 Btu’s
1 Gal of #4 Fuel Oil 145,000 Btu’s
1 Gal of #6 Fuel Oil 150,000 Btu’s
Other:
Wood (air dried) 20,000,000/cord or 8,000/pound
Pellets (for pellet stoves; premium) 16,500,000/ton
Coal 28,000,000/ton
These standards of measurement make comparisons of fuel types possible. For
example:
· The heat content of one gallon of fuel oil roughly equals that of 41 kWh of electricity,
137 cubic feet of natural gas, 1.5 gallons of propane, 17.5 pounds of air-dried wood,
17 pounds of pellets, a gallon of kerosene, or 10 pounds of coal.
· One million Btu’s is the heat equivalent of approximately 7 gallons of No. 2 heating oil or
kerosene, 293 kWh of electricity, 976 cubic feet of natural gas, 11 gallons of propane,
125 pounds of air-dried wood, 121 pounds of pellets, or 71 pounds of coal.
http://www.mainepublicservice.com/media/3467/fuel%20and%20energy.pdf
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They run a steam locomotive every now and again into town every year or so. I can hear the whistle from my house, and it is pretty eerie! I believe it is has something to do with the old Frisco line.
About a mile from here, there is a 4-8-4 on rails in a park. That's the biggest steam locomotive I've seen in person. I have never seen one actually being ran, though.
I think I know what you mean about the "living things" that steam locomotives have that newer ones do not. I feel the same way about older automobiles, versus newer ones.
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Did I interpret this correctly?
Twenty-eight tons of coal would be about the same as circa 5,000 gallons of regular-grade gasoline?
I'm trying to put this into a "picture" I can understand.
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Horsepower is in its basic definition is a measure of work done.
Without looking it up to be exact it is the force used to lift or move a certain pound weight a specific distance in a given amount of time.
It alone however can be misleading as a torque curve for a given engine also plays a huge role in things.
In short you can buy a 20 horsepower lawn tractor that has a very small torque curve or you can buy a John Deere model A tractor built in the 40s and also rated at 20 (or so) horsepower with a 321 cid 2 cylinder engine and can plow a field.
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They run a steam locomotive every now and again into town every year or so. I can hear the whistle from my house, and it is pretty eerie! I believe it is has something to do with the old Frisco line.
About a mile from here, there is a 4-8-4 on rails in a park. That's the biggest steam locomotive I've seen in person. I have never seen one actually being ran, though.
I think I know what you mean about the "living things" that steam locomotives have that newer ones do not. I feel the same way about older automobiles, versus newer ones.
The last I read, a few years ago, the Union Pacific still has three operable steam locomotives, all of them in good working order, and kept in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
There's a 4-8-4 on their "active duty" roster, just like all their diesels, and is actually used more than one might imagine. The 4-8-4s were in their time used mainly for freight trains, 4-6-2s in the eastern states for passenger trains; I dunno what the main passenger-train locomotive was that the Union Pacific used.
There's a 4-6-6-4 and a 4-8-8-4 on the roster, but not active duty; in other words, they can be immediately fired up and ready to go.
As for being able to see something work, years ago when I collected old clocks, their main attraction to me was that one could sit there and actually see all their working parts work, rather than being covered up. Ditto for automobiles and farm machiney; if I can see the working parts in motion, it's better than a Hollywood epic.
But if they're covered up, they hold no interest.
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Horsepower is in its basic definition is a measure of work done.
Without looking it up to be exact it is the force used to lift or move a certain pound weight a specific distance in a given amount of time.
It alone however can be misleading as a torque curve for a given engine also plays a huge role in things.
In short you can buy a 20 horsepower lawn tractor that has a very small torque curve or you can buy a John Deere model A tractor built in the 40s and also rated at 20 (or so) horsepower with a 321 cid 2 cylinder engine and can plow a field.
I can't find it for the 4-8-8-4 locomotive of the Union Pacific, but according to this book, there is a number from 1911, from the 2-10-10-2s used by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, in which the traction force was 111,600 pounds. (The 4-8-8-4s came into being in 1941, thirty years later.)
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But if they're covered up, they hold no interest.
They do the same thing to cars now, ostensibly as a way to reduce noise pollution. ::)
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They do the same thing to cars now, ostensibly as a way to reduce noise pollution. ::)
I have lots of photographs of the parents, circa 1940, with streamlined steam locomotives of the New York Central and those electric units from the Pennsylvania Railroad, but they don't hold any fascination, because all's covered up.
I dunno if steam locomotives beginning in the late 1930s were covered up for any reason other than the then-"streamlining" fad.
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I have lots of photographs of the parents, circa 1940, with streamlined steam locomotives of the New York Central and those electric units from the Pennsylvania Railroad, but they don't hold any fascination, because all's covered up.
I dunno if steam locomotives beginning in the late 1930s were covered up for any reason other than the then-"streamlining" fad.
Do you have any good photographs you'd be willing to post of the streamlined steam locomotives? Those are pretty, but in a different, less mechanical way.
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Do you have any good photographs you'd be willing to post of the streamlined steam locomotives? Those are pretty, but in a different, less mechanical way.
Yeah, I do, and I plan to scan and post them here circa Wednesday or Thursday, Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving. I don't have the time to dig them out and scan them at the moment.
But I'll find some good ones and get them up.
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Those UP "Big Boys" are truly marvelous and stunning examples of engineering, and just plain freakin' huge ta boot.
The New York Central ran several 4-6-4 "Hudson" locomotives, the biggest on that line into the 1960's. Several other lines ran Hudsons too. A few are still operational.
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/hudson/
A few years back I checked out a multi tape VHS set from the library on the NYC line in its steam days. Cool stuff.
These giants from the latter days of steam were the apex of engineering in their day. Forget the images in old western movies where the fireman would be shoveling coal by hand into the fire box and water was added at the depot from a tower with the train at a standstill. These latter day monsters were way past that. Coal was constantly fed from the tender to the firebox by an automatic auger, the guy with the shovel was out of a job by then. Water could be taken on by a Hudson at 70 mph via a scoop that lowered down into a trough between the tracks that might be a mile or more long at a rate of hundreds of gallons in seconds.
http://jimquest.com/writ/trains/pans/scoop2.htm
If kids in the 60's and 70's held astronauts as being the stuff of legend the same could be said for the way kids in decades past looked up to railroad engineers, they were like rock stars. My dad tells of running to the outskirts of town when the whistle was heard and the daily was rolling by his home town. The engineer would throw flares down to the boys as the train passed. I can imagine the uproar if something like that were to happen today, tossing a handful of flares to ten year old boys! :lmao:
(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_i_AovfzNXgQ/Sxmv_TVGOnI/AAAAAAABBBw/xGD0uNcsDHw/s400/johnny-cash-train.jpg)
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Yeah, I do, and I plan to scan and post them here circa Wednesday or Thursday, Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving. I don't have the time to dig them out and scan them at the moment.
But I'll find some good ones and get them up.
OK, thank you! Also, I didn't mean to sound impatient, if I did. Your pictures are always interesting. :cheersmate:
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Water could be taken on by a Hudson at 70 mph via a scoop that lowered down into a trough between the tracks that might be a mile or more long at a rate of hundreds of gallons in seconds.
There's a new one to add to the list of horrific ways to die: death by steam locomotive water scoop. :-)
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Ooops, I see I messed up on my terminology; I was going by memory of what I read, and the memory's not always accurate.
It wasn't 4-6-2s used in the eastern states for passenger trains, although they had been, earlier.
It was 4-6-4 "Hudsons," as you described, sir.
I was thinking the Hudson was a 4-6-2, but I was wrong.
I'm not sure why the trailing wheels were of such importance, but for reasons of physics, obviously they were.
For example, while a 2-8-0 could be used to pull a passenger train, if one didn't have to use it, one didn't.
I'm curious as to the rationale--there obviously is an eminently practical reason--for trailing wheels; I just assume they were good for equilibrium and stability, but beyond that, I have no idea.
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OK, thank you! Also, I didn't mean to sound impatient, if I did. Your pictures are always interesting. :cheersmate:
No, you didn't sound impatient, no way.
Actually I'd anticipated someone would ask, and so had already planned to; it's just that this evening I'm involved with too many other things that involve earning my keep.
So look again in a couple of days; they'll be here.
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My dad tells of running to the outskirts of town when the whistle was heard and the daily was rolling by his home town. The engineer would throw flares down to the boys as the train passed. I can imagine the uproar if something like that were to happen today, tossing a handful of flares to ten year old boys! :lmao:
That was, apparently, a common experience in the days of steam locomotives.
And I don't think it was because "there was nothing else to do" in those halcyonic days of yore; I think there was an honest attraction to the way things worked, the appeal of actually seeing the working parts of an engine working.
This was before my time, but during the late 1940s and early 1950s in North Platte, Nebraska, the paternal ancestor used to collect all the children and take them down to the railway depot to watch the trains on Sunday afternoons (the purpose, I guess, being so that my mother could have some rest).
North Platte was, and is, a major point on the Union Pacific mainline, and so they saw plenty of trains, passenger and freight, plenty of locomotives, steam and diesel.
I don't think it was just because there was nothing else to do; I think it was the locomotives themselves.
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These giants from the latter days of steam were the apex of engineering in their day. Forget the images in old western movies where the fireman would be shoveling coal by hand into the fire box and water was added at the depot from a tower with the train at a standstill. These latter day monsters were way past that. Coal was constantly fed from the tender to the firebox by an automatic auger, the guy with the shovel was out of a job by then. Water could be taken on by a Hudson at 70 mph via a scoop that lowered down into a trough between the tracks that might be a mile or more long at a rate of hundreds of gallons in seconds.
I'm familiar with that phenomenon, steam locomotives "taking water on the fly" (correct term?--I dunno), loading up the liquid as they sped along.
That seems to have been strictly an eastern phenomenon, though; apparently it was never used out here.
There's still a few of those ancient water-towers standing in Nebraska, unused since the mid-1950s, but most tumbled down a long time ago. However, the sharp eye can detect where they once were.
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There is a small railroad hereabouts which is mostly an excursion line but also still runs freight, the Attica & Arcade RR.
They pride themselves on their steamer.
I can remember going on outings with my grandparents on this train almost forty years ago. Once the train leaves the station and everyone is enjoying their ride desperadoes on horseback ride up alongside and hop from their horses to the train. They then burst into the passenger cars and commence to rob the passengers with bandanas over their faces and brandishing six-shooters just like Jesse James. I don't know if they still do that anymore but they usedtadid. It was a blast. My folks still have 8mm color home movies of that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_and_Attica_Railroad
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI8KZisY-cQ[/youtube]
http://www.arcadeandatticarr.com/
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There's a new one to add to the list of horrific ways to die: death by steam locomotive water scoop. :-)
I suddenly remember something.
As you know, since I was about 8 or 9 years old, I've always been attracted to old magazines, consuming their contents voraciously and quickly, snapping them up.
One of my favorites was always Popular Mechanics from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s; that was in the good old days when technological stuff could be easily explained to the non-scientific mind.
Wonderful magazines, those old Popular Mechanics.
But alas they used that certain sort of paper that yellows and crumbles too soon, and so one doesn't run across the older ones as much as one wishes to.
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Ooops, I see I messed up on my terminology; I was going by memory of what I read, and the memory's not always accurate.
It wasn't 4-6-2s used in the eastern states for passenger trains, although they had been, earlier.
It was 4-6-4 "Hudsons," as you described, sir.
I was thinking the Hudson was a 4-6-2, but I was wrong.
I'm not sure why the trailing wheels were of such importance, but for reasons of physics, obviously they were.
For example, while a 2-8-0 could be used to pull a passenger train, if one didn't have to use it, one didn't.
I'm curious as to the rationale--there obviously is an eminently practical reason--for trailing wheels; I just assume they were good for equilibrium and stability, but beyond that, I have no idea.
Typically locomotives with four leading wheels were used for passenger service. The four leading wheels reduced the natural yaw created by the asymmetric pull of the drivers, which were "power offset", This configuration produced a smoother overall ride for the passengers.
By asymmetric pull, I mean that one side of the locomotive was applying thrust to the drivers while the other side was in the exhaust stroke, During the days of steam if one actually watched a freight locomotive bearing down on you the sife-to-side motion of the front of the engine caused by the drivers was very apparent.
The presence of trailing wheels, and the number of them tended to be a function of the radius of turns the locomotive was required to negotiate......they guided the tender, and typically eastern railroads with tighter turns had none, or at the most two.....out west, long straight runs and wide sweeping turn radii made four trailing wheels useful, and also allowed higher track speeds. Same for drivers.....tighter turns (eastern roads) fewer drivers......typically 6.
doc
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Google has archives of 'Popular Mechanics' (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google+magazine+popular+mechanics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=popular+mechanics&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=bks&source=lnt&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1900,cd_max:1999&sa=X&ei=0grLTv7mOuWsiQK4p_XjCw&ved=0CBgQpwUoAg&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=e00cd4124103af&biw=1024&bih=612) online. You might want to take a look at it.
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Doc, I knew you could do it.
This is the same reason why, when I was in college I took mathematics courses in evening classes.
Regular professors of mathematics taught during the day time; high school teachers of mathematics taught the subject in the evenings and on weekends. (The credit hours however were the same.)
The high school teachers, part-time, were excellent with the subject.
You're the same way.
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This topic can go all over the place, which is okay, given that it's all science and technology.
A new question, from the books, that tell the what, but not the why.
The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific ran electrical locomotives though much of Montana.
The Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, which also spanned Montana, ran on coal.
Might there have been a particular advantage to using electrical locomotives? I used to assume perhaps the problem was of "supply" (water, fuel), but that can't be it, as Montana always had much.
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Google has archives of 'Popular Mechanics' (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=google+magazine+popular+mechanics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=popular+mechanics&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=bks&source=lnt&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1900,cd_max:1999&sa=X&ei=0grLTv7mOuWsiQK4p_XjCw&ved=0CBgQpwUoAg&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=e00cd4124103af&biw=1024&bih=612) online. You might want to take a look at it.
The problem with that is, it's not the same thing as actually having an actual paper-and-ink magazine in the hand.
I dunno if it's the same way with anybody else, but for me, there seems better understanding, and better retention of what one learns, from actually holding something in real life, rather than reading it on a computer screen.
I've been familiar with this phenomenon for a very long time; a 1924 edition of Time magazine on the internet doesn't mean excresence to me; a 1924 edition of Time magazine in real life illuminates me.
I really wish Popular Mechanics had used coated paper, but of course there's the economic factors to consider, including expense and availability. And this attitude that science and technology is always going forward so fast old knowledge doesn't matter any more, and so it's not important to preserve it.
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This topic can go all over the place, which is okay, given that it's all science and technology.
A new question, from the books, that tell the what, but not the why.
The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific ran electrical locomotives though much of Montana.
The Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, which also spanned Montana, ran on coal.
Might there have been a particular advantage to using electrical locomotives? I used to assume perhaps the problem was of "supply" (water, fuel), but that can't be it, as Montana always had much.
That is a really good question, and I can only speculate......by electric locomotives, I assume you mean "overhead supply" electric, as powered rails would be far too dangerous in the open areas without fencing the road to protect livestock and humans. The sheer cost of the infrastructure to run all those overhead supply lines would have been immense compared to using coal and water..,,,,,unless the railroad owned the power plants, and viewed running the trains on electricity as a freebie.
The only other consideration that I can think of is what was the load they were hauling?? Electric locomotives (traction motors), had the ability to "start" heavier loads because the torque to the wheels could be very finely tuned to eliminate driver slippage. This was the major disadvantage of steam......a steam locomotive could haul a hundred car train at 90 mph halfway across the country......the problem was getting it moving, too heavy a load, and the locomotive just sits there with the drivers spinning. "Sanders" were used to partially overcome this shortfall, but even they had their limits.
One interesting fact about steam is that there was NO theoretical limit to how fast a steam locomotive could go......keep the throttle wide open and pour on the coal to keep the boiler pressure climbing, and they would accelerate until they destroyed themselves.
As an aside, the "Land Speed Record" was for many years held by a steam-powered automobile.....the Stanley Steamer......over 100 mph, somewhere around 1900, when such speeds were unthinkable.....same principle.
doc
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The photographs, from the 1930s and 1940s, show overhead supply of power, as if they were trolley cars.
All photographs I've seen of the phenomenon show only passenger trains being hauled this way, no freight trains.
It wasn't all the way through Montana, but at least through the higher mountains.
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Temporary internet connection problems; the weather.
Anyway. I have to hit the sack for the night, and tomorrow I'm busy most of the day; I'd like to continue this discussion.
Two questions, one for JohnnyReb:
Are you telling me that, for example, when a train powered by four diesel engines is going along, only two of the four units are actually working, and that they "trade off"?
This one for TVDOC:
So.....on a steam locomotive, with those driving rods attached to the main wheels, the ones on one side are thrusting forward, while the rods on the other side are sliding back?
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Temporary internet connection problems; the weather.
Anyway. I have to hit the sack for the night, and tomorrow I'm busy most of the day; I'd like to continue this discussion.
Two questions, one for JohnnyReb:
Are you telling me that, for example, when a train powered by four diesel engines is going along, only two of the four units are actually working, and that they "trade off"?
This one for TVDOC:
So.....on a steam locomotive, with those driving rods attached to the main wheels, the ones on one side are thrusting forward, while the rods on the other side are sliding back?
I can actually answer both questions......when you see a train travelling over flat country with four engine units, likely only one is running, and it's a pretty good bet that the train is bound for the mountains......the remaining units come online when needed to climb a grade, and are used for "induction braking", when going down steep downgrades.
On the steam question.....yes the power to the drivers alternates from side to side, otherwise the locomotive would never start moving.....the drivers would complete one-half revolution and the engine would stop without the forward momentum to push the pistons back on the exhaust stroke to start the cycle again. By alternating torque is constantly being applied to pull the load.
doc
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I'll be back this evening, but thought I'd pass this along first, about why the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific electrified some of its lines in Montana.
I looked up "Olympian Hiawatha," the name of their most famous passenger train.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympian_Hiawatha
In 1915 the Milwaukee completed its initial electrified section of rail line, from Harlowton to Deer Lodge, Montana, a feat that was advertised to passengers since electrification eliminated the soot normally associated with steam-powered rail travel prior to the era of air-conditioning. Extensions to the electrified network in the 1910s and 1920s resulted in a total of 649 miles (1,044 km) of electrified main line, in Montana/Idaho and over the Cascades in Washington. The 440 miles (710 km) of electrified line between Harlowton, Montana and Avery, Idaho was the longest continuous electrified rail line in the world. Besides being cleaner, electrification allowed the road to pull both freight and passenger loads faster, more reliably and more efficiently regardless of season.
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Did I interpret this correctly?
Twenty-eight tons of coal would be about the same as circa 5,000 gallons of regular-grade gasoline?
I'm trying to put this into a "picture" I can understand.
1 ton of coal is roughly equivalent to 225 gallons of gas, so 28 tons would be close to 6300 gallons of gasoline.
Put another way, that 400-500 gallons of heating oil could in theory be replaced by just over 2 tons of coal to heat my home for a winter.
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i found this thread about the locomotives interesting but just wanted to add a comment about comparing btu rates.
the "so many gallons of fuel" equals "this much coal" would tend to vary by the efficiency of the furnaces used.
