UP, SP, Santa Fe - and their steam engines

I am not an expert on these roads but judging from the "all time Santa Fe steam roster" at

none of the Santa Fe articulateds were really compareable to the UP & SP engines you mention. Santa Fe doesn't seem to have rostered any really modern steam engines of similar type as newest the had was built in 1919.

SF had some kind of bizzare articulateds - especially (IMHO) 2-10-10-2 of which they seem to have had ten,

If your library has a copy of "Iron Horses of the Santa Fe" you can find out more aboutSanta Fe steam. As far as I know the book is out of print, but may be available through used book outlets. One copy is on the eBay auction web site (not my auction) at

Thank you for the great link to their roster of steam. I really appreciate it!

:Matt

Just a follow up; ATSF had some very large and efficient 2-10-4s and dual-purpose 4-8-4s they used for freight. In those locations where ATSF had bad grades, they preferred to doublehead; UP, SP and others had much longer grades and found articulateds to be more efficient in terms of equipment and manpower.

Matt,

First, personally, other than both being articulated, I would never consider a SP AC type locomotive in the same class as the Challengers and Big Boys. I guess the later ones were getting close but still...

The Santa Fe experimented with articulated locomotives early on (around

1910 as I recall) and even had some 2-10-10-2 types. They were disappointed with the results. Santa Fe's big three "super steam" locomotives were the 2-10-4 (Santa Fe), 4-6-4 (Hudson), and 4-8-4 (Northern). In fact there is a book called "The Santa Fe's Big Three" by S.Kip Farrington, Jr. that describes their operating characteristics in detail. The bottom line is that these were so successful, the Santa Fe never experimented with other types. Remember that the Santa Fe was already embracing the Diesel-Electric concept before many of the others were considering it. One reason was that Santa Fe did not have the investment in their own large coal supply like the NP, UP, NW did.

I believe if we checked the Union Pacific's roster they never purchased any FT class diesels while Santa Fe had hundreds.

That 2-10-10-10-10-10-2 sounds like a German WWII project to me...

Terry

Why do you say that? IIRC the largest loco proposed for the wartime Reichsbahn was a 2-12-0.

IIRC, the SP grades for which the ACs were developed were steeper than UP's. A Big Boy or Challenger would have a hard time keeping up with the AC over Donner.

Each of the railroads had their own philsophy of running a railroad. The SP wanted long trains and was happy with slogging up the heavy grades, the UP wanted fast big trains and had the moderate grades to allow such operation and the SF was happy with fast short trains. I'll note that the SF has a 100 or so mile long grade in northern Az. The SF tried some articulated designs like the accordian loco - the

2-10-10-2 and other sillyness and shied away from the multiple locos as a result. For some reason, the engineering dept. just couldn't build a straightforward articulated loco but rather went in strange ways. Thus, they ended up later when needed, some large single locos that could roll and pull well. Too bad that the engineering dept. didn't get back into articulated loco building with the knowledge that they got from the 4-8-4 and 2-10-4 programs. They probably would have built something that would have outperformed the Big Boys.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

I took it as a comment on Teutonic fascist silliness.

On Thu, 18 Dec 2003 13:25:20 UTC, Brian Paul Ehni wrote: 2000

The Espee's other problem was curvature. Ten-coupled engines were just too long for the curves on the Sierra grade. 2-10-2s were used successfully in other areas. The 4-10-2s were generally unsuccessful wherever used but that is a different matter.

Fair enough - I'm amazed that any railroad would contemplate such a travesty. But the Santa Fe certainly redeemed itself with the 2900s and

5000s. Magnificent locos.

IMHO some of the Santa Fe articulateds were truly ugly. They did redeem themselves with the 4-8-4's and other modern engines.

"Screwdrivers make poor hammers, and vice versa."

Hammers drive screws very nicely, it's the unscrewing in which they fall short.

Eric

For some just regular old silliness, look at some of the "innovative" locomotive designs off this link:

Some of my favorites:

A "Bigger Boy" 4-8-8 + 4-8-8-4 + 8-8-4

A Russian 4-14-4 A German Mikado driven by a V-8 engine! A challenge, what is the Whyte Classification for this beast? Ah, and is this a drawing of the proposed 2-10-10-10-10-10-2 !?! Not by the Germans, but Baldwin!

Just the thing for a Bill Schoop (sp?) article in RMC to use up all those left-over brass Big Boys'.

Very true. NONE of the big steam builders adapted well to making Diesels. They just had the wrong mindset, and by the time they realized it EMD already had the market. Baldwin and Lima fizzled out fairly early, and Alco/MLW blundered on like a headless dragon for considerably longer, but it's fate seemed inevitable. The rise of GE in the Diesel market spelled their doom (and didn't do EMD any good either).

It should be noted that GE, like EMD, got their railroad experience from building ELECTRIC locos, or gas electrics in EMD's case, in any event, the bottom half of a modern Diesel-electric. They knew from the start that a Diesel was *NOT* just a steam engine with a different power source. None of the steam builders figured that out until it was too late. They were always playing 'catch up', and never did.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Andy Harman wrote: