Best In Show?

by Emmett R Smith

This articulated Yellowstone-type single-expansion 2-8-8-4 wasn’t real slick like the more engineered and beautifully intricate double-expansion 2-8-8-2 Norfolk & Western Y6b for example, but lots of railfen feel she was the best-looking one of a brawny load of BIG locomotives at the end of the last Steam Age, so here is a look at Baltimore & Ohio RR EM-1 #657, pounding the rails to powder back in Lorain, OH, in the Fall of 1957.

http://www.divisionpoint.com/photos/B+O_EM1/B+O_657b.jpg

[Engineman Wook   

[all text-rights reserved & all other rights revert to holders

[16 September 2009]

Posted originally in Trains & Planes and “Getting There” | 1 Comment

 One Response

1. on September 17, 2009 at 9:15 pm | Reply Practical Pig

   Not bad, but those single-expansions were real wasteful, and the N&W really showed that with some tinkering you could get the power AND the speed with a well-engineered HP-LP system. That EM-1 is pounding along uphill though!

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Some American HIGH-PRESSURE Waterheaters

“A Helluva Way To Run A Railroad!”

 by Engineman Wook

THE History of the Delaware & Hudson Railway Company, America’s oldest transportation company, is the story of much experimental work with high-pressure steam through the high-rolling 1920s and flat-busted early 1930s.  This research involved developing operating boiler pressures of up to 500 (!) psi, right down in the depths of the Great Depression. 

 

                           D&H 4-8-0 Locomotive #1403 — L F Loree

THE Above locomotive was named for D&H “High Pressure” President L F Loree and presents some hair-raising

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The Cedric Sims UP 4-8-4 844 Gallery

by Preserved Wook

Mostly the steam locomotive fascination seems to draw the attention of old fools such as myself, looking back at the way the World showed itself when we were kids:

                        http://www.pbase.com/cdsims/union_pacific

Mr Cedric Sims’ UP 4-8-8-4 844 gallery brings to life again a remembered taste of the iconic feeling of fullness that seeing the old engines gave — and gives again today – to many of us.

[Engineman Wook

[all text-rights reserved & all picture-rights copyright Cedric Sims

[3 September 2009]

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The Cedric Sims UP 4-8-4 844 Gallery

by Engineman Preserved Wook

Mostly the steam locomotive fascination seems to draw the attention of old fools such as myself, looking back at the way the World showed itself when we were kids: 

http://www.pbase.com/cdsims/union_pacific 

Mr Cedric Sims’ UP 4-8-4 844 gallery conveys a remembered taste of the iconic feeling of satisfaction that the old engines gave — and give again today — to many of us.

[Engineman Wook    

[all text-rights reserved & all picture-rights copyright Cedric Sims

[3 September 2009]

 

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Norfolk & Western Railway Steam Locomotive Video Links

by Preserved Wook

Below are a some enjoyable EweBooby links to old footage, apparently some of it originally in 8 mm film, of steam locomotives on the N&W.

N&W Steam In The 1950s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fx03UvpWOI

N&W Y6b doubleheader:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JN3l-pcPVQ&feature=related

Norfolk & Western/Norfolk Southern VCR Tapes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm2VZ-YXGnk&feature=related

[Engineman Wook   

[all text-rights reserved & all other rights revert to holders    

[13 August 2009]

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Mirror, Mirror on The Wall…

by Engineman Wook

The debate about which was the “greatest,” the “most powerful” or even just the “biggest” of America’s late-modern articulated steam locomotives shows no sign of reaching a final conclusion.  Nor can it be expected to do.  The variables are simply too numerous.  However, there is another aspect to this matter of what is after all a question of quality.  On this last point, there indeed are other considerations besides those of mass and inertia and ox-like power.  These in turn must bring us to those concerns with superior design that may even trump the comparatively crass marxist question of which American articulated engine hauled in its career the most total value in cargo.  This final question however — a matter of engineering excellence — just perhaps is going to be at least a tad easier to resolve, and in fact I think I just might have found the answer, already.  Here then is an account of what may well have been America’s finest articulated steam locomotive of them all

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Correction:

The Hippo and the Rhinoceros!

by Engineman Preserved Wook

Somewhere or other recently, I’ll be hanged if I can find it now, I misquoted George H Drury on the topic of PRR’s “absolute hippopotamus” of a locomotive, which I said was

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“It NEVER Ends!” [Navarth, Mad Poet]

Some MORE Comparisons In The ENDLESS Argument Over America’s “Mightiest” Steam Locomotive

by Engineman Wook

THE Following figures are from the pp of LeMassena, Robert A, Articulated Steam Locomotives Of North America — Sundance Books, Silverton, CO (1979), ISBN:  0913582263.  My purpose in drawing them together here is to enable railfen to make a more direct comparison as between the Union Pacific ALCO-built “Big Boy” 4000-series 4-8-8-4 single-expansion articulated steam locomotives, and the Chesapeake & Ohio H-8 “Allegheny” 2-6-6-6 single-expansion engines, built by Lima (OH) Locomotive Works.
     As the locomotives were erected over a period of time in different lots there are at least two sets of figures in each case.

UP RR “Big Boy” 4000-series 4-8-8-4

1941 #4000-4019 & 1944 #4020-4024: 

[copyright   Richard Leonard’s Rail Archive   http://www.railarchive.net/index.html]                    

300 psi…

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Allegheny #1618

Chesapeake & Ohio Allegheny 2-6-6-6 1618

by Emmett R Smith

 

                    [RRPictureArchives.NET     copyright     Eric Larson]

This is such a mighty picture of the Allegheny steam locomotive at

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Virginian AE Class 2-10-10-2 Locomotives

Even Stronger Yet!

by Emmett Smith

The quest by Engineman Preserved Wook and everybody else and their brother to identify the American steam locomotive with specifically the most tractive power bids fair to be, well, mainly sort of unending.  Here is tonight’s find by me to cloud the issue some more, from the pp of steamlocomotive.com!

Virginian Railroad 1918 2-10-10-2 Mallet engine w/compound & simple expansion 

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/2-10-10-2/vgn.shtml

Tractive effort:  147,200 lbs (compound), 176,600 lbs (simple)

The 48″ low pressure

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