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I always understood steam power acted on the engine, rather than being created by the engine. Maybe the parts of the steam engine will break before they can move the load from a stop, where a diesel can gradually apply power? :confused:
It's more a matter of axle weight for the drive wheels, and the power curve to them. Roadbed is designed for a maximum axle weight, and while traction increases as axle weight goes up, it is limited by the rail and roadbed, so at a certain point adding more HP without more wheels just results in slipping when you try to start up. A pair of GP38s from 20 years ago would have the same HP as that 4-8-8-4, but the two Diesels have a total of 24 driven wheels against the steamer's 16, and the electric traction motors apply continuous steady force to all the drive wheels at once, while the thrust of the drive rods from the (Double-acting, double expansion*) steam cylinders only acts with full force on the steamer's drive wheels during half of their rotation (The drive wheels are 'Quartered' so there is not a dead space, but there are two points in each wheel's rotation where the cylinder on that side is not actually delivering any power).
There is a bit of slack at each coupling, the traditional way to get a very heavy train (For the available head-end power) started with either kind of power is to reverse and slowly back the cars into each other to make a compressed stack, then very slowly start moving forward so you are picking up one car at a time, and not trying to start the entire train into motion at once. The engineer does not start accelerating until he has all the slack out of the couplings and all the cars are in motion. Aside from only adding one car at a time to the drawbar, this also has the effect of adding all the forward inertia of the moving cars to the force pulling the last cars into motion from a stop.
*Almost all the articulated steam locomotives were compounds, i.e. the front engine (the cylinders for the front set of driven axles) used second-expansion steam from the rear set of cylinders. It sticks in my memory that one of the mid-20th Century behemoths was actually a double 'Simple' engine, i.e. both engines used first-expansion steam, which was more profligate with fuel but had some advantages for what they wanted to use it for, but I don't recall which road might have run it. Three or four different giants laid defensible claims to the 'Most powerful' title, based on different criteria.
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<snip> This was the major disadvantage of steam......a steam locomotive could haul a hundred car train at 90 mph halfway across the country......the problem was getting it moving, too heavy a load, and the locomotive just sits there with the drivers spinning. "Sanders" were used to partially overcome this shortfall, but even they had their limits.
doc
Any locomotive, steam or diesel-electric, passenger or freight, cannot get a train moving unless there is space between the knuckle couplers. With no spacing, it would be like immediately moving the entire weight of the train as a single unit; the spacing allows for moving only one car at a time. The knuckle couplers are designed for this spacing. That's why when a train begins moving we hear the noise of each car's slack in the knuckle couplers being taken up by the moving cars that precede it.
I remember when I was a kid in Tucson that my dad took me to the train station to see the trains and steam engines. Even then, I was fascinated by the power of the locomotives. I loved it when the wheels lost traction and the engineers would play with the throttle to regain momentum. I wish my dad was alive today to shed some more first-hand knowledge on this topic. He was Exec VP of a Railway Supply Company and could call out the names of each railroad just by the initials and/or the paint jobs as the freight cars passed by.
About 10 years ago, the Union Pacific Challenger No. 3985 came through town on an excursion. Just standing about 50' away from the engine as it passed I could feel that the heat from the boilers was tremendous. The engineers in those cabs really had some tough lives, putting up with all of that heat every day, particularly in the hot and humid summers and/or out west in the deserts.
Here is a data sheet for the Challenger No. 3985.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Automotive/SteamLoco1.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Automotive/SteamLoco2.jpg)
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There is a bit of slack at each coupling, the traditional way to get a very heavy train (For the available head-end power) started with either kind of power is to reverse and slowly back the cars into each other to make a compressed stack, then very slowly start moving forward so you are picking up one car at a time, and not trying to start the entire train into motion at once. The engineer does not start accelerating until he has all the slack out of the couplings and all the cars are in motion. Aside from only adding one car at a time to the drawbar, this also has the effect of adding all the forward inertia of the moving cars to the force pulling the last cars into motion from a stop.
Damn....I DO remember engineers doing this when I was a kid.......our town was on the main line for Wabash/Union Pacific (and the GM&O on a second set of tracks), and frequently the fast freights would stop to drop cars on the siding for transfer to the Columbia branch, and they always did this....backing for about a car-length, then starting the whole thing rolling forward.....makes perfect sense.
I also remember after stopping with steam locomotives, the engineers "clearing" the cylinders of residual water (water being somewhat incompressible) before starting the locomotive in motion again.....on a cold winter's day the process created a huge cloud of steam that enveloped the entire locomotive.
My grandfather worked for the railroad for most of his life.....he started as a "gandy dancer" for the MK&T "Katy" as a kid, went to Wabash as a brakeman, and ultimately a fireman. It was a damn good job back in those years, particularly during the depression. I remember when he visited us, and a train would go through town, he could give me the engineer's name by how he blew the whistle for grade crossings......he said that each engineer had his own "signature", and he had stoked boilers for most of them.
I also remember him telling me that during the transition from steam to diesel, the union still required each locomotive to carry a "fireman" even though there was no more coal to shovel, or augers to manage......the job eventually morphed into maintaining the fuel load, the condition of the actual diesel engine, and the traction motor system. At that time under union rules, only the fireman was allowed to actually start and shut off the diesel engine in the locomotive.
As an interesting aside, when FDR initiated the Social Security system, railroad workers were among the few categories that were exempt from SS, as they had their own pension system.
doc
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And that RR pension system is still in play, isn't it?
Quite lucrative too, IIRC....
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I see quite a few of the traction motors at work, they're some heavy beasts.
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And that RR pension system is still in play, isn't it?
Quite lucrative too, IIRC....
I think so, as there is still a line on everyone's tax return to report RR pension income. My grandmother lived to be 97, and she had a nice retirement income from my granddad's RR pension. A hell of a lot better than SS. In her case, Union Pacific also owned and operated their own hospital in St. Louis, where healthcare was free for employees and retirees/dependants.
doc
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Another interesting tidbit, as I mentioned working for a railroad was a damn good job back in the day, it was also the best opportunity for African Americans.
During the hayday of passenger rail, the conductor and assistants were the only white employees on a passenger train (outside of the locomotive crew), porters, waiters, bartenders stewards, cooks/chefs, kitchen help and car cleaners were all black, and paid the prevailing hourly wage for track crew........which was top-tier wages for hourly workers, plus they also received tips for many jobs.
The wages, coupled with their pension and other benefits (like free travel passes), made these jobs legendary, and the most sought-after positions for blacks in the US. It was so lucrative that not infrequently these jobs were passed down from father to son, and further.
doc
Footnote: RR benefits - travel passes: Funny how thinking about it brings the memories of these things back.....however, another lucrative benefit RR employees received was travel passes......depending on seniority, an employee/retiree was allowed to request from two to eight "passes" every year (each generally valid for two weeks), for an employee and/or members of his/her immediate family (four people per pass). These were not unlike those granted to airline employees today EXCEPT, they were honored by any railroad in North America (Canada & Mexico included), enabling employees to travel anywhere served by passenger rail. As a youngster, I went on a significant number of trips on one of these passes.
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I'm still up to my shoulders in work--got to get everything all squared away before the contest for top primitive of 2011 starts about suppertime on Thanksgiving Eve--but here's more on the electrification of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific (commonly known as the "Milwaukee Road").
I can't bother with a map at the moment, but anyway, the line stretched from Chicago up into Wisconsin and Minnesota, then through South Dakota and a small corner of North Dakota, across southern Montana, northern Idaho, mid-Washington, ending at Seattle.
It was probably the "weakest" (financially and by name) of all the transcontinental railways; it's since been split up among others.
The Milwaukee soon found that operation of steam locomotives over the mountain passes was difficult, with winter temperatures that reached −40 °F. Electrification seemed to be the answer, especially with abundant hydroelectric power in the mountains and a ready source of copper on-line at Anaconda, Montana. In 1914, electrification began between Harlowton, Montana and Avery, Idaho. The first electric train ran in 1915 between Three Forks and Deer Lodge, Montana. The system used a 3,000 volt direct-current (DC) overhead line.
In 1917, the board approved the construction of a separate electrified district between Othello and Tacoma, Washington, extended to Seattle in 1927. The two electrified districts were never connected, but a total of 656 route-miles (1,056 km) of railroad were electrified, making it the largest electrified railroad in the US.
The electrification was successful from an engineering and operational standpoint, but the cost of building the Puget Sound Extension and electrification had cost $257 million (equal to $3,251,050,000 today), not the $45 million the road had originally budgeted for reaching the Pacific. The debt load and reduced revenues brought the road to bankruptcy in 1925.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago,_Milwaukee,_St._Paul_and_Pacific_Railroad
I'm still confused however as to why the Milwaukee Road thought this such a good idea, while the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways, which went through the same sort of country, never did. Electric railways were popular in the northeastern United States, but to the best of my memory, this was the only major such thing west of the Mississippi.
Why would an electric locomotive work "better" in sub-zero terrain than steam or diesel?
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Three or four different giants laid defensible claims to the 'Most powerful' title, based on different criteria.
I saw a claim once, that one of the lines operating in, generally, the northern-Virginia-Maryland-West-Virginia area, had a steam locomotive more powerful than the 4-8-8-4 Union Pacific. It had a really big wheel-arrangement, but I don't recall the specifics.
That area actually had some pretty big beasts, probably bigger than anything other than the 4-8-8-4 in all of America. The lines were the Chesapeake & Ohio, Western Maryland, and Norfolk & Western.
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Quote, CG6468~
"Any locomotive, steam or diesel-electric, passenger or freight, cannot get a train moving unless there is space between the knuckle couplers. With no spacing, it would be like immediately moving the entire weight of the train as a single unit; the spacing allows for moving only one car at a time. The knuckle couplers are designed for this spacing. That's why when a train begins moving we hear the noise of each car's slack in the knuckle couplers being taken up by the moving cars that precede it."
When I worked as a "carknocker" in the old PRR roundhouse in Buffalo switching cars around the yard to and from the roundhouse and the various sheds was a regular daily task. Everyone was checked out on the GE diesel switcher and was trained as a brakeman. If it was your car that needed moved it was you that moved it (and maybe a dozen others in the course of getting it where it needed to be).
