horsepower

[franksolich]

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! 

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.

[franksolich]

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.

[FreeBorn]

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/

[franksolich]

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.

[TVDOC]

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

[Chris_]

Google has archives of 'Popular Mechanics' online.  You might want to take a look at it.

[franksolich]

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.

[franksolich]

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.

[franksolich]

Google has archives of 'Popular Mechanics' 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.

[TVDOC]

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

[franksolich]

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.

[franksolich]

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?

[TVDOC]

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

[franksolich]

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.

[NHSparky]

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.

[Rugnuts]

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.

[DumbAss Tanker]

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?   

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. 

[CG6468]

<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.

[TVDOC]

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

[Eupher]

And that RR pension system is still in play, isn't it?

Quite lucrative too, IIRC....

[thundley4]

I see quite a few of the traction motors at work, they're some heavy beasts.

[TVDOC]

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

[TVDOC]

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.

[franksolich]

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?

[franksolich]

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.