In reply to NickD :
Lol! Well at least that would make sense.
In reply to NickD :
Lol! Well at least that would make sense.
Frisco #4211 at Southeastern Junction in St. Louis, Missouri. The 4200-series Mikados were, at the time, the largest Mikados built in the US, eclipsed later on only by the Great Northern O-8s of 1938, and were on par with many of the early 63" drivered Berkshires in terms of performance. Ironically, the Frisco didn't even want to originally take delivery of them. The order was placed early in '29 and when the Great Depression struck, Frisco tried to cancel the order. Baldwin pretty much told them "Tough E36 M3, we already started building them" and so they became the only new steam locomotives delivered by Baldwin in 1930. The "Depression Babies" proved their worth though, becoming a vital component of the rolling oil pipeline that the Frisco was during WWII. Largely dispatched to the rolling, remote terrain of the Ozarks, action photos of the 4200s are fairly rare.
Frisco #4204 hitting a grade at Nichols, Missouri
The #4205 starting a train at Rosedale, Kansas. The plume of steam from the rear trailing truck indicates that the Franklin trailing truck booster is cut in. Frisco was never a fan of experimentation, and so their later power all followed a pretty basic formula of proven wheel arrangements, Franklin trailing truck booster, Coffin internal feedwater heater, Nicholson thermic syphons. No crazy Duplex drives or poppet valve valve gear or 3-cylinder power on the Frisco.
Appearancew-wise, they had all the hallmarks of Frisco freight power. They were clean-lined, honest-looking engines. No big Elesco feedwater heaters hanging out front or hiding the smokestack, no air pumps hung on the smokebox door or dangling under the running boards. A boiler tube pilot, air pumps behind shields on the pilot deck, a visored headlight in the center of the smokebox, bell hung out over the smokebox, and the tall spacious cab that Frisco preferred.
One of Frisco's lesser-known homebrew semi-streamlined Hudsons at Kansas City, displaying the typical Frisco spit and polish.
Frisco's Springfield shops were well-known for rebuilding older engines into more modern power. This includes throwing every modern appliance available at some very pretty little 4-4-0s, rebuilding old unloved drag-freight 2-10-2s into modern heavy Mountains, streamlining some antiquated Pacifics, and rebuilding their 1060-series Pacifics into more modern Hudsons.
The ten 1060-series Pacifics were delivered in 1917, a much larger and more powerful 4-6-2 than any of the various older passenger power the Frisco owned. The Baldwin-built engines were superheated with 26.5"x28" cylinders, 200psi boilers, spoked 73" drivers, Baker valve gear, the unusual and rarely-seen Street mechanical stokers and Ragonnet power reversers. Notably, they did not include a feedwater heater, and they were constructed with a Jacobs-Schupert firebox, which was popular with some of the southwest lines at the time. Rather than tradition plate steel fireboxes, a Jacobs-Schupert firebox was constructed of upside-down U-shaped strips of stamped steel that were riveted together. The advantage was that they were less prone to boiler explosions when the crown sheet was either not covered with water or had a heavy buildup of scale from poor quality water. Frisco also had their 2-10-2s, built around the same time, delivered with Jacobs-Schupert fireboxes. Cosmetically, they were typically Frisco: silvered smokebox, tall tapered stack, big cab, a visored headlight centered in the smokebox with the coonskin number plate hung under it, boiler tube pilot. The clunky-looking outside-equalized trailing truck, and the severe step down in diameter from the smokebox to the front boiler course were the only visual blemish. Performance-wise though, the 1060s were never quite what Frisco hoped for. The Street mechanical stokers were problematic in any engine they were installed in, and while the Jacobs-Schupert fireboxes were indeed less prone to boiler explosions, they were notorious leakers and difficult to clean. Frisco was also not a fan of Baker valve gear, believing that it was too lightly built for hard usage and ultimately installed Walschaerts valve gear whenever one of the 1060s went in for a major servicing.
