A uniquely UP lashup, one U50 and three SD24Bs, prepares to depart North Platte under stormy skies.
A uniquely UP lashup, one U50 and three SD24Bs, prepares to depart North Platte under stormy skies.
A very unusual mix of motive power in Nebraska, with an SDP35, a GP9B, a U50, and a GP30. The U50 appears to be suffering from either a turbo fire or maybe an electrical fire.
While SP crews called their U50s "Baby Hueys", UP crews had a variety of nicknames including "Whirlybirds", "Choppers", "Rock Crushers", and "Stalk Cutters", and this view shows why. At each end of the locomotive was a massive squirrel cage blower motor used to cool the generator and 4 traction motors at either end. Brakeman had to be careful when walking past them while the locomotive was running hard because the fans would suck them up against the mesh screens if they weren't careful. The screens also tended to collect every piece of trash near the right of way and had to be cleaned off frequently. This angle also shows the span bolster B+B trucks used under them. While EMDs DD35s, DD35As and DDA40Xs used unique D trucks, the U50s and C855s used two B trucks linked together. The GE U50Cs would use a single 3-axle truck under each end, hence the C at the end, that were recycled from the 8500hp "Big Blow" turbines they were retiring at the time.
What the hell is going on here? Well, the Cheap & Nothing Wasted strikes again. When the C&NW was looking for some high horsepower units to take over their taconite ore hauling operations up in Michigan to replace their long-in-the-tooth FM Baby Train Masters, Uncle Pete was looking at getting rid of the U50s and U50Cs. Chicago & North Western leased at least one, maybe more, U50 from Union Pacific for at least a month. The C&NW instead ended up buying secondhand high-nose Alco C628s off of Norfolk & Western. There must have been a brief overlap between when the C628s arrived and the U50s were sent back, as shown here. In the lead, and still in N&W black, is C628 #6729, followed by UP #43 and then a C&NW yellow and green EMD product. Three railroad and three manufacturers, all in one consist.
UP #43 at C&NW's Proviso yard with a shiny new slug coupled to it. I can't make out the number, and while the headlight screams Baldwin to me, the number boards don't match the two ex-Chicago Great Western DS-4-4-1000s that they rebuilt into slugs.
According to the interwebs, N&W #611's stoker was successfully welded and she left Spencer, NC 2 days ago and spent the night tied up in Manassas, VA last night. Norfolk Southern keeps the schedule and route of #611's deadhead moves pretty close to their chest. Which is understandable. They don't want people swarming their property and causing a hassle at crossings and such, trying to get photos of it. I saw that when I was down to watch Reading & Northern #425 and saw guys with cameras climbing fences, going around chained gates and generally just being where they weren't supposed to be, all to get a couple photos or some video. Then when one of them gets hurt because they were doing that kind of stuff, that's when railroads stop doing excursions.
#611 has shown up on VRF the last couple of days.
She's staying at Strasburg until October 3rd. Since she can't haul excursions on the mainline for the time being, it looks like Strasburg is going to be her second home. The Strasburg track department has also nicknamed #611 "The Portable Rolling Mill" due to her weight. Nothing as heavy as the #611 had operated on Strasburg prior to 2019 and when she arrived there the first time, they actually followed her back from Leaman Place to Strasburg with Strasburg #89 to make sure she didn't damage, roll or spread any rails.
This video still blows my mind. On a trip up Saliva Grade, the steepest mainline in the US, #611 stalls due to a blocked sand pipe. You can watch the crewman get up on top and he's wacking on the sand pipe to free it up and get the sanders going. Once they do that, #611, without any diesel assistance, gets a train that is longer and heavier than anything she pulled in her original career started on the steepest part of the grade. That is an impressive machine and an engineer who knows his E36 M3.
In reply to NickD :
I totally don't blame NS for abandoning the Saluda grade, but I kinda wish they'd kept it active just so they could occasionally host the railroad equivalent of a hillclimb on it.
Strasburg RR hauled a couple of broken electric engines, plus the railroad museum equipment up the tracks. The tracks had some pretty heavy equipment on them then.
In reply to LS_BC8 :
Heavy, yes, but #611 still actually outweighs them all. Total engine and tender weight is 872,000lbs over a 95.4 foot wheelbase.
The Railroad Museum of PA has two GG1s, #4800 and #4935, but a GG1 weighs "only" 475,000lbs over a 79.5 foot length.
