Confederate layouts?

Here's one I found on the Library of Congress site.

a great resource for civil time period.

Titled: City Point, Va. "Gen. J. C. Robinson" and other locomotives of the U.S. Military Railroad]

Photograph from the main eastern theater of war, the siege of Petersburg, June-1864-April 1865

This may no be the General but it is the same type of loco used by most railroads of that period.

Bob CEO/Chief Ditch Digger B & L Railroad & Mining Company

Unless my eyes are really bad that boiler is straight (engine behind it looks to be a 2-6-0). The "General" on display has a large change in boiler diameter (wagon top???). One of the comments was explosion and burning. I'm guessing explosion means the boiler and a burning would destroy the cab as they were all wood. While the "General" on display is a very nice engine I would suggest the picture that Bob referenced is probably what the General looked like at the time of the chase. I'm suggesting that all that was left of the "original" General (engine at time of chase) was probably the frame, drivers, cylinders, and lead truck. I have seen pictures of boiler explosions in the '30/'40 that show the preceding parts, and nothing more, just sitting on the track.

The current engine on display would be a type of engine to model for the period. The picture referenced is great for building similar period engines. Note that these are very small in HO scale. If you have ever seen the Mantua model the motor is in the tender. I would think G scale would be much better for the era. Does anyone know what the gauge was for the "General"?

You're doing an awful lot of "guessing" and repeatedly coming up short in the fact department. As it says in the previously referenced site at

:

"By the time it returned, the evacuation of Atlanta by Hood's Army of Tennessee was nearly complete. General Hood had one last job for the locomotive. He ordered it, along with five other engines, run into the

81-car munitions train that could not be moved since all rail lines to Atlanta had been severed. Although badly damaged from the resulting explosion and fire, The General survived and ran on the United Stated Military Railroad Service (USMRS), continuing her service to the Western and Atlantic after the USMRS returned the W&ARR equipment. "

Running the locomotive into a munitions train doesn't sound much like a boiler explosion to me... and if it wasn't the lead locomotive, surviving the explosions is quite possible.

Eighty years later, bigger boilers, higher pressures, MUCH bigger explosions... and as I pointed out above, the "explosion" you referenced turned out not to be the boiler at all, but the munitions train a string of locomotives was run in to.

No, they're not small in HO. They're small in _N_ scale... and Bachmann has similar locomotives in several paint schemes in N scale. A few years ago one of the magazines featured an ACW era layout featuring several military trains (including some of those huge flat car mounted mortars) in N scale. I haven't done it myself, but some folks have even put DCC decoders in the N scale Bachmann 4-4-0s.

According to

(also previously referenced... aren't you looking at _any_ of the links?):

"3. The General was converted from coal to fuel oil burning during the

1962 L&N refit. The gauge of her drivers was changed by moving the tires in 1.5 inches on each side. It appeared that the pony truck wheels (front bogies) were replaced as were those of the tender with new trucks of the new gauge."

So, depending on what the allowances were, it would appear that for at least part of its life the General was an "almost" five foot gauge locomotive. (4' 8.5" + 1.5" + 1.5" = 4' 11.5")

Yep, seems so.

If you mean the one with the US Military RR lettering on the tender, it's definitely a 4-4-0.

There is a book on the "great Locomotive chase" entitled " The General and the Texas" by Stan Cohen and James G Bogie ISBn 1575100606

The has a picture of the Gemeral dated 1864 after it was badly damaged by the reterating Confederated from Atlanta. There is no cab, large holes in the smoke stack and steam dome, also some damage ttot he boilerb but may only be to the clading.

Comparison with later pictures shows that every thing above the chasis looks different. The text says she was repaired in 1866 and rebuitl in 1870 and regauged in 1886.

Other books of use on this subject are MR Lincoln's Military Railroads by Roy Merideth ISBN 0393057038 Civil War Railroads and Models by Edwin P Alexander ISBN 0517530732 Civil war Railroads vy George B Abdill ISBN 0253335361

Regards

Tony Cane

Now, now - it's not politically correct to bring that up :-).

It is, however, historically correct.

--=20 It's turtles, all the way down

definitely a 4-4-0.< Right, bad eyes. I blew up the picture and what I thought was a driver is not. Another comment. It appears from that picture that the engines carried the full name. The "General" is actually the "General John B. Hood". So the question is did it actually carry the full name at the time of the "chase"? Joe is correct in that I didn't read the comments about the explosion and fire correctly but still the term 'survived' means what? This comment needs more details; _He ordered it, along with five other engines, run into the 81-car munitions train_ 81 cars filled with munitions no matter where the General was in the 5 engines (pick last) if run at speed surely resulted in great damage. No information on the other 4 engines. From that time up to the last of steam it was common to rebuild engines that had large amount of damage or even those that were changed. Santa Fe for example would fit boilers from one engine to the frames of another engine, i.e. the 2-10-10-2 being made into two 2-10-2s! They didn't waste in those eras! So bottom line is that without a picture of the General John B. Hood we have no real information what that engine really looked like at the time of the chase. The term "survived" really doesn't mean much when talking about steam engines!

damaged by the retreating Confederated from Atlanta. There is no cab, large holes in the smoke stack and steam dome, also some damage to he boiler but may only be to the cladding.