After two decades of disappointing performance (wouldn't want to rush into things, would we?) Frisco decided they needed bigger 6-coupled passenger engines, and so they took five of the 1060-class Pacifics and ran them through Springfield shops to convert to a Hudson-type. They replaced the main driver with a Scullen disc-type driver and installed thicker tires on the reused drivers to bump overall diameter to 74". The firebox was heavily enlarged to take advantage of the 4-wheel trailing truck and this time they used a conventional firebox, as well as adding a Nicholson thermic syphon. Boiler pressure was bumped to 225psi, and they also added ten more superheater elements. The smokebox was reconstructed to accommodate a Coffin feedwater heater, resulting in the boiler and smokebox being the same diameter, although this also pushed the smokebox front out just about even with the pilot. The troublesome Street stoker was also replaced with a more convetional Duplex stoker. To make them look the part of a top-tier passenger hauler, Frisco installed large sheetmetal shrouds on the running board and a much more stylized slatted pilot. After the successful conversion of the first five, Frisco ran the remaining five through the shop between '40 and '41. Much more successful in their second iteration, the 1060-series Hudsons hung around until they were "dismissed from service" between 1951 and 1952.
Another example of Frisco's makeover abilities. Who would guess that underneath this fierce, bullet-nosed, mohawk-crested sheetmetal...
lies one of these old pencil-boilered, tall-stacked relics from 1910?
Well, pretty much as I expected, and to the dismay of many railfans, last week's move of one of the ex-D&H Sharknoses up to the Escanaba & Lake Superior was just them being moved to a different storage facility. While many hoped that they were leaving the property, or being moved to start a restoration, John Larkin said don't get your hopes up.
E&LS President John Larkin told Trains News Wire he had the unit moved to open space in the shop for covered hoppers to be cleaned. “We will be using track one and track two in the building washing off covered hoppers cars inside and outside; in so doing there will be water on the floor and we certainly don’t want to get the traction motors on the RF16 wet,” Larkin said.
Also from the article:
Larkin says he’d like to restore the locomotive some day and has the parts to do it, but acknowledged it would be a “tough project to do” that would involve a lot of time and expense. “In 1991, when Baldwin was getting out of the processes, I bought a number of items that could be used either for a Baldwin RS12 (which E&LS was using at the time) and/or an RF16. The problem was that even though we put the materials in storage, people would take a part out and use it to repair other Baldwin engines and by taking the parts out, we don’t know how many or what type are gone,” he said.
“I would hope that at some point to rebuild the 1216. The last time the late Fred Cave (former Baldwin Locomotive manager and mechanic) was here, we shot a 608A bedplate and put the crank in the bedplate with the proper tensioning so that at some point it may become economically feasible to rebuild an RF16. My main objective is to keep the locomotives out of harm’s way.”
Honestly, at this point, I wouldn't even care if they ever ran, but to see them nicely cosemetically restored and on public display in a museum would be really nice, rather than partially disassembled and sequestered away in some private facility. And I get the view point that some have of "Why wait until he dies to donate them? If he donates them now, he might see them restored and operating before he dies." Especially because Baldwin parts aren't getting any more commone or cheaper, so the longer the wait is before attempting to restore it, the more expensive and difficult it gets.
In response to the "What's he waiting for?" crowd though, I've seen this reply, which does make a fair bit of sense:
The answer may have been revealed with a discussion/back-and-forth I had with other museum and preservation railfans and "players" online. They pointed out--quite validly, if you ask me--that museums change over time, and not always for the better.
Steamtown, for example, became a ward of the National Park Service (for better or worse--not gonna argue that here, please). The B&O Railroad Museum went from being a ward of CSX to being a private foundation. Some places have done a good job of preserving their collections and rationalizing their holdings, while others continue to sit on a bigger collection than they can manage--and in a couple such cases of the latter, keep adding more stuff anyway.
There are museums that have seemingly become gradually better known as "playgrounds" or "venues for rent" than actual museums. There have been "mom and pop" operations that have "gone corporate"--again, for better and worse.
Once you donate something like a locomotive or book collection, you lose control of it, excepting a "permanent loan" scenario or "right of first refusal" written into the donation. I have personally seen a major piece of rolling stock donated to one museum that, after the museum in question changed mission slightly, was declared surplus literally the moment the last of the donors died [this is in reference to GG1 #4890 and the B&O Museum - NickD], and was sent a thousand miles away, clearly in complete violation of the donors' intentions. There are still parties that participated in the restoration of that piece with very hard feelings on that disposal.
It's possible, if not likely, that Mr. Larkin is (and has long been) watching how the various museums operate, from both a logistics and business sense, and wants to assure for himself for as long as possible that the intended recipient(s) "keep their noses clean," or however we want to phrase it, and remain a good destination. There are probably other factors being invoked, such as quiet negotiations behind the scenes over how it would be transported, how soon it would be restored, raising funds for transport and restoration, etc. Remember also that "he" still runs a railroad, one that always appears to be on the financial edge to boot.
