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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 3, 2020 15:39:16 GMT -7
Don't cheat!!! I am wondering if any of you can identify these two steam engines? they are roughly in the same category in weight, power and force. They were designed to solve a problem. Do you know what that problem was? Do you know what these engines are? I know, but I am curious if anyone else here knows.   If you know steam engines and how they work, many clues are shown in the above pictures. If you have a knowledge of the knowing signs of proper and officiant operation. then you will have the answers. Well, below, we have a standard locomotive of the same time frame: a 2-8-2 Mikado. She has roughly the same force and power ratings.  Study the pictures. They have some of the clues you might need. -------- For good measure I thought I would just go ahead and a picture of...  A large Climax Class B (two powered trucks), even though the type isn't one of my favorites. That said the Climax geared steam engines did the job as well as the other two did!!! |
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 3, 2020 15:44:37 GMT -7
another clue...
the locomotives are running on the same conditions. Same weather, same routes, and the trains are roughly between 250 tons to 280 tons in total mass...
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Post by starcruiser on Dec 3, 2020 16:42:10 GMT -7
The first is a Shay and the second is a Heisler. Both were very popular with the logging industry since they would manage tight radius track and pull heavy loads (at relatively slow speed). There is a third type roughly contemporary called the "Climax":  |
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 3, 2020 17:10:26 GMT -7
The first is a Shay and the second is a Heisler. Both were very popular with the logging industry since they would manage tight radius track and pull heavy loads (at relatively slow speed). There is a third type roughly contemporary called the "Climax": Correct on the types. The top pic is a Shay D class (three cylinders and four powered trucks). The second is a Heisler. This one is one of the later models with its two cylinders at a 30 degree angles. Both of these locomotives are geared steam engines. They were built to solve problems encountered in the logging and mine industries. The problem wasn't really tight curves: it was grades that climbed above 3%grades. They did have the benefit of being able to handle some tighter turns, but it was the ability to climb step grades that made these engines popular. The trains in the pictures are climbing a grade that is 2.1% to 2.8%. As I said look at all three engines, paying attention to the smoke from the stack. Notice the white smoke coming from the geared steam engines. It is white meaning they aren't struggling climbing the incline. They are moving at a slow speed but they aren't using very much regulator (steam usage)or reverser (throttle and torque control). Both these trains are climbing the grade at around 15 MPH. Now look at the Mikado. See how dark its smoke is. this engine is pulling the same mass up the same grade, but she is pulling at nearly fully cracked open regulator, meaning nearly all her steam is being pushed into the direct drive connectors to the driver wheels. The reverser is nearly fully forward on the direction of the wheels. This is very inefficient on the use of the steam. She is using nearly all her power to pull the load up the same grade. She is using a lot of water and a lot of coal to do the same job that the geared engines are doing. The geared engines barely have the regulator open to half and the reversers are barely open as well. This saves steam for those very step grades. |
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Post by starcruiser on Dec 3, 2020 21:04:54 GMT -7
Yep - there's a reason those geared engines were popular for specialized work but, that Mikado can run much faster on relatively level ground. That's something the geared engines weren't built for but, that's not why someone would buy them anyway!
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 3, 2020 21:28:55 GMT -7
Yep - there's a reason those geared engines were popular for specialized work but, that Mikado can run much faster on relatively level ground. That's something the geared engines weren't built for but, that's not why someone would buy them anyway! The Mikado is a good comparison to these geared steam engines. It shows why most mainline trains had to be double-headed going over the mountains; yes, Shay and Heisler were wonderful moving up those tough grades. The Mikado was an excellent freight engine on open grades that were below 2%, this little Mikado i used for the post can actually move that train at a good pace of around 70 mph on flat grades, but in the use as a freight engine they seldom got over 40 mph. |
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 5, 2020 6:18:14 GMT -7
One of the roads i like to model is the AT&SF. The Santa Fe didn't have the most powerful of steam engines, but what they did have were considered very reliable and capable of handling the road miles and grades on their routes. Most of the routes they covered were either open prairie or desert, with a few mountain grades. They shared track rites with the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific. Their yards also handled some classification work for them as well. I enjoy modeling the Santa Fe, in this hobby. I grew up on the Santa Fe. My granddad was the chief engineer on the Missouri division. He designed and built a lot of bridges...lol Case in point of good reliable power was the 2-10-2 "Santa Fe" type.  |
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Post by starcruiser on Dec 5, 2020 9:58:10 GMT -7
AT&SF - SP - UP - MP - MKT - CRI&P - T&P - CBQ - IGN - KCS and on and on and on in Texas over the years. It's crazy how few remain now. So many merged - bankrupt etc...