(http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRtkbhesZkmrE3JBFujTfKF0WH3He7cY1NbeaqryM2oiXmnKATcfQ)
That old switcher was a twin engine model but only one engine worked, the other having been cannibalized for parts to maintain the first. The brakes were sketchy.
Most of the rolling stock being worked on usually had no brakes most of the time being they were in various states of repair or remanufacture. Slack action was a very dangerous thing for the unaware. New guys in training usually got right on board with the learning curve but now and then we had an accident or two with those who proved a wee tad slower on the uptake. Once those guys caught a brake lever in the ear or got knocked on their backsides in the slush while attempting to chock the wheels on a "stopped" car they learned about slack action the hard way.
The switcher and one car was no problem. The switcher and a string of half a dozen cars could see that last car creep several feet before it was actually stationary and safe to chock the wheels of with a hunk of 2x4.
I left that job after three years there. Suddenly it seemed several of the guys got the bright idea that we should go union, UAW. The whole sordid affair dragged on for more than a year and it got ugly. Fist fights, broken windshields, etc. When the opportunity came up I took another welding job and bailed. The new job was welding cement mixer truck drums, the big part on the back that turns and mixes the cement as the truck is on its way. Good job with more pay and better hours. Eight months into that we had an all hands meeting, going out of business.
Back at the rail yard I recalled seeing a map of North America on the office wall. There was a little red dot wherever there was a car shop (rail road repair or manufacture facility). Dozens all over the U.S., several across Canada and only two dots in Mexico. That map predated NAFTA. In the meantime it seems our mustachioed friends south of the border had been quite busy indeed. During the meeting I learned that our parent company based in Dallas was mainly involved in railcar manufacture and that since NAFTA went through there were now more than forty car shops down in old Meh-hee-co. As the story went the company had manufactured xxx thousand cars the last year before Nafta, xx thousand the next year, x thousand the next and most of those now being repairs as opposed to new builds and there went my job. Our mustachioed friends south of the border will work for forty bucks a week. How the :censored: do we compete with that??? How the :censored: was NAFTA "such a good thing for America"???
Gee thanks, Willie! :bs:
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This is a great thread. I'm always impressed with the vast amount of knowledge here. :-)
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The below is from a book that's here; it's not one of the pictures promised tomorrow (Wednesday), when I go to town and look in the family archives, which are kept in storage there (I keep nothing of value out here where I live; best to always have such things in secure locations).
The book doesn't say when or where, but given it's from the archives of Southern Methodist University, it's probably a pretty good bet it's from Texas or the southwest. Date? Maybe the 1920s. It's identified only as a locomotive engineer standing beside his machine.
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/engineer.jpg)
I should point out this looks to be only an "average-sized" steam locomotive of the period--but notice how large it is.
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BTW, forgot to mention. While I was at the rail yard there was an ad in the Sunday paper one week. Norfolk Southern Rail Road was hosting a hiring seminar at the Holiday Inn on Grand Island, one day only. This was for twenty something jobs with NSRR. Several of us from the rail yard attended, about a dozen.
Total attendance was about 1,800 people. They got the shindig started by saying "welcome, blah blah blah"... "any of you who have ever had a speeding ticket, please put your hand up". That was about half the room, myself included.
"Thank you for coming"... and that was that. One of our group, one guy made it as far as a sit down with one of the reps. He didn't get a job either.
Years later I happened to meet a guy who was about 25 at the time. Told me he used to be a locomotive engineer for NSRR, some relative had gotten him in when he was 18. His was a part time gig and his regular run was from Buffalo down to Cleveland every few weeks or so. He would take a string of empty automobile haulers down, sometimes have a layover in a hotel on the company dime and catch a ride back to Buffalo on the next northbound.
He got fired from that job after only six months because on one of the layovers in Cleveland after his run down he got a twelve pack of beer along with some groceries to take to his hotel room. He would be reimbursed by NSRR later after submitting his receipts. They didn't like the beer listed there and fired him for having alcohol on rail road property. The hotel was of course not rail road property and he was off duty at the time but they were paying for the room so he ran afoul of their regs and it cost him his job.
IIRC retirees of NSRR receive their pay in full and full medical and dental for the rest of their lives. If their spouse survives them she gets half for the rest of her life.
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I'm still confused however as to why the Milwaukee Road thought this such a good idea, while the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways, which went through the same sort of country, never did. Electric railways were popular in the northeastern United States, but to the best of my memory, this was the only major such thing west of the Mississippi.
Why would an electric locomotive work "better" in sub-zero terrain than steam or diesel?
The NP ran electrified lines as well, I don't recall if they were its own original trackage or lines it took over from the Milwaukee. one of the advantages the electrical lines had in the mountains was "Regenerative braking," i.e. they could produce power with the traction motors acting as generators on the downhill runs, and feed it back into the lines (I believe they used 3300v 3-phase, but I may be misremembering that). On modern road Diesels you'll generally see blisters about the center of the long hoods, at the roof line, which are the cooling intakes for "Dynamic braking," a cousin of the regeneration. In dynamic braking, the traction motors brake the wheels by acting as generators (Thus massively saving on brake shoes and wheel wear) but dump the power they generate into a huge resistance load that turns it into heat, without leaving the locomotive, which then has to be cooled with the apparatus those blisters represent. It's not nearly as elegant a use of power as regenerative braking, but it is still a huge improvement over reliance on conventional brakes alone.
Steam engines necessarily rely on water and therefore have certain disadvantages if not kept with fires alive but at least banked in sub-zero weather, and their support facilities like filling tanks along the line are subject to the same problem. Even Diesels require the constant movement of many tons of fuel to fueling points along the line, traffic which produces no direct revenue itself (And starting an 2,000+ HP Diesel in subzero weather can be a trying experience, Diesel fuel gets kind of sluggish at those low temps and it can take some nurturing to get the cylinders to start firing).
The thing about railroads is that they are businesses first, and everything they do has to make more financial sense than the alternatives; some decisions have much more to do with things like fuel taxes in a given state than with questions of mechanical efficiency, and the reasons may be opaque at the time to those outside the railroad's operational management circles.
One side of my Dad's family were Irish railroadmen in the Chicago area, in fact my uncle was a motorman on the North Shore Line back in the day, actually running their flagship Electroliner in the years before the line went under, circa 1960.
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The thing about railroads is that they are businesses first, and everything they do has to make more financial sense than the alternatives; some decisions have much more to do with things like fuel taxes in a given state than with questions of mechanical efficiency, and the reasons may be opaque at the time to those outside the railroad's operational management circles.
I knew that, sir; that's why I was inquiring of any possible economic advantages to having electrified lines.....and you answered so well in your two paragraphs preceding.
You, like TVDOC, should've been a teacher, and a highly-paid one.
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I'm waiting for the senior business partner to get back to me on something--I know what I'd do, but he has to sign off on my work, so best to learn what he thinks--and while waiting, I took out some photographs kept in one of the books on trains here.
During the 1950s into the early 1960s, the older brothers used to write public relations departments of various railways, inquiring of this or that, usually asking photographs. This being a kinder and gentler time, the public relations departments always responded.
What follows are all 8x10 glossy photographs sent by the various railways. There used to be a lot more, but much of this stuff eventually decorated the bedroom of my younger brother and I, and some things just aren't hardy enough to survive children.
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/ovltd.jpg)
A publicity shot, obviously air-brushed and altered, from the Chicago & North Western railway, of the famous Chicago-San Francisco Overland Limited, which ran on the rails of the C & NW to Omaha, the Union Pacific from there to Ogden, Utah, and then the Southern Pacific to San Francisco.
There's no identifying information on the back (other than the C & NW logo), but one assumes this is probably Iowa, and from the first decade of the last century.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/laltd1906.jpg)
As one can see, "the initial trip of the Los Angeles Limited in the desert."
If it was the initial trip, this photograph was snapped in 1906.
The Los Angeles Limited was one of the premier passenger trains of the Union Pacific until the advent of the streamliners during the late 1930s.
It went from Chicago to Los Angeles, but I disremember which line carried it on the Chicago-Omaha leg of the trip.
The deal was, for some reason long ago buried in the archives of the ICC (the Interstate Commerce Commission), the Union Pacific ended (eastward) at Omaha. All the other transcontinental lines were allowed to build, or acquire, lines that gave them direct access to Chicago, but the Union Pacific wasn't allowed to do that, not even via stock ownership in a rail line that came out of Chicago.
This was a definite handicap, as Chicago was the main rail center of North America. Omaha was pretty big, but really nothing compared with Chicago.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/unkn.jpg)
The above has NO identifying mark or script on the back; one assumes it was in Iowa, circa 1900-1920.
From the position of the engineer on the left-hand side, it must be the C & NW.
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The Los Angeles Limited, probably between 1910-1920.
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/laltd.jpg)
The cracks are apparently from a cracked glass negative.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/17.jpg)
Identified only as "#17," and from the Chicago & Northwestern, probably in Iowa, on its way to Omaha; probably from the 1920s.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/400.jpg)
The Chicago & North Western's famous "400," leaving Chicago for Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota.
Probably from the 1920s.
It was called the "400"--its actual name--because it took 400 minutes to make the trip.
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That is a really good question, and I can only speculate......by electric locomotives, I assume you mean "overhead supply" electric, as powered rails would be far too dangerous in the open areas without fencing the road to protect livestock and humans. The sheer cost of the infrastructure to run all those overhead supply lines would have been immense compared to using coal and water..,,,,,unless the railroad owned the power plants, and viewed running the trains on electricity as a freebie.
The only other consideration that I can think of is what was the load they were hauling?? Electric locomotives (traction motors), had the ability to "start" heavier loads because the torque to the wheels could be very finely tuned to eliminate driver slippage. This was the major disadvantage of steam......a steam locomotive could haul a hundred car train at 90 mph halfway across the country......the problem was getting it moving, too heavy a load, and the locomotive just sits there with the drivers spinning. "Sanders" were used to partially overcome this shortfall, but even they had their limits.