So, it seems like the Baldwin RF-16s are to vanish back into storage for the time being. Well, it was nice to catch a glimpse of them.
I was watching this vid last night while I was working, and although it's about is model railroad, the years he spent researching & collecting artifacts from the original railroad just for the sake of accuracy is fascinating.
East Broad Top Railroad received a $1.1 million state grant to put towards restoring the tracks from Orbisonia to Three Springs and Saltillo, which have not seen a train since 1956. EBT also announced that just 2 months into their 2022 fundraising, they are already 86% towards their goal. This money will go towards modifying the old Rockhill coal tipple to service as a water tank for a fire suppression system, interpretive signs and displays at Rockhill, and continued archiving.
A rare shot of one of the Sharks in operation on the Escanaba & Lake Superior shortly after their arrival in 1979. The RF-16s were not well-liked by the D&H crews due to their oddball nature, and had earned the reputation of being D&H president Bruce Sterzing's babies. When Sterzing was forced out of the D&H, the Sharks were stricken from the roster literally the next day and sold off.
Certainly has a bit of an imposing look to them.
In reply to DjGreggieP :
Aesthetically imposing for sure. But never a real threat to the market. They certainly could pull, Baldwin marketing materials even referred to them as "The Hauling Fool", but they were held back by reliability issues and Baldwin's adamant refusal of standardized manufacturing. Every Baldwin diesel, even units that were the same model built in the same batch for the same railroad, was configured completely different. From unit to unit, they had wiring, air hoses and fluid lines all routed wildly different, making them a nightmare to troubleshoot and repair. Baldwin's air-actuated throttle was technically superior to the standardized 8-notch electro-mechanical throttle everyone else used, but it also meant that they could not be operated in multiple unit sets with other none-Baldwins, and they also lacked M.U. connections in the front of the units, so you could only hook them back-to-back in pairs or A-B-B-A sets.
Pennsylvania Railroad had their earlier DR-6-4-2000 passenger units delivered with "Sharknose" carbodies, rather than the homely Babyface styling. PRR classified them as a BP-20 (Baldwin, Passenger, 2000hp) but later in life they were busted down to freight use and rerated to 1600hp, becoming a BF-16 in PRR parlance.
N&W #611 after striking a semi-truck at Ironton with the eastbound Powhattan Arrow in October of '54. An M-class 4-8-0, which would have been living out it's final days in '54, was used to take the train to Williamson, where either a K-class Mountain or another J took over
In reply to NickD :
Repair list:
611- Repair sheetmetal, running board steps, pilot deck sheeting and handrail
Trailer- replace frame, replace box; aw hell, replace whole trailer.
Truck driver- surgical removal of underpants required.
You also had #611's big accident just two years later where she nearly ended up in the Tug River. Excessive speed on a curve was the cause of the derailment. The major shopping that followed was the main reason the #611 ended up being preserved, since it was in such good shape when it was retired 3 years later.
If you look at a lot of the preserved steam locomotives, a lot of them suffered major accidents during their life.
SP&S #700 was laid on her side near the north bank of the Snake River east of Pasco near Redd, in an incident very similar to #611's 1956 accident. Excessive speed on a curve caused a derailment and she slid on her side down an embankment.
Strasburg's Great Western of Colorado #90 had two grade crossing accidents that flopped her over and killed the fireman both times. In her early years at Strasburg she had a pretty good lope, and when the valve gear was set for the first time at Strasburg, it was found that the left side was in better time than the right, probably due to its having been set reset after the rollover while the right was not. The cab also is a more crude homebuilt affair that was installed by CB&Q's shops, rather than the original Baldwin cab. Also, when the Great Western of Colorado had a roundhouse fire, #90 was used to pull the GWR's other engines out of the burning roundhouse and suffered considerable fire damage.
CN #3254 has a badly tweaked frame from at least one serious accident, which is why the running gear always had issues on it and resulted in Steamtown retiring.
Atlanta & West Point was always troubled by bearing issues due to a frame that was badly out of alignment due to an accident (sadly, they fixed those issues and it ran great for a couple months, only for the New Georgia Railroad to shut down).
The PRR L1s at the Railroad Museum of PA had a boiler explosion at one point in its life.
B&M #3713 has been laid on her side more than once. One of the wrecks involved breaking the front pilot beam end on the fireman's side clean off and bending the webs and plumbing on the left cylinder casting. The other wreck put her on her right side after splitting a switch.
