The Broadway Limited PRR T-1's have arrived!

I feel the same way. Trouble with Pennsy locos is that they all look so damn, well, "Pennsy", so it's hard to change their appearance to suit anything else, even a freelance railway like my GER.

-- Cheers Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

The T is way cool though.

"MrRathburne"

Agree with you there.

-- Cheers Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

Yes indeed. I'm afraid I have to agree with Rathburne on that one as well. Not a success, but way cool all the same. A rarity for things PRR.

Regards,

DAve

Putting streamlining on a steam locomotive is like putting plate mail on a table dancer. Gene ABV61-1043.001.HCB

Not so.

The LNER in the UK conducted wind tunnel tests on models of the A4 before they went into production to prove there was a cost savings in fuel and water. However, at North American plodding speeds, yes, exterior streamlining is as you describe.

It will be noticed though, that the LNER never really pursued streamlining other than a handful of locos in two (I think) more classes. The streamlining on the other UK loco class, the LMS Duchesses, was removed from all of them after WW II. The only other streamlined loco in the UK was one King (Castle?) class loco of the GWR who applied a hideous bulbous nose, and a few other streamlined bits, to one loco. The ex Southern 4-6-2s of the WC?BB and MN classes were never streamlined, the were "airsmoothed", and woe betide anyone who called them anything else. All the MN classes rebuilt in the late 1950s to remove the airsmooth casing and replace the chain drive with Walcharts (sp) gear. Most of the WC?BB class were also rebuilt at the same time. Rebuilding was stopped when the end of steam became obvious.

Internal streamlining? Now that's a different kettle of fish and is related to other comments on the "Chuff" thread about front end design.

-- Cheers Roger T.

Home of the Great Eastern Railway

Have you ever seen a middle eastern dancer with a coin bra? Maybe it ain't exactly plate mail, but its OK by me!

The (British) LNER streamlined Pacifics were built after experiments with models in a wind tunnel. The entire train was designed for high speed minimising wind resistance. So the locomotive wasn't shaped too differently than the power cars of today's high-speed trains, and the observation car had a similar profile. They showed that an effective streamliner had to be designed that way rather than taking an existing engine and covering it up.

It was what streamlining was all about. These trains ran non-stop between London and Edinburgh - 400 miles and could maintain a sustained high speed.

The LMS also built streamlined Pacifics but they weren't quite as aerodynamic. They still had attractive lines though.

You can see models of the LMS and LNER streamlined Pacifics at hobby stores which carry British models.

My favourite line, the GWR even tried streamlining, but this was horrible - they put a rounded nose on a Castle and a King, a vee cab on the King, and generally made a mess of a pair of fine engines. The covers altered the wind-flow and bits that shouldn't have overheated, did.

Back on thread - the Pennsylvania 4-4-4-4s were excellent engines. Fast and powerful. And this is a limey saying it!

This always makes me pause and consider the not so small differences between North America and Europe. Four Hundred miles. Quite a long distance in the UK, but 103 miles short of being enough to cross the state of Tennessee. The Southern Railway (US) ran 503 miles between Bristol, Tennessee and Memphis, Tennessee.

I am not making any comparisons here between the two, not at all, but that segment represents only 20% of the trip from Boston to Los Angeles. It represents even less than that percentage on the route from Halifax to Vancouver It is no wonder that we North Americans do things so differently. Only Australia, Russia and China have similarly sized areas to traverse and none of them do it on the scope of North America.

The point was that this was non-stop. I don't think any US, Russian, Chionese or Australian locomotive did anything approaching that.

No-one in Australia is in that much of a hurry to travel 400 miles in ANY direction...

Cheers,

Mark.

"Approaching that" ? Probably approaching that.

Check out the Australian "Indian Pacific" which crosses the Nullarbor Plain in South Australia / Western Australia and see. It'll be pretty close. The Trans Siberian Express across Russia is going to come fairly close as well. maybe not for speed, but certainly for distance

My point was not to diminish in any way the nonstop run of 400 miles. I don't believe any North American railroad did that because of Government restrictions, safety considerations (something the Brits were never too keen on) and union working agreements. It certainly would have been no problem whatever for the Southern Pacific, Union Pacific or the Santa-Fe to have had non-stop runs that long. There were many places where the habitation was quite sparse and there was little or no need to stop first class trains.

Cheyenne, Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Utah - 440 miles Wichita, Kansas to Santa Fe New Mexico - 638.23 miles San Antonio, Texas to El Paso, Texas 552.06 miles

That last one might actually have been done by the Sunset limited, I don't know for sure, but I suspect that there would have been one crew change somewhere between.

North American crews did not ride on the train like British crews and did not change on the fly like the LNER and LMS did. That 400 mile run wouldn't have been possible without having the crews double-heading on the trains AND specially designed locomotives with tunnel tenders such that the relief crew could get to the loco cab from the train without stopping.

I will leave it to Roger or someone else from Canada to find out how long the CN or CP ran its longest non stop run. I suspect there might be one that long somewhere. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are awfully lonely places in certain areas..

Winnipeg, MB to Saskatoon, SK 519.76 miles / 836.47Km Similar distances are plentiful in the west. Of course sustained high speed is a relative term. What constitutes high speed? Faster than a horse can run? as fast as a jet airliner? Trains fit somewhere between those limits. It is one thing to run at sustained high speed across prairies, and other types of flatlands, or even rolling terrain; it is quite another to do such through the Appalachian, Rocky, Bitterroot and Cascade mountain ranges. The Pennines pale by comparison to the Canadian Rocky Mountains and are no match for the northern Cascades in the US. It is simply not possible to operate trains at sustained high speeds (your definition) upon 3% grades in 10 degree curves. You couldn't stand, or walk around, or eat. It would be as a carnival ride. Can you imagine trying to sip a martini on the tilt-A-whirl or the Scrambler? In short, that it was not done does not mean that it could not be done, merely that there was no economic reason or need to do it.

Well, there are numerous, verifiable runs of the T1s in excess of 130 MPH (not necessarily legal, " just making up time"), I'm sure their chisel nose had some beneficial effect at that speed.

Dale " proud owner of a BLI T1"

"Roger T." wrote:

-- Dale leasure Chief Rust Scraper Penfield and Western RR