The Pennsylvanian Railroad T1 Duplexes

[scots region]

Hello all, I am quite a fan of oddballs and the Pennsylvanian T1 4-4-4-4 duplex are without doubt amongst the stranger machines to have been built. I recently bought "Steam Glory 3" Special edition Classic Trains, and it’s an absolute mine of information, not least the article by one David Stephenson on the machines in question, titled "Pennsy's T1 Reassessed" throws up some interesting observations, one in particular could stand as a warning for all budding researchers.

 

"The PRR T1 is one of the most microscopically examined locomotives of all time. Nonetheless, until recently, its history has been primarily based on myth and lore. A few dramatic events were embellished and repeated over and over. Its history suffered too much from too much entertainment and not enough research. The real story is better than the legend"

 

To begin with the folklore around the T1 did have some ground, the precursor to the T1s, the PRR's S1 6-4-4-6, received a generally negative appraisal. It was largely impractical for daily service and was not very sure footed; it’s likely this is where the belief of the duplexes as being unable to haul their own weight began. However Stephenson notes that could handle a train of 15-16 coaches easily at a Hundred miles per hour, which ultimately sold the PRR management on the Duplex concept, it should be kept in mind that this was the purpose of the S1, and that as a demonstration model regular service was not a realistic proposition. Another move by Stephenson is to dispel the myth that the PRR didn't sit on its hands with regards to the early T1 prototypes considerable teething problems. In total No 6110, the original prototype, was tested 59 times at Altoona in 1944.

 

During its time under test the prototype in fact set the record for the lowest Water rate consumption, at 76 miles per hour with a reverser setting or cut-off of 20% a rate of just 13.6 lbs or 6.169 Kg per the indicated horsepower. It’s also possible that 6110 also set the record for superheat at Altoona, with a maximum superheat of 381 degrees. So there clearly was vast potential for the T1s.

 

This forms a key focus for the article, the PRR was an inherently conservative railway and this was problematic in their adoption of the T1. One example of this was found by Stephenson in the PRR’s dispatching policy with regard to the monthly mileages posted by the T1s, according to the article, the T1s were often used on services that otherwise would have involved doubleheaded K4s, the standard locomotive of the PRR, this was used primarily as a cost cutting method. Unfortunately the PRR recorded the mileages of Locomotives based on assigned trains, thus the belief that the T1s posted poor mileages arose out of faulty bureaucracy rather than faulty engines. In fact Stephenson has found that the T1s posted the highest mileage of any PRR locomotive... next to the E7s.

 

Stephenson also found the inevitable comparison between the T1 and K4 to have been inherently unfair, the K4s success lay in its simplicity, it had an excellent boiler and a user friendly layout. In complete contrast the T1s entire basis was its complexity and unlike the K4 did not take kindly to mishandling. In the hands of a competent Crew the T1s could easily rise to the occasion, another key argument of the article, once a Pennsy crew had adapted to a T1 they could easily get the best out of them.

 

In the era were the opportunity to question the men who lived with these machines slips further and further away, it should be remembered that the performance of a locomotive is as much down to the people at the controls as it is the engineering quality of a machine.

 

Yours ScR

[coachmann]

Interesting read. In the video 'Pensylvannia Glory', the script writer mentioned they were the saviour of the Pennsy in the 1940s. It seems, like all the engines that came during that decade (except the N&W), they were innevitably overshadowed by the rush to dieselise. We witnessed the same thing in the UK. The pilot diesels werent necessarily better than the steam locos they were replacing but a mix of politics and reducing manpower (wages bill) fed the switch. The bus world went though a similar process when the rear-engine boxes arrived. A big bus was the last thing operators needed when passenger numbers were getting smaller, but politics, grants and nationalisation of Leyland made the difference.

[scots region]

There, sorted the formatting. 