There is a photo of Reading #2101 laid over on its side at some point although I can't find any real mention of it.
WW&F No. 9 was involved in numerous accidents when she was on the Sandy River & Rangely Lake. This includes being sideswiped by a standard gauge MEC train on the diamond in Farmington in 1897 (which killed her engineer), roundhouse fires in Phillips in 1897 and 1923, and several rollovers or other serious derailments. Her current wooden cab, though certainly historic, is at least the third one she's carried.
Union Pacific #9000, the only surviving 4-12-2 had a full-on boiler explosion.
Union Pacific #4005 was derailed by a green switchman while hauling a hog train tender still shows the scars from that day with a large dent on one side.
Southern #1401, the green and gold Pacific at the Smithsonian that pulled FDR's funeral train, hit a car at a grade crossing and rolled over once. The Smithsonian supposedly has photos of it on it's side after the accident, but keeps the photographs pretty closely guarded.
Southern #4501 was dropped by a crane once while being worked on, and still has a slight bow in the frame from the incident.
Northern Pacific 4-6-0 #1356, on display at Missoula Montana, fell through a washed out bridge in 1943 and was buried buried by the log train it was pulling. In the course of retrieving it, the first wrecker collapsed on top of it. It was finally retrieved and rebuilt at the NP's Livingston shops and continued in service.
Baldwin Locomotive Works #26, the 0-6-0 at Steamtown, rammed something at some point in her life, hard enough to put a healthy dent in her pilot beam. It also humped the frame up 3/4". This was not straightened out by her previous owners, who made binders to fit the crowded toes and put her back into service. The frame was pulled back and new pedestal binders were made by the current owner SNHS.
Louisiana & Arkansas 4-6-0 #509 was in a spectacular head-on with a 2-8-2. A side-view photo of the wreck showed the 509 up into the smokebox of the Mike. The 509's tender tank was torn from it's frame and smashed forward trapping the fireman in the left side gangway as the tank crushed the cab towards the backhead. You could see his left boot, glove and hat sticking out from the 2" space that used to be the gangway. It later derailed on straight level track and diverted down a dirt road and into the post office - killing the postmaster. The loco was rebuilt again and remained in service many years, but earned a reputation has a hoodoo engine, haunted or possesed with an intent for killing.
The D&RGW narrow gauge stuff all suffered numerous wrecks and were repaired. D&RGW #483 was involved in a derailment east of Durango in September, 1958. It was leading #494 down the 2% grade into Durango when it derailed in a right hand curve on a fill. The #494 shoved it off the hill and over on its left side killing fireman Paul Mayer. The D&RGW patched up #483 and it was in service until the end in 1968 and the C&TS operated #483 until retired in 1977. D&RGW #489 was running light down Cumbres Pass just west of MP 336 when it hit a broken rail in May, 1926, went off the left side of the fill and rolled over down the hill killing the engineer. The fireman survived and worked until retirement in the 1960's. The #489 was less than 6 months old and the newest engine on the narrow gauge.D&RGW #492 has been in a couple of wrecks. She hit a HUGE boulder west of Chama in 1962, caving in the upper part of the smokebox. She was repaired with the smokebox off retired #490. #492 worked to Alamosa shop under her own power, and a caved-in nose. In the late 1930's #492 ran away headed east off Marshall Pass into Salida. She derailed into a rock wall which tore up the right side quite badly. And that's just a few. The only D&RGW narrow gauge engine not to be repaired after an accident was the #485, which was scrapped after it fell in a turntable pit.
On to one of my favorite subjects- rare locomotives!
I present to you GM&O #1900, the only Ingalls 4-S ever built. Manufactured at Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Mississippi in March of 1946, it was demonstrated to several railroads in the region as the flagship of a new line of locomotives. Regarded as a modern design at the time, she had a "turret" cab to improve visibility and was configured for MU usage. The locomotive produced 1,650 shaft horsepower from an inline 8-cylinder diesel manufactured by Superior Engines and Compressors, modified for railroad use by Cooper-Bessemer, and force fed by an Elliot turbocharger. The expected sales boom never materialized, and she was ultimately sold to the Gulf Mobile & Ohio, where she was placed in service as #1900. She provided yeoman service to the GM&O for the next 17 years, until they traded her in to EMD on 22 SD40s in 1966. EMD offered the locomotive to the Illinois Railway Museum for $3000; sadly, they were unable to find the money to make the purchase. In 1967, when no other buyers were found, she was sold for scrap.