One interesting fact about steam is that there was NO theoretical limit to how fast a steam locomotive could go......keep the throttle wide open and pour on the coal to keep the boiler pressure climbing, and they would accelerate until they destroyed themselves.
As an aside, the "Land Speed Record" was for many years held by a steam-powered automobile.....the Stanley Steamer......over 100 mph, somewhere around 1900, when such speeds were unthinkable.....same principle.
doc
Interesting as this is also a distinction between a gas fueled,spark ignited piston engine and a diesel fueled,compression ignited one.
The gas one is limited by how much air it can draw in to mix with the fuel whereas the diesel will keep revving faster and faster (called running away and the reason the old 2 stroke Detroits had an air shut off) until something mechanically failed.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/sjd.jpg)
The San Joaquin Daylight of the Southern Pacific, which ran San Francisco-Los Angeles, probably from the late 1930s, maybe as late as the late 1940s.
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/cd.jpg)
The Coast Daylight of the Southern Pacific, which also ran San Francisco-Los Angeles, about the same time.
The Southern Pacific had two lines running up-and-down California, one in the interior, and one along the Pacific coast.
Both Daylights were day-time trains; there were also Starlights which went overnight.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/sp.jpg)
From the Southern Pacific, no identification, no date; one assumes California, late 1950s, early 1960s.
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Hmmm. I wasn't aware.
I knew the 4-8-4 of the Union Pacific was in active duty, never retired, and sometimes used when there's abnormally-bad blizzards in Wyoming, and that the 4-6-6-4 had been retired but then was restored, and is currently "active".
I had heard a rumor that there's an operable 4-8-8-4, and thought it was in Cheyenne, but it's in Omaha, on display but ready to go any time it's fired up. In fact in 1996 it had gone from Cheyenne to Omaha under its own power, no help needed.
I guess the problem is.....OSHA.
Anyway.
Alone among modern railroads, UP maintains a small fleet of historic locomotives for special trains and hire in its Cheyenne, Wyoming roundhouse. The roundhouse is just south of the historic depot.
UP 844 is a 4-8-4 Northern type express passenger steam locomotive (class FEF-3). It was the last steam locomotive built for UP and has been in continuous service since its 1944 delivery. Many people know the engine as the No. 8444, since an extra '4' was added to its number in 1962 to distinguish it from a diesel numbered in the 800 series. It regained its rightful number in June 1989, after the diesel was retired. A mechanical failure occurred on June 24, 1999, in which the boiler tubes from the 1996 overhaul, being made of the wrong material, collapsed inside the boiler and put the steam locomotive out of commission. The UP steam crew successfully repaired it and returned it to service on November 10, 2004. It is the only steam locomotive to never be officially retired from a North American Class I railroad.
UP 3985 is a 4-6-6-4 Challenger class dual-service steam locomotive. It is the largest steam locomotive still in operation anywhere in the world. Withdrawn from service in 1962, it was stored in the UP roundhouse until 1975, when it was moved to the employees' parking lot outside the Cheyenne, Wyoming, depot until 1981 when a team of employee volunteers restored it to service. In 2007, it underwent repairs for service, and was back up and running in 2008 to continue its run.
UP 5511 is a 2-10-2 steam locomotive. This locomotive is very rarely ever heard of, because it was never donated for public display. This locomotive is reportedly in excellent condition, and a restoration probably would not take more than a couple of weeks. The only thing keeping it from being restored is that it would be limited to 40 mph (64 km/h) or lower due to its large cylinders and small drivers. As of August 2004, this locomotive is being offered for sale by UP. It is currently in storage at the roundhouse where 844 & 3985 are repaired in Cheyenne, Wyoming
UP 1243 is a 4-6-0 steam locomotive, and is the oldest locomotive owned by UP. Built in 1890 and retired in 1957, it was at first stored in Rawlins, Wyoming. It was cosmetically restored in 1990 for public display, and toured with 844 as part of the Idaho and Wyoming Centennial train, being moved on a flat car. It was moved to Omaha, Nebraska in November 1996 and put on display at the Western Heritage Museum.
UP 4023 – A Union Pacific Big Boy 4-8-8-4 articulated steam locomotive, on display at Lauritzen Gardens/Kenefick Park, Omaha, Nebraska. It has been rumoured that Number 4023 was being considered by UP for restoration to operational status.
UP 3203 – A 4-6-2 type, donated to City of Portland, Oregon in January 1958. Originally Oregon Railway and Navigation Company #197, it was moved to the Brooklyn Roundhouse in 1996 and is scheduled to return to operation by 2012.
UP 838, a twin 4-8-4 to 844, is stored in the Cheyenne roundhouse as a parts source, though as most of its usable parts have already been applied to 844, it is more likely to see use as a source of pattern parts for reproduction replacements. Reputedly, 838's boiler is in better condition than that of 844, due to 838 having not been in steam since retirement, compared to 844's relatively heavy use since 1960.
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Now my question for the science and technology guys.
UP 5511 is a 2-10-2 steam locomotive. This locomotive is very rarely ever heard of, because it was never donated for public display. This locomotive is reportedly in excellent condition, and a restoration probably would not take more than a couple of weeks. The only thing keeping it from being restored is that it would be limited to 40 mph (64 km/h) or lower due to its large cylinders and small drivers. As of August 2004, this locomotive is being offered for sale by UP. It is currently in storage at the roundhouse where 844 & 3985 are repaired in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
One can only speculate, but for what purpose was such a locomotive designed?
If it couldn't go more than 40 mph even in its prime, while it may have worked other places, it would've been too slow to begin with, on the Union Pacific.
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(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/unkn.jpg)
The above has NO identifying mark or script on the back; one assumes it was in Iowa, circa 1900-1920.
From the position of the engineer on the left-hand side, it must be the C & NW.
It looks like the one HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:D%26SNG_482%26480_2006.jpg), Frank.
The number and the smokestack design seem just like what your picture shows.
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Now my question for the science and technology guys.
One can only speculate, but for what purpose was such a locomotive designed?
If it couldn't go more than 40 mph even in its prime, while it may have worked other places, it would've been too slow to begin with, on the Union Pacific.
Maybe it was a switcher, Frank.
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It looks like the one HERE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:D%26SNG_482%26480_2006.jpg), Frank.
The ones at your link, sir, are narrow guage, not standard gauge.
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Maybe it was a switcher, Frank.
A 2-10-2?
Surely you jest, sir.
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The ones at your link, sir, are narrow guage, not standard gauge.
I know. But like I said above, the general design and the number match your pic.
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I know. But like I said above, the general design and the number match your pic.
I just noticed something else about that picture, and am wondering if the negative was reversed.
We don't know if this is a C&NW locomotive; I'm just guessing it is.
The C&NW, alone among American railways, drove on the left side, not the usual way.
Like the way the British drive.
I dunno why the C&NW did that, but that's what they did.
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A 2-10-2?
Surely you jest, sir.
No, just a JFU! :cheersmate: :lmao:
I got the photos mixed up in my small mind! :wink: :hyper:
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I just noticed something else about that picture, and am wondering if the negative was reversed.
I think not. The numbers on the cab are not reversed or backwards. I think the photo is OK.
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I think not. The numbers on the cab are not reversed or backwards. I think the photo is OK.
Yeah, after I wrote that, I saw, oooops.
I was doing some adding on an adding machine, and goofed up.
Sorry. You're right; it doesn't appear reversed.
And since it's not reversed, it's not C&NW.
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Yeah, after I wrote that, I saw, oooops.
I was doing some adding on an adding machine, and goofed up.
Sorry. You're right; it doesn't appear reversed.
And since it's not reversed, it's not C&NW.
We may never really know, Frank. We do know it's not C&NW, however.
It's another one of life's mysteries! :-)
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We may never really know, Frank. We do know it's not C&NW, however.
It's another one of life's mysteries! :-)
I'll find a steam railway fan message board, and try to get someone from it to come over here to chat.
You know, sir, I did that in the early days of conservativecave, when I went around looking for potential members. I'd posted something about sunken ships, and went to a message board for sunken ship enthusiasts; one guy, a professor from some college in Georgia who knew the subject like the back of his hand came over and explained things. He made, oh, maybe 50 posts, over a few weeks, and as everything seemed satisfactorily explained and as he wasn't into politics, he left.
I'll bet I can do it again, but not today. Maybe Friday.
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Now my question for the science and technology guys.
One can only speculate, but for what purpose was such a locomotive designed?
If it couldn't go more than 40 mph even in its prime, while it may have worked other places, it would've been too slow to begin with, on the Union Pacific.
Slow, heavy freights. Wheel diameter is like basic leverage or gear ratios: For the same power and stroke from the pistons, larger drive wheel diameter = higher speed + lower torque (Or power at the meeting of rail and drive wheel), and smaller drive wheel diameter = lower speed + higher torque.
Yeah, not a switcher. Switchers generally had no lead or trail wheels, at low speeds on tight turns in the yards, they are an unnecessary impediment. The purpose of the lead wheels is to assist with tracking at higher speed on open road, and the main purpose of the trailing wheels is to support the weight of the cab and firebox. Both help distribute the weight of the locomotive to keep the drive wheels within the maximum axle load limits, of course.
I believe at least one of the big Western roads, AT&SF, SP or UP, did have a few 0-10-0 switchers to handle the long strings in their biggest yards, but 0-6-0s and 0-4-0s were far and away the typical switchers.