[jamie92208]

The article is very good, as is the whole publication.  I visited the USA for the first time in 1978 and though primarily interested in the UP I had read about the T1's and thought them fascinating locos.  That trip I got the chance to spend nearly two hours in the cab of an Amtrak (Ex NYC) E9 that was waitin to haul the Broadway Ltd out of Uninon Station in Chicago.  The engineeer was an old Pennsy man near to retirement and he had started on steam.  I asked him if he had driven the T1's and he had.  Distant memories record that eh liked them but I knew too little to ask him any deeper questions.   As the OP says these personal memories of such machines are fading fast.  By sheer chance as few days later I got a cab ride from Cheyenne to Laramie on an SDP40F, the fireman (It still had a steam heating boiler) was a man called Maxfield.   I was back there in 2005 and got talking to a UP conductor and mentioend him and was told that he was still alive and drawing his pension though in his 90's. Apparently he had been one of the few steam firemen who didn't want to train as an engineer when steam finished.   I looked him up in a book about the Big Boys and it turns out Mr Maxfield was one of the last people to fire a Big Boy in service.   Such connections are now very rare.  The article referred to above is superb and well worth reading.

 

Jamie

[Oldddudders]

Raymond Loewy's design on the T1 was known to me decades before I took any interest in US prototype - simply unique. Lucius Beebe described the T1 as "unable to turn a wheel without Burning-of-Rome smoke effects". Find me a steam enthusiast who wouldn't enjoy that!

[will5210]

Fantastically extravagantly American! I also found these whilst looking into Duplex locos. Nearly 8000 horsepower on the rolling road - Unreal!

[coachmann]

Fantastically extravagantly American! I also found these whilst looking into Duplex locos. Nearly 8000 horsepower on the rolling road - Unreal!

Maggie Sharp had a Jap Brass model of one of these in her model loco boutique in Sheffield in the early 1970s. Many weeks wages even then but it was good to droooool... There is footage of one drifting downgrade around horseshoe curve one one of the Steam Powered video tapes.

[trisonic]

How can we have a thread without this:

 

 

A most beautiful locomotive.

 

Best, Pete.

 

 

[Lawrence]

Coachman mentions the rush for diesel overshadowing such steam locos but I think it was the concessions given to road freight that started to kill off the railroads (and the already mentioned severe cuts in manpower that diesels eventually brought) and contributed to such overshadowing, as such locos were being rapidly replaced by modern traction in order to try and compete with cheaper road freight (which the railroads were funding through higher taxation) and a boom in access to affordable personal transport.

[coachmann]

I agree there were lots of contributary factors that led to mass dieselisation from the late 1940s, but during the early to mid 1940s when Union Pacific 'Challengers' were being built with incremental improvements, when New York Central and other railroads were introducing 4-8-4's with roller bearings and the Pennsy was persuing the rigid frame Duplex, the steam locomotive appeared to have a secure future and there was no thought of dieselisation at that time. When the new big idea dawned (diesels), American railroads had the wherewithall to go down that road too....or thought they had. Some railroads never really recovered.

[dave1905]

I agree there were lots of contributary factors that led to mass dieselisation from the late 1940s, but during the early to mid 1940s when Union Pacific 'Challengers' were being built with incremental improvements, when New York Central and other railroads were introducing 4-8-4's with roller bearings and the Pennsy was persuing the rigid frame Duplex, the steam locomotive appeared to have a secure future and there was no thought of dieselisation at that time. When the new big idea dawned (diesels), American railroads had the wherewithall to go down that road too....or thought they had. Some railroads never really recovered.

I would disagree.  By the 1940's dieselization was well underway.  Hundreds if not thousands of switch engines had been replaced by diesels.  They were the first to go, but because they aren't flashy, they travel under the radar.

during the first half of the 1940's locomotive production was regulated by the War Production Board and they mandated that only existing designs could be built (why the PRR built engines to a C&O design).  The railroads were dieselizing as fast as the locomotive makers could build them.  The WPB limited the EMD FT as the only road freight diesel to be built so production was limited.  Railroads built steam because that's all they could get.  Once those wartime restrictions ended and railroads were free to buy what they wanted, the construction of new steam engines evaporated, new locomotive construction was overwhelmingly diesel.

 

The famous quote when one railroader was asked how powerful were diesel engines, his answer was, "Powerful enough to pull a railroad out of bankruptcy."

[Oldddudders]

I would disagree.  By the 1940's dieselization was well underway.  Hundreds if not thousands of switch engines had been replaced by diesels.  They were the first to go, but because they aren't flashy, they travel under the radar.

during the first half of the 1940's locomotive production was regulated by the War Production Board and they mandated that only existing designs could be built (why the PRR built engines to a C&O design).  The railroads were dieselizing as fast as the locomotive makers could build them.  The WPB limited the EMD FT as the only road freight diesel to be built so production was limited.  Railroads built steam because that's all they could get.  Once those wartime restrictions ended and railroads were free to buy what they wanted, the construction of new steam engines evaporated, new locomotive construction was overwhelmingly diesel.

 

The famous quote when one railroader was asked how powerful were diesel engines, his answer was, "Powerful enough to pull a railroad out of bankruptcy."

You are closer to all this stuff than I am, Dave, but wasn't it the case that until FT103 did its nationwide tour, no-one had really produced a diesel design capable of moving heavy freight over long distances? The switchers were clearly a success, the streamliner now often ran with a diesel, but big freight was still almost exclusively steam. The near-coincidence of Pearl Harbor and the beginning of FT production gave GM/EMD a head start it was not to lose. As you say, the Big 3 steam manufacturers, Alco, Lima and Baldwin, were directed by the WPB to carry on with their steam programme for the duration of hostilities. No doubt GM's huge influence over production of all sorts of items for the front line gave it a preference, but it did mean that by 1946 it was ready with F2, then F3 etc.

[JWB]

No matter how "good" or "improved" late steam designs were, none was able to resist the diesel. There's been a great deal said about the Norfolk & Western's steam designs, for instance, but no matter how much efficiency they could get from an A or a Y6, they outlasted steam on other railroads by only a few years, and the slight delay in replacing steam was counterbalanced by drastic measures like leasing diesels from neighboring lines. (Same thing happened on the Nickel Plate.)

 

The Pennsylvania Railroad is probably the most overrated of US railroads, and it's worth stressing that Penn Central had long and deep historical roots in the PRR. However, I doubt if Dave H would disagree that during the same period, the UP was stodgy too. Maury Klein in his scholarly two-volume history of the UP makes the assertion that the gas turbine program was an effort by management to deflect criticism that they'd been too slow to adopt diesels -- they were trying to prove that no, they hadn't been asleep at the diesel switch, they'd just had a better form of power in mind all along! Klein also says that Otto Jabelmann (I think this is spelled correctly), the UP's CMO and designer of the FEFs, Challengers, and Big Boys, went to the UK during World War II, where he hobnobbed with the likes of Stanier and Bulleid, was regarded as a peer by them, but of course was historically something of a dinosaur.

 

The PRR made a number of calls that in hindsight were very bad, electrification being the biggest -- it absorbed capital that even in the late 1930s should have been going to diesels. Then they spent a lot of attention on the exotic new steam designs that ran for only half a dozen years. The Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society, which it's no coincidence has been dominated by former PRR "officials", has probably been the seat of "revisionist" opinion on the T1 and Q2 -- I believe the most recent theory is that enginemen weren't properly trained on how to start the T1s -- but the fact is that E7s were the better locomotive. Raymond Loewy is an interesting issue -- he's noted for far more than the T1, like Studebaker models, the Coca-Cola soda fountain dispenser, and many household appliances. On the other hand, the PRR kept his firm on retainer, and there was always internal dispute about exactly what Loewy was billing them for!  As I say, Penn Central had long and deep roots.

[jamie92208]

 Otto Jabelmann (I think this is spelled correctly), the UP's CMO and designer of the FEFs, Challengers, and Big Boys, went to the UK during World War II, where he hobnobbed with the likes of Stanier and Bulleid, was regarded as a peer by them, but of course was historically something of a dinosaur.