In reply to Recon1342 :
1946 was just a rough year to try and enter the market. You had EMD, Alco, Baldwin and Fairbanks-Morse all competing for sales of big locomotive, and then the small switcher market also had GE, Whitcomb, and Plymouth. There just really wasn't any room for a new manufacturers. Ingalls actually had an entire lineup of locomotives planned in addition to the 4-S but never built any of the models.
GM&O's purchase of the 4-S is believed to be a bit of a conciliatory gesture, since Ingalls Shipbuilding was an on-line customer of the GM&O. And someone at the GM&O must have had a soft spot for the #1900, since it was wrecked twice and rebuilt and returned to service both times. The important thing to remember about IRM was that at the time, they were at a different site with less room, and their primary focus was on electric traction equipment, trolleys and interurban cars and electric locomotives. They didn't widen their scope until after the move to the current day site in Union. Once the #1900 went through the gates of Pielet Brothers scrapyard, it's fate was sealed. Pielet Brothers had an exclusive contract with EMD for cutting up traded-in locomotives and part of that contract was that nothing that entered could exit intact. The only locomotive to ever escape: CB&Q E5A #9911A at Illinois Railway Museum.
In reply to Recon1342 :
That's a cool, albeit slightly awkward looking loco.
...and now I'm thinking of the Zumwalt destroyers Ingals is currently building & wondering what stealth locomotive technology would look like.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
It's functionally a pretty solid design. The turret cab gives it actual rearward visibility, unlike the Es, Fs, PAs, FAs, etc. And it also had a vestibule area in the back, kind of like an RDC or EMU cab, where the head brakeman could ride while hooking onto a train, rather than having to hang off the grabirons on the side.
Are they still building Zumwalts? I thought the Navy gave up on those after just a couple and decided to bin the whole program and build more Arleigh Burkes. I saw one of those Zumwalts at Bath Iron Works last winter when I drove up to the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington. Definitely strange-looking ships.
In reply to NickD :
No clue on what Ingals is currently building. It's been probably almost 2 years since I drove past. I've seen ads within the last year or less that they're hiring, so they may have a new contract.
A little L&N #152 for page 152. One of the first batch of Pacifics that the Louisville & Nashville bought from Rogers in 1905, class K-1, L&N #152 has a long list of accolades to her name. She's the oldest surviving Pacific in the US, one of only three surviving L&N steam locomotives (the other two are 0-8-0s #2132 and #2152), the only L&N engine returned to steam in the preservation era, hauled Teddy Roosevelt's 1912 campaign train between Louisville and Cincinnati, pulled the car holding Al Capone on his way to Alcatraz for a leg of the trip, and was saved by L&N President John E. Tilford's personal orders after he allegedly said it was "too lovely to scrap".
Donated to the Kentucky Railway Museum as one of their first pieces, it underwent an operational restoration from 1972-1985, and ran from 1985-2011, when boiler issues and wear on the running gear knocked it out of service. It has been undergoing a slow overhaul since then, with hopes to return it to operation.
The #152 is definitely a bit odd, as far as Pacifics go. The large-diamter spoked trailing truck is rigid-mounted, making it more like an early turn-of-the-century Atlantic with an extra driving axle grafted on. The backhead of the boiler also extends to the back of the cab, meaning the engineer is crammed in alongside the firebox, while the fireman actually stands with one foot on the deckplate of the locomotive and the other on the tender deck. According to those that have operated her, she's not the most pleasant machine to run. In her original configuration, there was a large Johnson Bar reverser, that took up any room for a seat, save for a tiny folding seat and the engineer either sat on the tiny fold down seat, on the window sill, or just stood, while the fireman had no seat box of his own either. Even in restored service, the addition of a power reverser made more room for a seat for the engineer, but one had to climb up over the seat to sit in it.
Also pretty funny is that the tender behind #152 in these photos is not it's original tender. It's actually the third tender, at least, to be hooked up to #152. At some point, L&N swapped the original out for a slightly larger one from a retired GM&O Pacific. Then when it was restored to operation in the '80s, the tender from L&N L-1 class 4-8-2 #408 was swapped on for more capacity. As far as anyone knows, it was the only fully-welded L-1 tank on the L&N, at least from the photographic evidence. It also has an interesting vertical welded patch on the fireman's side, apparently from a roll-over.
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