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Regarding
UP 5511 is a 2-10-2 steam locomotive. This locomotive is very rarely ever heard of, because it was never donated for public display. This locomotive is reportedly in excellent condition, and a restoration probably would not take more than a couple of weeks. The only thing keeping it from being restored is that it would be limited to 40 mph (64 km/h) or lower due to its large cylinders and small drivers. As of August 2004, this locomotive is being offered for sale by UP. It is currently in storage at the roundhouse where 844 & 3985 are repaired in Cheyenne, Wyoming
I humbly submit the following information:
UP 5511
In its last years of use, 5511 was used as a stationary boiler at Ogden, then at Green River. Such use was very hard on boilers as they seldom received blow-downs and in general were not watched as closely as they were when used as a steam locomotive. Its piston rods were cut (see photo on the right) when it was towed from Green River to Cheyenne for storage and possible scrapping back in 1968. During that trip it developed a "hot box" had to be set out to be repacked. Cutting the piston rods was standard procedure when preparing a locomotive for the scrapper's torch. The drive rods would be left on so that the drivers would be balanced during transport but the main rods would be severed so that there would be no chance for the pistons to bind which could cause a derailment. 5511 arrived in Cheyenne but was fortunately saved from the cutters torch possibly because it was featured in the movie Last of the Giants made by UP about the Big Boy locomotives. 4-6-0 1243 (which had been towed from Rawlins in 1968) was also featured in that movie and was also stored in the UP roundhouse for many years before being sent to Omaha for display.
I have heard conflicting information regarding 5511's current condition. One report stated that 5511 is not in very good mechanical condition. The report stated that most of the cab appliances have been removed (although they could have been removed by UP staff, I don't know). It went on to say that since returning from Green River, 5511 had not had a hydro test or any kind of boiler inspection and its condition was a bit of a mystery. A recent report stated that the steam crew looked at the boiler and "ran all sorts of tests" and concluded that it would not take much work to restore it. Whatever its current condition, as a candidate for restoration it is very poor. It was built as a "drag" locomotive. It has a very long wheel base, longer than that of 844. Contrary to what some people have told me, Steve Lee of the UP steam program has informed me that the center driver is NOT blind. It has friction bearings (which is another strike against any restoration efforts). It has a small tender, limiting its range, and finally its large cylinders and small drivers would limit its speed. In service this class of locomotives was limited to 45 mph. In all, it would not be a very useful locomotive to have running. In 2004 I heard that this locomotive would be offered for sale.
Some more info (http://www.steamlocomotive.com/northern/upstorage.shtml)
and re:"drag locomotives"....
This style of locomotive was designed to be used in general freight service, working slowly along the line setting out and picking up cars from sidings along the way.
Drag locomotives (http://www.lsrm.org/Home/exsteam.html)
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Not a steam locomotive, but a sort of old time classic, that I saw during my younger days in Western Springs, Illinois. That village is a suburb of Chicago and is on the main line of the CB&Q.
The Burlington Zephyr:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Automotive/CBQ_Zephyr.jpg)
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A bit of information for any here having satellite or cable television. "RFD-TV" (a network specializing in rural, farm, and ranching interests)........airs a one hour show every Monday between 5 and 6 PM (Central), that runs nothing but film and stories of steam locomotives in the modern era, restorations, promotional runs, railroad history, and upcoming steam events.
Lots of great footage, and overall, pretty interesting for railroad buffs.
doc
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A bit of information for any here having satellite or cable television. "RFD-TV" (a network specializing in rural, farm, and ranching interests)........airs a one hour show every Monday between 5 and 6 PM (Central), that runs nothing but film and stories of steam locomotives in the modern era, restorations, promotional runs, railroad history, and upcoming steam events.
Lots of great footage, and overall, pretty interesting for railroad buffs.
doc
We had that channel with Dish Network, but now with Comcast it is not available in their lineup. I really liked RFD-TV. They also broadcast some good cooking programs.
Trivia: What does RFD mean?
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What a great thread. My own love for steam locos started when I was roughly 4. My father was working for US Plywood at the time in Cupertino Ca. and landed a sale of T111 (I think) plywood for a narrow gauge railroad being built in Felton Ca. This was and is Roaring Camp. The plywood was used for the open air cars being built.
Being a rail nut he became friends with the man building his "dream" much like Walt Disney but on a vastly smaller scale. Many times my father would bring me along to see how the little railroad was coming along. We would get "personal" rides up to the corkscrew trestle being built (since burned down by an arsonist). I still have some very fond memories of the rides up the hill.
The railroad uses 2-3 types of logging locos; Shays, Climaxes, and Heislers. I'm not sure if all three are actually in use.
Here's the Dixiana Shay still in use today:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwfvNgopka0&feature=related[/youtube]
Oh, Frank, these engines have ALOT of the "guts" exposed and are absolutely fascinating to watch run.
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We had that channel with Dish Network, but now with Comcast it is not available in their lineup. I really liked RFD-TV. They also broadcast some good cooking programs.
Trivia: What does RFD mean?
"Rural Free Delivery"......from the Post Office........
doc
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A bit of information for any here having satellite or cable television. "RFD-TV" (a network specializing in rural, farm, and ranching interests)........airs a one hour show every Monday between 5 and 6 PM (Central), that runs nothing but film and stories of steam locomotives in the modern era, restorations, promotional runs, railroad history, and upcoming steam events.
Lots of great footage, and overall, pretty interesting for railroad buffs.
doc
The local PBS station carries a similar program, but with a heavy focus on model railroads It's called 'Tracks Ahead' and is hosted by Spencer Christian. I don't know if it's still being produced, but it's on every Saturday morning.
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"Rural Free Delivery"......from the Post Office........
doc
Correct, Doc!
I have a short but favorite and simple video (I'm Just a Farmer, Plain and Simple) I copied from RFD when it was still available. They no longer offer it, unfortunately, and I don't know how or even if I can put it here directly from my computer. Photobucket has a problem with it.
Here are the words, but the video is much better.
Often seen and heard on RFD-TV
I’m Just a Farmer, Plain and Simple
~By Bobby Collier~
I'm just a farmer,
Plain and simple.
Not of a royal birth
But rather, a worker of the earth.
I know not of riches
But rather, of patches on my britches
I know of draught and rain,
Of pleasure and pain.
I know of the good and the bad,
The happy and the sad.
I am a man of emotions.
A man who loves this land,
And the beauty of its sand.
I know of a spring's fresh flow
And autumn's golden glow,
Of a newborn calf's hesitation,
And the eagle's destination.
I know of tall pines,
And long, waiting lines.
Of the warmth of campfires,
And the agony of flat tires.
But I am a man who loves his job
And the life I live.
I am a man who works with God,
I cannot succeed without His help,
For you see,
I'm just a farmer
Plain and simple.
Just a Farmer (http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/vb/archive/index.php/t-11102.html)
PS - Sorry for the thread drift.
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Wineslob, I could watch those Shay locomotives all day. Everything seemed to move with the geared locomotives!
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Wineslob, I could watch those Shay locomotives all day. Everything seemed to move with the geared locomotives!
More geared locos:
[youtube=425,350][http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-XBDOLA-As&feature=related/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYfT0_PmbWo[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyqd8R0KPlg&feature=related[/youtube]
I love the sounds these old Iron Horses make, especially the whistles.
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Slow, heavy freights. Wheel diameter is like basic leverage or gear ratios: For the same power and stroke from the pistons, larger drive wheel diameter = higher speed + lower torque (Or power at the meeting of rail and drive wheel), and smaller drive wheel diameter = lower speed + higher torque.
Yeah, not a switcher. Switchers generally had no lead or trail wheels, at low speeds on tight turns in the yards, they are an unnecessary impediment. The purpose of the lead wheels is to assist with tracking at higher speed on open road, and the main purpose of the trailing wheels is to support the weight of the cab and firebox. Both help distribute the weight of the locomotive to keep the drive wheels within the maximum axle load limits, of course.
I believe at least one of the big Western roads, AT&SF, SP or UP, did have a few 0-10-0 switchers to handle the long strings in their biggest yards, but 0-6-0s and 0-4-0s were far and away the typical switchers.
It appears the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe had a bunch of them, as did too the Reading in Pennsylvania.
To be honest, I'd never heard of a 2-10-2, and it's not listed anywhere in my handy-dandy guide of railway locomotives.
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/2-10-2.jpg)
--from the Pennsylvania Railroad.
To my mind, it looks kind of unstable, as if it's about to tip over at either end.
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Wineslob, I could watch those Shay locomotives all day. Everything seemed to move with the geared locomotives!
Uh huh.
You know, those who actually worked with steam locomotives some time ago departed from this time and place.
And those who can remember seeing them in real-life working action are alas slowly heading that way, too.
There is however a new generation of steam enthusiasts; a generation that has no memories of, or nostalgia for, steam locomotives. This younger crowd is attracted to them for the reason you stated; it's a fascinating thing to watch--and to watch for hours--a machine with all its moving parts out where one can see them (and hence understand them), a machine that actually seems to breathe human-like animation and life.
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Here's yet another most peculiar one, a 2-8-8-4:
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/28884.jpg)
Only one 2-8-8-8-4 was ever built, a Mallet-type for the Virginian Railway in 1916. Built by Baldwin Locomotive Works, it became the only example of their class XA, so named due to the experimental nature of the locomotive.
The XA was unable to sustain a speed greater than five miles an hour, since the six cylinders could easily consume more steam than the boiler could produce. The tender had a four-wheel truck at the rear to help guide the locomotive into curves when drifting back downhill after pushing a train over the hill.
Okay, now I'm not intimately acquainted with the terrain where the Virginian Railway operated, because while I've been through that area, it was back when I was a kid, and not paying attention.
Mountainous. Not easy to traverse.
Yet on the other hand, the Virginian railway operated in an area where the Chesapeake & Ohio, Norfolk & Western, and Western Maryland also operated.....and outside of the vast plains and mountains of the west, this particular area boasted some of the largest locomotives ever made. Giants.
So they knew how to make massive locomotives that could handle the geographic features, but this to me looks as if someone goofed, making a massive locomotive that couldn't possibly deal with the terrain.
The XA was sent back to Baldwin in 1920 and was rebuilt as two locomotives, a 2-8-8-0 and a 2-8-2. Unlike their progenitor which lasted only a few years in service, these two locomotives remained in service until 1953.
Hmmmm.
Recycling steam locomotives. I didn't know they did that. I knew that on occasion some were somewhat altered, but making two locomotives out of one, I never read of.