I'm just in the course of re reading Maury Klein's marvellous book (Which has now grown to 3 volumes) and Jabelman actually died in the UK during the tour.  So there is a chance that he will ahve been buried over here.

 

 

Jamie

[dave1905]

The last UP steam engine, #844 was delivered in December 1944.  While the UP continued to run steam for another 15-16 years, they stopped buying new ones (though technically they never really stopped running steam, they've always had at least one steamer on the roster).

 

The UP likes new technology and big engines.  It pioneered turbochargers on EMD diesels, making its own GP20's before EMD offered them.  It was the only railroad to operate turbines regularly, it was the only railroad to operate the high horsepower double motor engines for an extended time and it went for the modern high horsepower SD90, C60AC's (with somewhat less success).

 

Steam engines require a fairly large and expensive infrastructure to support them that diesels don't even think about.  If you consider the amount railroads invested in pump houses, water treatment plants, water towers and track pans plus all the people to operate and maintain it.  Then consider that diesels generally don't need any of that infrastucture.  Big bucks.

[PaulRhB]

No matter how "good" or "improved" late steam designs were, none was able to resist the diesel

True but as major coal haulers and diesel not yet fully proved you can see why Pennsy and N&W did look at steam development so they didn't have all their eggs in one basket.

 

The Pennsylvania Railroad is probably the most overrated of US railroads, and it's worth stressing that Penn Central had long and deep historical roots in the PRR.

 

Overrated? Like the GWR? Their standardisation worked very well as did some of their experimental designs. The fight for supremacy between ex PRR and NYC policies is often quoted for bringing PC down as that distracted from the recovery of the damage done by the intensive war use much like BR's lack of investment was supposed to bs solved by Railtrack. Yes they soldiered on for years much like BR trying to make it work but never really had the revenue due to the impact of road transport post war.

 

.

where he hobnobbed with the likes of Stanier and Bulleid, was regarded as a peer by them, but of course was historically something of a dinosaur.

 

Again at the time it was wise to consider the alternatives as the bump of the oil crisis proved, what if that had cut off 50% of the USA's oil?

 

The PRR made a number of calls that in hindsight were very bad, electrification being the biggest -- it absorbed capital that even in the late 1930s should have been going to diesels.

So the rest of the world has gone mainly to electric and that was a bad call? Considering the East coast commuter lines are still electrified it seems to have been a wise move especially as more are looking at electrification now. I think the limited funding to expand the network post war combined with cheap oil in the states led to their over reliance on oil then and the big powerful diesel producers were very good at marketing but not particularly imaginative on development. Modern emissions regulations have moved that goalpost rather significantly now though.

 

Inevitably someone writing about a loco like this is going to have an opinion and there have been a lot if articles on the flaws of the T1 and this offers some interesting alternatives. Pennsy had far more significant problems than these few experimental designs and some very good standard designs so are they really any different to the Western region experimenting with hydraulic traction? It's easy in hindsight to slam the ideas that didn't quite work out but weren't a disaster or a major contribution to the end if that company.

 

The T1 certainly was different and had some good ideas on reducing reciprocating weight plus brought a bit of glamour back. Ultimately it was a dead end as they made diesel work brilliantly for the US way especially with the multiple working advantages. But what would history and hindsight have said about it if oil had foundered as the fuel post war?

 

The Broadway model of the T1 is very impressive by the way

[JWB]