Comparison with later pictures shows that every thing above the chassis looks different. The text says she was repaired in 1866 and rebuilt in 1870 and regauged in 1886.<

Well here it is. The current "General" apparently doesn't look like the "original General" which is my original thought. Thanks Tony, will check the library for this book.

Oh, sure, the cane cutters were and are free workers, yeah, that's the ticket.

You might be surprised.

On St. Prisca plantation, ( St. James parish ) they were known for buying slaves and setting them free. They were offered land and a house and given the rights of a share cropper. Ask me about it sometime. I learned about it when I was about 5 years old ( back in 1960 ) and I asked why the road next to the family house was named "freetown lane" and why they was a village between the pecan orchard and the 600 acres of sugarcane.

But thats ok Steve, go ahead and watch Mandingo and make your judgements. like so many people with no clue.

The point is, as small a % as it may be, it is MY "southern" heritage, I get sick of people thinking everyone in the south was either a black slave or a rich white slave owner.

It's far from the truth but I guess since some of our founding fathers were slave owners, we can paint the picture with a very wide brush. can't we ? Not just the south.

Lets see, New England had endutured ( sp ? ) servants, the west have the chinese, New Orleans had untold Irish slave type workers die....who else should we add to the list.

Let's not forget what we did to the Native Americans or the Japanese in the camps in WWII.

But thats ok,let's just point fingers at the South.

Right.

This country has more to be ashamed of then to be proud of..

But because some yahoo with the screen name "Rebel Yell" makes a post about a "Confederate" railroad, you want to sit on your throne and look down upon ALL people in the south ?

Hopefully someday we can all be as perfect as you.

Jon's basic point is correct, however inelegantly he expressed it. Even the museum that houses the "General" does not have a photo of the engine showing it undamaged, and in the condition it ran in at the time of the chase. It's appearance today is considerably different to that of the Civil War era. Each time it was rebuilt it gained features that were in vogue at that time, and lost other that were outdated, for want of a better word.

Incorrect. The Scots scientist James Clerk-Maxwell had developed and publicly demonstrated a colour photography method by 1861. Another good example why speaking in absolutes is dangerous.

Regardless, anyone wishing to accurately model the General in the Civil War period won't learn much from studying its current appearance, which is an amalgam of 1890s practice and "restoration".

Cheers,

Mark.

Incorrect. Boiler explosions are mainly* due low water, which causes the crown sheet to collapse. At that point the remaining water in the boiler is reduce to atmosperic pressure, and instantly flashes over to steam. It doesn't matter whether it is a big high pressure boiler, or a small low pressure boiler, the physics is the same in both cases. In either case the loco will be destroyed, and the crew killed.

*Leaving aside the relatively rare cases of lap seam failure...

So it's clear that I wasn't talking about a boiler explosion caused by any kind of internal failure, but one caused by an external event.

BTW, none of the documentation says that the General's _boiler_ exploded. It _does_ say that the boiler was replaced as a _result_ of fire damage and explosions... but given the fact that it was one of five locomotives that were run into a munitions train, it is highly likely these were _external_ events. Even then, they knew enough about materials science to understand that being subject to that kind of event would make the safety of the boiler highly suspect even if it were still intact.

One of the documents suggests that the General had a history of major changes of appearance even before the chase - it apparently started life as a tank engine.

If you're going to count rivets, it helps to know the difference between a rivet and a bolt.

Clerk Maxwell's method was not useable in the field, nor was it of good enough resolution or color reproduction to be useful. Calling it a "color" photograph is... generous, at best. See:

The first practical color photograph wasn't taken until 1872 by Louis Ducos du Hauron. He didn't even come up with the method to take color photos in this way until 1869 - AFTER the end of the American Civil War.

See:

However, it wasn't until 1907 that Auguste and Louis Lumiere made autochrome glass plates available to actually make color photographs.

I stand by my statement. One potential concept for color photography was understood, but there was no practical implementation available at the time of the Great Locomotive Chase, hence no color photography.

Go pick your nits elsewhere.

IIRC, only 6% of the whites were major slave holders. A somewhat larger group (I don't recall the numbers) were one step removed from "po' white trash" and owned one slave or one slave family.

And they were foolish enough to go along with the big slaveholders in dragging their states down into ruin and sacrificing the bravest as well as the most foolish among themselves.

Sorta like small business owners feeling some kinship with Exxon-Mobil or GE.

Tunas!!!

Yep, gotta agree with you. It's just like how many of the people in the middle east think about Americans. No matter who is President or what they decide to do, we are all guilty in their eyes for murdering innocent woman and children.

Sucks to be thought of as a baby killer doesn't it ?

.

Guess we all look alike, eh? As one who was shot at and hit (a category to which no one in the Bush adminisration or the NeoCon hierarchy belong) in Vietnam, been there, done that, got the Purple Heart. I remember what sort of politicians supported the war, and particularly those who kept it going and going and going . . . (hint: they weren't "left wing liberal humanists")