Late PRR steam TAN (was Locomotive Wheelbase)

nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Sun Jan 15 17:56:17 EST 2006


I didn't maintain that they were successful! However, they all had
the high horsepower boilers and the divided drive that was the rage
at the time. (See John King's recent musings on whether the "Super
Power" movement was misguided.) Perhaps PRR should have gotten over
its dislike of articulation (the conventional wisdom at the time was
that artics didn't track well at speed), but, if you have the
curvature to permit it, a rigid multi-cylinder loco would be cheaper
to maintain than an articulated of the same TE and HP.

What do you think the T-1 was, but a Northern with divided drive? So
also, the Qs were 2-10-4s with four axle leading trucks (four is
always better at speed) but without the massive rotating machinery
that was necessary to absorb the enormous piston thrust of the 30"
cylinders of the big 2-10-4s? Or, they were 4-6-6-4s with one less
driving axle. The C&O thought that their 2-10-4s were obsolete by
the late thirties; the 2-6-6-6s were their replacements. The better
comparison might have been the last Santa Fe 2-10-4s.

In my old age, I've finally realized that, in comparing locomotive
designs, its all about boiler size (i.e., horsepower) and the desired
combination of tractive effort and speed that's desired. The wheel
arrangement choice is then fairly straightforward. For example,
remember that the Santa Fe was considering using the boilers from the
N&W Y3s that it bought in WW II to reboiler some of their older 80"
4-8-4s? These are the locos that ended up on the VGN as the USEs.
(Its also a testimony to what good steamers the USRA 2-8-8-2 boilers
apparently were!)

Of course, more astute steam loco designing was going on at PRR's
subsidiary in the Virginia foothills! Who knows what Pilcher, et al,
would have come up with for passenger service across Ohio and Indiana?

We probably should end this thread, at least in the NWHS site.

Pete Groom

On Jan 14, 2006, at 4:10 PM, nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org wrote:

Thinking about 'late' steam era PRR power will not lead me to
reconsider. The rush to catch up and bring PRR to the front of the
class fell short of success - and at great cost. By type:

. . .



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