Naturally, there's wide latitude for opinion, especially on discussion forums. It's true that there were battles between the PRR and NYC factions in PC, but the fact is that the PRR won out, and Perlman was shunted aside. My uncle later worked for Perlman at WP, so in part I'm biased, but my uncle's experience in both the trucking and rail industries was that the PRR was killing itself in many different ways. He found, for instance, that he could get a rate for piggyback from Chicago to Kearney, NJ that had to be below PRR's own cost. He was delighted -- as he put it, not only was he making money routing trailers over PRR while they were losing it, but as a bonus his trailers on the TOFC cars were flashing the trucking company's name at every grade crossing! Perlman's objections to PRR's money-losing rates are documented in The Wreck of the Penn Central. A fairly recent book on the dismantling of the PRR's ex PCC&StL routes in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois makes the point that the PRR was always a marginal operation. Even the inability of K4 1361 to survive in excursion service has been traced to poor workmanship at Altoona. As for electrification -- you're right, the rest of the world does it, but the rest of the world loses money on its railroads! The PRR and New Haven, along with the Reading and DL&W, electrified suburban and corridor operations that became legacies for money-losing transit agencies. Santa Fe and Southern Pacific looked at electrification in the 1970s and suddenly realized that the cost of copper wire alone to electrify would be more than their entire market capitalization! It was a no-brainer.

[Ozexpatriate]

during the first half of the 1940's locomotive production was regulated by the War Production Board and they mandated that only existing designs could be built (why the PRR built engines to a C&O design).  The railroads were dieselizing as fast as the locomotive makers could build them.  The WPB limited the EMD FT as the only road freight diesel to be built so production was limited.  Railroads built steam because that's all they could get.  Once those wartime restrictions ended and railroads were free to buy what they wanted, the construction of new steam engines evaporated, new locomotive construction was overwhelmingly diesel.

Clearly the late 1930s and early 1940s were the last hurrah for US steam locomotives - and new steam designs like the N&W J class and the PRR T1 that were introduced during the war years represent the pinnacle of US steam development. They were doomed by labour costs not their performance characteristics.

 

Even beyond war production restrictions, the effects of second world war on US dieselization should not be underestimated - in large measure from the expertize developed in the mass manufacturing of internal combustion engines for aircraft, trucks, tanks and particularly motor vessels (including submarines). Fairbanks-Morse, GM and GE built a lot of diesel electric motors for the Electric Boat company.

 

Of the steam locomotive manufacturers, Alco (last steam locomotive in 1948) competed, building diesels for a while. Lima (last steam locomotive in 1949) and Baldwin tried to compete with diesels, but died died even more quickly.

[PaulRhB]

the PRR was killing itself in many different ways.

 

I agree and your points are exactly what I meant, their whole system was struggling and the T1 was one tiny cog that might have contributed but the motive power policy wasn't a major factor as Pennsy dieselised alongside spreading the risk. Subsequently we can see they needed to be far harsher on dropping small loads and concentrating on the bulk traffic that the roads couldn't compete on. Did Pennsy and N&W fare badly because of their Eastern location competing against the most developed road network while most of the other big roads handled heavy East to West traffic supporting their divisions in the heavier developed Western areas?

 

As for electrification -- you're right, the rest of the world does it, but the rest of the world loses money on its railroads!

Yes but the rest of the world invested public money in road AND rail because the railways were nationalised in one way or the other when they did it. In the US the public funding that offsets the massive capital cost just wasn't there for rail, so as you say, for the private companies a complete no brainer

[Ozexpatriate]

Did Pennsy and N&W fare badly because of their Eastern location competing against the most developed road network while most of the other big roads handled heavy East to West traffic supporting their divisions in the heavier developed Western areas?

The N&W and the C&O were wedded to coal, they weren't called big black coal conveyors for nothing - hence the glorious but failed steam-electric units. Wonderous monsterous beasts they were.

 

I'm not sure what you mean here by "Western" areas. I suspect that there is some truth to distinguishing between freight patterns for the railroads of the northeast versus what would become today's UP and BNSF.

 

There are apt comparisons that could be made between the PRR and the GWR. They both had long traditions of engineering. They built their own fleets and did things 'their' way because that was the 'proper' way, according to their lights.

 

In the US the public funding that offsets the massive capital cost just wasn't there for rail, so as you say, for the private companies a complete no brainer

It's all Herr Hitler's fault. Eisenhower's experience with the German auto-bahns (not to mention his experiences on the 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy) led to vast sums of Federal monies poured into the Interstate Highways (or more properly, the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highway) which gave (and continues to give) trucks an 'unfair' nationally subsidized advantage in freight haulage.