Of course, during the 1940s and 1950s when railways were getting rid of their steam locomotives, they were sold for scrap metal.
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Frank, the Virginian, C&O, and N&W were all big coal-haulers in the Appalachians, and had some of the most powerful freight locomotives in the Eastern US for moving those long, heavy coal strings over the mountains.
You may have noticed the unusually long firebox on that Pennsy 2-10-2. The Pennsy and the Reading were notable as the "Anthracite roads," that burned the harder, cleaner, but cooler-burning anthracite coal instead of the otherwise-near-universal bituminous. The extra-large fireboxes for the hard coal are generally called 'Belpaire fireboxes' for man responsible for developing them, who worked for the Pennsy. The Pennsylvania in fact advertised itself as 'The road that anthracite built,' and 'The standard railroad of America' because it tried to set the pace of technology and engineering practice, for instance throughout much of its history the standard for mainline rail on the PRR was 10% or greater more than the average in use on the other Class 1 railroads, i.e. the PRR was using 180# rail as its standard when the average elsewhere was 150#-160#.
I do remember seeing steam locomotives, just barely; PRR actually, in the late 50s. I do remember on a trip to north of Chicago that my Dad and Uncle (Who lived in the area) took me down one night to await the passage of a streamliner, on its highballing departure from the north Chicago yards, which I realized later was the Hiawatha. I also remember hearing the local switcher's crew at night in my own southern Indiana town, they were maybe a mile away, working the set-outs for the scheduled train to pick up the next day.
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Whoa, Tanker.
Are you sure you're not a steam expert in fact. Damn, you know stuff, sir.
The Belpaire firebox is a type of firebox used on steam locomotives.....It has a greater surface area at the top of the firebox, improving heat transfer and steam production. Its rectangular shape makes attaching the firebox to the boiler more difficult, but this is offset by simpler interior bracing of the firebox.
The Pennsylvania Railroad used Belpaire fireboxes on nearly all of its steam locomotives. The distinctive square shape practically became a PRR trademark, as no other American railroad except the Great Northern used Belpaire fireboxes in significant numbers.
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In addition to a vast interest in things military, cultural, and historical, I have a love of things mechanical from elegant pulley and lever solutions in ancient machines to phased plasma rifles in the forty Watt range. One picks up a tremendous amount of information in the course of a lifetime, I suppose.
:cheersmate:
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How many of you have put a coin on the track for the train to run over? :-)
A show of hands, please. :wink:
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How many of you have put a coin on the track for the train to run over? :-)
A show of hands, please. :wink:
I used to put coins on the old Frisco line near where I grew up. The railroad bed is a bicycle trail now. I ride it occasionally.
I remember I was always disappointed because when I went to collect my freshly squashed coins, they were WAY to smashed and stretched out on the track to even think about peeling them off. Maybe the train was going to slow, and kind of squeezed them out for too long. I don't know. I never did give that one much thought as to why it wasn't working.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Automotive/UP844.jpg)
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ5t9_ahBqY&feature=related[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G94Aw2S0Coc&feature=related[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEhj9sXvP-8&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
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Frank, the Virginian, C&O, and N&W were all big coal-haulers in the Appalachians, and had some of the most powerful freight locomotives in the Eastern US for moving those long, heavy coal strings over the mountains.
Speaking of coal strings, several years ago, Mrs.D and I took a road trip up to the Black Hills area, on back roads (some gravel) from KC, up through the Nebraska Sand Hills, into SD. As we traveled west (I don't remember the highway) we were travelling along a double road (two track sets, one for trains in each direction), which carried nothing but coal strings......one after another, spaced perhaps fifteen to twenty minutes apart, fully loaded going east, and equally spaced empties deadheading west. We assumed they were coming from the coal fields in western Wyoming and Montana. It was a massive display of RR hauling capability.
Don't know where they are divided and routed to their ultimate destinations, but some of them come through here, on the N&S road about a mile from our house. We also see coal strings bound for local power plants coming from the Peabody fields in SW Missouri and SE Kansas.
doc
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Is your driveway covered with deep snow? Well, is it? Need some help?
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBSuNz3g0oA&feature=related[/youtube]
This one could probably help out, too.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVm3MMZ-UgY&feature=related[/youtube]
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Speaking of coal strings, several years ago, Mrs.D and I took a road trip up to the Black Hills area, on back roads (some gravel) from KC, up through the Nebraska Sand Hills, into SD. As we traveled west (I don't remember the highway) we were travelling along a double road (two track sets, one for trains in each direction), which carried nothing but coal strings......one after another, spaced perhaps fifteen to twenty minutes apart, fully loaded going east, and equally spaced empties deadheading west. We assumed they were coming from the coal fields in western Wyoming and Montana. It was a massive display of RR hauling capability.
Don't know where they are divided and routed to their ultimate destinations, but some of them come through here, on the N&S road about a mile from our house. We also see coal strings bound for local power plants coming from the Peabody fields in SW Missouri and SE Kansas.
You went up Nebraska Highway 2 towards Chadron, which would be the only possible scenario with the picture you painted. That was the old Chicago, Burlington & Quincy line, now I guess the Burlington Northern unless they changed their name again.
You went right through the town where I spent my adolescence.
This was the Hastings (near Grand Island)-Billings, Montana, branch line of the old CB&Q. When I was growing up, it was a little-used line. The "division points" were at Grand Island, Ravenna, and Alliance. Alliance, on the outer western edge of the Sandhills, was the major point.
During the Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush prosperity, this once little-used line was double-tracked to bring coal from Montana further south, and it's been a very lucrative business for the Burlington Northern (if it's still called that). For a while, I guess, a few years back, it was also the longest line using strictly continuously-welded rails.
It's much different than it was when I grew up there, again the result of tax-and-spend policies that encouraged opening up the remote areas.
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Doc, the BNSF runs some HUGE unit trains of coal to the east.
Oops. Frank beat me to it! :thatsright:
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DAT.....perhaps you can answer a question for me.......CG's photos and clips above of UP844 show a vertical flat shield on both sides of the front of the locomotive extending from several feet in front of the boiler back for about 30% of the locomotive's length.
These were almost universally used on European steam locomotives (but not American), and I could never figure their purpose.
I'm certain you know.......
doc
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Doc, the BNSF runs some HUGE unit trains of coal to the east.
Okay, that's it, the name now.
The Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
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DAT.....perhaps you can answer a question for me.......CG's photos and clips above of UP844 show a vertical flat shield on both sides of the front of the locomotive extending from several feet in front of the boiler back for about 30% of the locomotive's length.
These were almost universally used on European steam locomotives (but not American), and I could never figure their purpose.
I'm certain you know.......
doc
I have one thought on this, Doc. They probably prevented snow from falling back under the wheels of the locomotives after the plows had cut through the snow.
But that's only a guess.
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Okay, that's it, the name now.
The Burlington Northern Santa Fe.
Correcto mundo!
Burlington (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy [CB&Q]) + Great Northern + Santa Fe.
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CSX uses this jet engine gadget to clear tracks/ switches of ice around Buffalo, New York.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OO94Bk1cgw[/youtube]
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Correcto mundo!
Burlington (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy [CB&Q]) + Great Northern + Santa Fe.
There was a whole spate of railway mergers after I stopped keeping track of trains.
It's odd, that for decades, generations, the Union Pacific was compelled to stop at Omaha and Kansas City, not allowed to reach towards Chicago and St. Louis, the main railway centers of North America, depending upon lesser lines to carry goods that short distance and give them to eastern roads at Chicago and St. Louis--and now the Union Pacific covers nearly all the United States west of Indiana down to Louisiana.
By the way, the Union Pacific has its own police force, with official federal, state, and local law-enforcement rights. One wonders what the primitives would think of that if they knew it, a private corporation thus empowered.
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CSX uses this jet engine gadget to clear tracks/ switches of ice around Buffalo, New York.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OO94Bk1cgw[/youtube]
Ice is just as bad or worse for trains than it is for cars. When the switches freeze up with ice, there will be serious problems.
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Up here on the roof of Nebraska, there aren't any rails any more; it's all a very long bicycle and horse-riding trail alongside the Niobrara River.
The Chicago & Northwestern once had a line, converging from Chicago, Omaha, and Minneapolis-St. Paul on Sioux City, where the lines all came together and headed westward across here.
They perhaps had hopes of building a line clear to the Pacific, but withered out somewhere in mid-Wyoming.
The height of the line's fame was during the 1920s, when Calvin Coolidge used the Black Hills as his Camp David, and came via train through here many times. He didn't have to, but he took the opportunity anyway to campaign in all these very small towns, stopping in at the local hotel or watering-hole to have a cup of coffee while the locomotive was getting filled with water.
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Empire State Express No. 999 preserved and on display at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Railroad/800px-999_at_Chicago_Museum.jpg)
In Syracuse, NY, 5/13/1893.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Railroad/800px-NYC_999_in_Syracuse.jpg)
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Up here on the roof of Nebraska, there aren't any rails any more; it's all a very long bicycle and horse-riding trail alongside the Niobrara River.
They did that down here to the old MK&T (Missouri, Kansas & Texas) "Katy" line, which winds along the Missouri River across most of the state......it's now a bicycle trail......
The rest of our roads (except spurs), are pretty much intact.......probably due to the fact that Missouri was on the "main line" for many of the roads going east/west, and NW/SE.....coast to coast.
doc
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The "Katy." I haven't heard that name in a long time.
It's search time - if not today then - no, tomorrow, I have to go up past the cheddar curtain - well, sometime! :lmao:
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Need a special cell phone ring?
Cell Phone Rings (http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/display/sounds.cfm/sound_group_iid.3789)
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Missouri, Kansas, Texas (The Katy).
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Railroad/MKT_RNC_RVN08634.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Railroad/MKT_RNC_RVN03527.jpg)
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SLSF 1522 (St. Louis and San Francisco).