The GE E60C Amtrak#603, notorious for being an overweight rail-buster, only weighs 426,000lbs on a 71 foot length.
The GE E44 PRR #4465 is a svelte 384,000lbs with a 69.5 foot length.
The EMD AEM-7 Amtrak #915, well, those weighed just 202,000lbs over a 51 foot length (and with 7,000hp on tap, they were a real hot rod)
On the steam side of things, well, a lot of their stuff is relatively small. H-series Consolidations, E6s Atlantics, K4s Pacifics and L1s Mikados weren't lightweights for their wheel arrangement, but they certainly don't rival a Northern. And stuff like PRR A5s 0-4-0s and B6 0-6-0s and D16sb 4-4-0s, don't event warrant mentioning. So, I'll just compare the two biggest locomotives in the RRMoPA collection: PRR M1a Mountain #6755 and Nickel Plate S-2 Berkshire #757 (Actually, #757 isn't even there anymore. It was sold to the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum in Bellevue, Ohio)
PRR #6755 is equipped with a regular six-axle tender, instead of the 8-axle long haul "coast-to-coast" tender than many of her sisters were paired with. This means she only has a total length of 79.32 feet, and a weight of 606,900lbs. And actually, she was even lighter than that when she was moved to the museum, because the boiler, sand box and tender were all empty. That's a lot of weight not present.
NKP #757 was up there in size, at only 8 feet shorter in overall length. But its a full 30 tons lighter at 784,500lbs, and again that is when it is fully loaded. Take all the coal and water out of it and it gets a good bit lighter.
PRR #4483, the I1sa Decapod up in Hamburg, NY, is only 590,800lbs and only 81.75 feet in length. I mention that engine because at one point the Railroad Museum of PA was trying to trade off NKP #757 to the Western NY Railway Historical Society for PRR #4483. The trade would have made a good bit of sense, since the NKP had a big presence in the Buffalo area and PRR #4483 would have been rejoined with the rest of the Northumberland Collection.
The PRR J1 Texas-types were both heavier and larger than an N&W J 4-8-4, at 984,100lbs and 104.04 feet, but there isn't one at the RRMoPA. Or anywhere for that matter, unless you believe the urban legend that there is one buried in Norfolk Southern's ex-PRR Pitcairn yard. I've never seen anyone give any sort of details to that story to where I would place any stock in that. And all the Duplexes were also bigger and heavier, but again, none exist anywhere. Although T1 #5550 is under construction currently. I would be highly skeptical of ever seeing her at Strasburg though, due to size and weight.
Map to the secret fishing hole drawn on the back of a RR manual.
In reply to 914Driver :
I see your D&H secret fishing hole map and raise you a GM&O banana heater waybill.
I was digging through a box earlier & found this.
And also, just because I thought this was interesting.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
Some L&N-related news, former L&N GE C30-7 #7067 has been donated to the Kentucky Steam Heritage Center, the same folks restoring C&O #2716 and storing NKP #587. She's not operational, due to missing traction motors, but at least once C30-7 will be preserved (kind of crazy that so far there is only one preserved example of a model they sold almost 1200 of) and it will make a nice display piece alongside the N&W SD40-2 and L&N SW-1500 they already have. I read a lot of Dash-7s met their demise in the '80s because their GE 752 traction motors were favored for conversion to use in oil-drilling operations, so Dash-7s were bought up, had their traction motors stripped and then the rest scrapped, which is probably what happened to #7067's motors.
Also, in potentially Monon-related news, the Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum in North Judson, Indiana purchased both of the ex-Saratoga & North Creek EMD BL2s that were on Ozark Mountain Rail Car. I say "potentially Monon-related" because Monon had a pretty solid presence in Indiana and they also owned BL2s, so it would make sense to paint them up as Monon units. But the C&O also ran through North Judson, the HVRM already has a C&O Kanawha, and the C&O also had BL2s on their roster (and very snazzy ones at that), so they could potentially end up in C&O colors. Or maybe they'll paint one as Monon and one as C&O. Then again, the Chicago & Eastern Illinois also had BL2s, and also dipped into western Indiana.
In reply to NickD :
That C&O livery is beautiful! I definitely hope they do one in Monon colors though, I'm pretty sure it ran within a mile or 2 of North Judson. The C&EI owned the CA&S which ran just a bit west of there, though that's still in the neighborhood relatively speaking.
Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) said:In reply to NickD :
I totally don't blame NS for abandoning the Saluda grade, but I kinda wish they'd kept it active just so they could occasionally host the railroad equivalent of a hillclimb on it.
The thing I've always found fascinating about Southern is that they ran Saluda Grade and some pretty other snotty grades, and so you would think that they would have some monster locomotives for slugging it out over that grade. But they primarily relied on Mikados, which were about average size and power, although of exceptional good looks.
Their Ms Class Mikes, like #4501, were 425,940lbs total, 67.04 feet in length, had 63" drivers, 180psi of boiler pressure and made 53,000lbs of tractive effort. Their bigger Ms-4 Class Mikes were 475,360 lbs total , 71.38 feet in length, with 63" drivers, 200psi boiler pressures and made 54,725lbs of tractive effort.
Meanwhile, CB&Q's stalwart O-1-a Mikados weighed 511,980lbs and made 58,000lbs of tractive effort. PRR's L1s Mikado weighed the same as a Southern Ms-4 but cranked out 61,000lbs of tractive effort. Frisco's 4200-series "Depression babies" were 608,790lbs with 66,096 of tractive effort, plus another 10,000lbs of starting effort on top from a trailing truck booster. New York Central's hulking H-10b Mikados beat the rails with 613,000lbs total and 63,467lbs of tractive effort.
Southern also had two batches of 2-10-2 Santa Fes, which seem to be largely forgotten engines. The bigger of the two classes, the Ss-1 class, were 75.97 feet in length, 540,300 in weight, had 57" drivers, 200psi boiler pressure, and generated 69,575lbs of tractive effort. They were the blueprint for the USRA's Light Santa Fe that was sold during WWI. Already you have some Mikados that are heavier and nearly match them in tractive effort. The Union Pacific's TTT-11 class Santa Fes were about on par.
But then they pale in comparison to Wabash's L1 Class Santa Fes (598,000 lbs, 210psi boiler, 75,059lbs of tractive effort). And that's not even getting into monsters like Readings K1sbs, which were 95.23 feet, weighed 814,000lbs, had 61" drivers, had 225psi boilers feeding 30.5" x 32" cylinders and generated 92,571lbs of tractive effort. Or B&O's famed champions of Sand Patch, the "Big Six" 2-10-2s, which weighed a solid 200,000lbs more than Southern's, had 64" drivers, 220psi boilers and ground out 82,753lbs of tractive effort.
And then, you have Southern's biggest, and most forgotten, engines, the Ls-1 and Ls-2 2-8-8-2s. Some were built as compound engines that were simplified, and others came straight from the factory as simplified. But even the most powerful failed to break 100,000lbs of tractive effort at 99,396lbs from an engine that 709,600, was over 95 and a half feet in length and ran a 210psi boiler. Big by Southern's standards, but outweighed and outpowered by stuff like Clinchfield's L-1s, C&O's H-7s, D&RGW's L-132s, Great Northern's R-1s and R-2s, and N&W's Y2 thru Y-6s.
And consider the fact that Southern never owned any Super Power locomotives, or any locomotives with a 2-axle trailing truck. No Berkshires, or Texas-types, or Challengers, or Yellowstones like a lot of their neighboring lines. Not on the passenger front either. They stuck with Pacifics and Mountains, thank you very much. And when they went into the diesel era, they avoided a lot of the high-powered diesels as well. No F-M Train Masters or Alco RSD-7s or Baldwin Centipedes.
Just very odd. You think with a railroad operating the steepest standard gauge mainline in the US, they would have owned some real monster locomotives.
In reply to NickD :
That's a good(and puzzling) point. Did they just double-head them?
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
Helpers, and sometimes doubling or tripling the train (taking it over in parts).
In reply to Recon1342 :
Yeah. I have a photo in one-off my books showing two Santa Fes on the head-end of a freight over Saluda, with the author noting there was a third shoving at the back.
Part of their reticence to own bigger power might have been due to clearance issues on other parts of the line. The smaller earlier S class 2-10-2s were originally built for the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific subsidiary and were almost immediately moved over to the Southern proper due to clearance troubles on the "Rathole Division". So maybe Southern just preferred to own engines that could be operated system-wide.
In addition to their Ps Pacifics, Southern had some really pretty Mountains, class Ts-1. Southern also had some of their old 4-6-0s painted into the green and gold, and some allege that the switchers used at passenger terminals were also painted green and gold, although there is no photographic evidence.
Also, happy birthday to N&W #611. Seventy-one years ago today, she rolled out of the Roanoke erecting hall and into the history books.
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