 

Airplanes killed long-distance passenger trains.

[peach james]

T1 was doomed from the start because of the deal which GM could afford to offer the railways- _new_ locomotives, on credit terms.  The railway's were dealing with a huge amount of delayed purchasing, and the Diesel-Electric offered a way forward that made sense on all kinds of levels.  It doesn't take much of a difference per mile to make steam look unattractive, especially depending on the fiscal situation in the US and Canada- where "new" was worth more in tax deductions than "old, rebuilt".

 

One of the killers of the N&W steam in 58-60 was the total decimation of the support infastructure which had supported steam up to that point.  Companies like ELSCO that offered parts for superheaters in 1958, didn't in 1960...and it made it very hard for N&W to keep steam on the road.  It's not bad when you are cookie cutter assembling new engines, with only the big bits being the responsiblity of your own shops- but much harder when you have to start with steel and make everything.  I know Weir hate us when we ask for help with steam turbine pumps that they made in the mid 60's...we're the last users of them, and know as much as their "experts".

 

James

[dave1905]

One of the killers of the N&W steam in 58-60 was the total decimation of the support infastructure which had supported steam up to that point. 

 Slightly aside story.

 

When I was in college my best friend volunteered at a trolley museum.  They were trying to rebuild a trolley car but were having problems wit the controller.  They couldn't find one, they polled al the other museums and couldn't find any surplus parts at any other museums.  As a last resort, they decided to ask GE, who made the originals.  They called GE and gave them the part number.  The parts guys mulled it over and told them that this was an old part and wasn't in the computer, it was in their old parts manual.  He fetched the volume and after searching through it announced they had some of those controllers in stock.  Evidently those same controllers are used in overhead bridge cranes.  So they bought several.

[jamie92208]

 Slightly aside story.

 

When I was in college my best friend volunteered at a trolley museum.  They were trying to rebuild a trolley car but were having problems wit the controller.  They couldn't find one, they polled al the other museums and couldn't find any surplus parts at any other museums.  As a last resort, they decided to ask GE, who made the originals.  They called GE and gave them the part number.  The parts guys mulled it over and told them that this was an old part and wasn't in the computer, it was in their old parts manual.  He fetched the volume and after searching through it announced they had some of those controllers in stock.  Evidently those same controllers are used in overhead bridge cranes.  So they bought several.

A group of us are getting started on a project to recreate the first overhead electric tram in the UK, known as  a Roundhay electric., built in New York by the Stephenson Company with thompson Houston Electrical gear and a Bemis truck.    After a research trip The body and truck are doable but we need motors and a controller.  The correct motors would be Thompson Houston SRG's from 1891 together with a Type 51 controller, as GE now owns the Thompson Houston brand perhaps i should give them a call.

 

Jamie

[Hunslet]

While on the subject of Pennsylvania Duplex locos I thought you might like to see a video of my pair of BLI H0 scale locos which I took some time ago.

T1 hauling passenger and Q2 hauling freight.

Both with synchro smoke and sound.

 

http://youtu.be/ltkG-y0EjiA

 

 

Regards, Colin.

[scots region]

A group of us are getting started on a project to recreate the first overhead electric tram in the UK, known as  a Roundhay electric., built in New York by the Stephenson Company with thompson Houston Electrical gear and a Bemis truck.    After a research trip The body and truck are doable but we need motors and a controller.  The correct motors would be Thompson Houston SRG's from 1891 together with a Type 51 controller, as GE now owns the Thompson Houston brand perhaps i should give them a call.

 

Jamie

 

Interesting project Jamie, good luck with it.

 

SG3 tells me that the issues over the T1s performance became irrelevant after 1946 when the PRR made its first loss, at the same time the last T1 was delivered and the NYC, the PRRs main competitor and long standing rival, was in the midst of it own dieselization program. This loss and the sense that NYC was overtaking them was what prompted the PRR to get serious about diesels on their first rate passengers. So the T1s from the get go were in a running battle with the E7s for control of the very job they were built for, a fight which they couldn't win.