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/lowfreeboard/Railroad/Frisco.jpg)
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By the way, the Union Pacific has its own police force, with official federal, state, and local law-enforcement rights. One wonders what the primitives would think of that if they knew it, a private corporation thus empowered.
I always wondered about that, when seeing the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Police SUVs here in town. It looks like the BNSF Police have the same jurisdiction powers:
49 USC - Sec. 28101
http://us-code.vlex.com/vid/sec-rail-police-officers-19259784
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From Steamtown, National Historic Site. A very cool place~
(http://www.nps.gov/stea//images/20060714095558.jpg)
If ever passing through the northeast near Scranton, Pennsylvania this would be a great "whistle stop".
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Does anyone remember this from the US Bicentennial in 1976?
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jLC1_Ymhyk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Dressed out in her original SP colors.....
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWGc8JAWWj0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
It carried the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution on tour across the country.......we had the opportunity to see it in New York (it was a zoo).
doc
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Walter Chrysler started out washing locomotives as a boy and eventually worked his way up to engineer. It's an amazing story.
His hand-made tools are on display at the Chrysler Building in New York.
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(http://einhornpress.com/images/LOCOMOTIVE%20WHEEL%20PLANS.bmp)
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DAT.....perhaps you can answer a question for me.......CG's photos and clips above of UP844 show a vertical flat shield on both sides of the front of the locomotive extending from several feet in front of the boiler back for about 30% of the locomotive's length.
These were almost universally used on European steam locomotives (but not American), and I could never figure their purpose.
I'm certain you know.......
doc
They have two purposes, Doc, one is purely stylistic, but on the giants, they actually served a useful purpose for airflow to take the smoke up. The giant locomotives still had to clear the road's loading gage for tunnel and bridge clearance, leaving very little room for a stack to provide uptake for the smoke, so the wings channel air back over the top of the boiler to lift the exhaust smoke. A lot of which is actually the exhaust steam from the cylinders, which shoots up the stack under its own expansive power, and provides draw to pull the actual smoke through the boiler tubes and up the stack, and therefore pull air into the firebox all the way back in the cab. The very front of the boiler is called the 'Smokebox' because that is where the exhaust steam and outlet end of the boiler tubes comes together and is ducted together to produce that draw.
European railroads use a smaller loading gage and lighter maximum axle weights than American Class 1 railroads, even though (Except for anything built by the Russians) the rail guage was the same as ours. Entirely different coupling system, of course...both started with link-and-pin, they improved it until it was safe but labor-intensive with buffers and turnbuckle hooks, we junked it entirely and adopted the automatic knuckle coupler and air brake systems.
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This rail road bridge is just a few miles from here in Letchworth State Park. It spans the Genesee river over the "upper falls", one of three waterfalls in the park. Now 136 years old it still carries regular rail traffic today. It is 820 feet long and 240 feet high. To give perspective, the falls seen below it are 71 feet high and 300 feet wide.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCM0I7nMqZo[/youtube]
This bridge was built in 1875 of iron and steel atop the stone abutments of the first bridge. The first bridge was erected in 1851-52 by the Erie Rail Road. It was entirely consumed by fire May 06, 1875 leaving only the stone abutments remaining.
The first bridge~
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/33/Pgbridge_1864.jpg/220px-Pgbridge_1864.jpg)
(http://gowaterfalling.com/waterfalls/images/full/ny/letchworthupperfalls43.jpg)
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Durango & Silverton Railroad.
We camped right near this railroad in 1972. And then, just by happenstance, we pulled into the same campground in 1995 and camped in the exact same location as the first time.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y31i6T1byVQ&feature=related[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1kvCKT9bl4&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
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They have two purposes, Doc, one is purely stylistic, but on the giants, they actually served a useful purpose for airflow to take the smoke up. The giant locomotives still had to clear the road's loading gage for tunnel and bridge clearance, leaving very little room for a stack to provide uptake for the smoke, so the wings channel air back over the top of the boiler to lift the exhaust smoke. A lot of which is actually the exhaust steam from the cylinders, which shoots up the stack under its own expansive power, and provides draw to pull the actual smoke through the boiler tubes and up the stack, and therefore pull air into the firebox all the way back in the cab. The very front of the boiler is called the 'Smokebox' because that is where the exhaust steam and outlet end of the boiler tubes comes together and is ducted together to produce that draw.
European railroads use a smaller loading gage and lighter maximum axle weights than American Class 1 railroads, even though (Except for anything built by the Russians) the rail guage was the same as ours. Entirely different coupling system, of course...both started with link-and-pin, they improved it until it was safe but labor-intensive with buffers and turnbuckle hooks, we junked it entirely and adopted the automatic knuckle coupler and air brake systems.
The mystery is solved!! Thanks, makes perfect sense, smoke and soot were always a problem with steam.
doc
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Union Pacific 4-6-6-4 Big Boys.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAjsTA8ptwE&feature=related[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zt00jwsYqh8&feature=related[/youtube]
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we junked it entirely and adopted the automatic knuckle coupler and air brake systems.
This reminds me, I have a book "Air Brake Catechism" thats rather fun to read through. I believe the copyright is around 1921. (orig. 1st ed is 1906)
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This reminds me, I have a book "Air Brake Catechism" thats rather fun to read through. I believe the copyright is around 1921. (orig. 1st ed is 1906)
It was a huge lifesaver. Before airbrakes, the brakemen had to scamper up along the train on the catwalks atop the cars to turn or release the brake wheels by hand, on signal from the whistle, limiting the length of trains drastically...hard enough to do in clear weather and straight track, but risky as all Hell in freezing conditions or even rain and wind. Upwards of 15,000 railroad workers met their Maker every year in operations accidents before the air brake and automatic knuckle coupler. Life and labor were held cheap by the owners and management, and it all gave legitimate rise to the unions in reaction to that attitude.
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This morning, I finally got around to doing something.
I'm trying to determine the real size of 132 feet, the length of a 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive; I dunno if that includes the tender or not, but whatever.
The longest side of this house is 84 feet.
The eaves from the roof reach down to about 12 feet from the ground one's standing on.
(I dunno what the height was of one of those locomotives.)
That 4-8-8-4 was truly a big one.
It must've looked even bigger when in operation.
I know this might seem stupid, but simply to say something is "twenty feet long" means nothing to me; I have to actually see twenty feet of length to "conceptualize" it.
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It was a huge lifesaver. Before airbrakes, the brakemen had to scamper up along the train on the catwalks atop the cars to turn or release the brake wheels by hand, on signal from the whistle, limiting the length of trains drastically...hard enough to do in clear weather and straight track, but risky as all Hell in freezing conditions or even rain and wind. Upwards of 15,000 railroad workers met their Maker every year in operations accidents before the air brake and automatic knuckle coupler. Life and labor were held cheap by the owners and management, and it all gave legitimate rise to the unions in reaction to that attitude.
Thank you to George Westinghouse, who invented the air brake system for trains in 1869. It was simpler, more reliable and offered a high level of safety to generations of railroaders back then and today.
Westinghouse Railroad Air Brake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_brake_%28rail%29)
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This morning, I finally got around to doing something.
I'm trying to determine the real size of 132 feet, the length of a 4-8-8-4 steam locomotive; I dunno if that includes the tender or not, but whatever.
The longest side of this house is 84 feet.
The eaves from the roof reach down to about 12 feet from the ground one's standing on.
(I dunno what the height was of one of those locomotives.)
That 4-8-8-4 was truly a big one.
It must've looked even bigger when in operation.
I know this might seem stupid, but simply to say something is "twenty feet long" means nothing to me; I have to actually see twenty feet of length to "conceptualize" it.
While not as big (I think) I've stood next to this Loco. It's absolutely massive. Ya, unless you get next to one it's very hard to imagine just how big they are.
http://www.csrmf.org/library-and-collections/full-size-railroad-equipment/steam-locomotives/southern-pacific-cab-forward-no-4294
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Frank, you might try going to a local big store (grocery, big box, or even a strip mall) with a long wall and have a friend stand at the end of a tape measure in front of the wall and another friend stand at 132'; that might graphically illustrate the length of the locomotive.
Or if you get near Omaha, there's supposed to be one at Lauritzen Gardens, whatever and wherever that is. (No. 8 on the website.)
BIG BOYS (http://www.steamlocomotive.com/bigboy/)
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Gleaming British steel.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN-flDNwCws[/youtube]
Another on the same line at Yeovil in the south of England, an 0-4-0 tank engine switcher.
(http://www.martynbane.co.uk/images/peckett/locos/1579-peckett.jpg)
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I donno about Brit steamers, they look too pretty.
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Well, it took a very long time--a very very very long time--but I finally found some of the promised photographs.
They're from the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940; the individuals shown are my parents. My mother was 21, my father 27, at the time.
I'd really like to find one from September 4, 1939, that my father snapped, of the Polish Pavillion with the sign announcing it was "closed."
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/NYWF1939-5.jpg)
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/NYWF1939-1.jpg)
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/NYWF1939-2.jpg)
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/NYWF1939-3.jpg)
(http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/g419/Eferrari/NYWF1939-4.jpg)
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Confirmed Anglophile that you are, it'd probably interest to you to know that the Coronation was a Brit locomitive; while the couplings weren't compatible systems, they did (And do) run on the same guage track as US trains, and have a lighter maximum axle weight, and have made periodic 'Good will' appearances in the US, most notable among those probably being the tour of the "Flying Scotsman."
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Confirmed Anglophile that you are, it'd probably interest to you to know that the Coronation was a Brit locomotive; while the couplings weren't compatible systems, they did (And do) run on the same gauge track as US trains, and have a lighter maximum axle weight, and have made periodic 'Good will' appearances in the US, most notable among those probably being the tour of the "Flying Scotsman."
Yeah, I was aware of the Coronation locomotive, and this being 1939-1940, the coronation of George VI having only recently taken place, in 1937.
There was, I believe, a famous passenger train at the time, London-Edinburgh, the "Coronation Scot," and it was pulled by this sort of locomotive. That is, if the memory's correct.