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 5, 2020 13:48:59 GMT -7
AT&SF - SP - UP - MP - MKT - CRI&P - T&P - CBQ - IGN - KCS and on and on and on in Texas over the years. It's crazy how few remain now. So many merged - bankrupt etc... Mergers and bankruptcies have always been a staple of the railroad industry in the North America, mergers are just as common as box cars, and bankruptcies where is common is laying track |
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 7, 2020 8:53:50 GMT -7
 What I like to model, in the club that i belong to, is the transition era in North America. Generally the post war years, from around 1946 to 1970: though we can go back to the mid 30's, when diesel-electric power started to appear. This era had many of the old steam engines still in use, that were built around the turn of the Century all the way up to the beginning of the second generation of diesels. Our club has three different modular layouts that we can set up. We have a mountain grade prototypes off of Donner Pass. But that set up has two types of line running on it. We have a set of modules that contains an "electrified" mountain route and then we have one one that represents a standard mountain road. That is two of our layouts The third layout we have in operation, is one that covers the prairie and transitions into desert. We use this for ATSF and UP operations. We don't have the room to set up anymore layouts, but we do have plans for a fourth layout if we can find the money and a place to rent. It will be an electrified layout based on the Northeast Corridor in the same time frame. Some of us members want a place to run our lovely GG1 engines and other PRR and NYC equipment. So if you model, what era do you cover. Transition era like we do, or 19th to turn of the Century, or do you go for the modern era? Some on here might even be into European layouts. Just wondering? |
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Post by starcruiser on Dec 7, 2020 9:15:32 GMT -7
I have some equipment but, don't have a layout and haven't joined any local club/group. If I did get a chance to build a layout, it would be pretty much the same - transition era. Just so much variety of equipment and railroads. Vibrant and varied color schemes for them as well. My "official" cutoff would be around 1958-59.
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 7, 2020 10:27:56 GMT -7
I have some equipment but, don't have a layout and haven't joined any local club/group. If I did get a chance to build a layout, it would be pretty much the same - transition era. Just so much variety of equipment and railroads. Vibrant and varied color schemes for them as well. My "official" cutoff would be around 1958-59. We use 1970 as our cut off for the era because it gives us the option of using some of the latest first generation equipment that was being introduced in the diesel-electrics. 1959, saw the wide scale introduction of the U25B, the first of General Electric's U-boats, which proved to be a good competitor to the EMD GP and SD range of engines. The 1960's also saw the beginning of things to come. Some of the first intermodal trains were being yanked around the system, by first generation diesels.The sixties still offered steam. We also saw the death of three great American firms. Lima, ALCO and Baldwin, these shops just couldn't handle the new era of construction methods. They failed to adapt. Just dome of the reasons we chose this cut off |
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Post by thescreamingswede on Dec 8, 2020 22:51:48 GMT -7
Shays, Climaxes and Heislers were really good on uneven track. Normal steam locomotives, especially ones with larger wheel arrangements like x-6-x and x-8-x that had the power and tractive effort were very rigid and had difficulty in navigating the rough, uneven track that was typically found in logging operations. The flexibility of their gearing system and the bogie style wheelsets on Shays allowed them much more leeway vertically. That four truck Class D Shay wasn't any more powerful than the Class C (three truck), but the extra truck was needed because the railroad it was built for (in New Mexico if I recall) suffered from poor water quality along it's 30 something mile line and needed to carry the extra water for the round trip. As for a train club. I've been president of mine for 21 years now. I joined when my oldest was 3 months old! He's 27 now. Our club is small, only 13 members on paper and we occupy a 250 square foot room in the basement of an old Canadian National station near Edmonton Alberta. Our layout is a two level design and is generic in the sense that the club members are free to run what they want, which covers all the eras, from turn of the last century to the modern age. Scenery wise we have tried to stay within the western region of Canada. We have recreated the town we are in as it was in the late 1950s, then as the layout moves east and west the eras becomes more fluid with some sections being modeled after various later time periods. As for me, I model in both H.O. and O scale narrow gauge. My narrow gauge is freelanced; being based off of the WP&YR and Copper River Western railroads just around the end of the first world war. I had been doing a depression era 1930/35 interpretation of what we locally call "The Coal Branch"; an actual line that ran southwest of the town of Esdon into the coal rich veins of the eastern Rockies. After having modelled this for nearly 20 years, I suddenly had the urge to change my focus. So now I'm researching and starting to work on a new prototype based in Sweden called the Malmbanan, or "The Iron Line", and electrified railway that runs from the eastern port of Lulea (pronounced Loo Lei Oh), north past the Arctic Circle to Kiruna where the huge iron mines are located, all the way to Narvik, an ice free port in Norway. I intend to focus on a modern railway operation featuring the most state of the art equipment they are currently running, though I do want to get one of these because they look so damn cool...  It's a Dm3 electric locomotive that they were using up till around 2013 when they started replacing them with these....  I even found a video of these units pulling the empty ore cars back to Kiruna. Skip ahead to the 4 minute mark when the train starts moving again. When they wind up, it sounds so familiar.... |
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Post by cowboy40 on Dec 15, 2020 18:54:46 GMT -7
 What i like, about the transition era, is the operations end. Even in the virtual world the group and i play in, we still use time tables/train order methods of operations. We were doing a multiplayer op this morning on a server we set up. here I was operating as and "extra" on the Southern Pacific time table for the Donner Pass. This train was listed as train 150 in the orders. As an "extra" I was operating on train orders, meaning i had to had orders clearing through the mainline. Those orders were built around the time table of the regular trains on the line. I had to stand to for about an hour as i had to wait for the line to clear of a passenger train and slow freight to clear. My "extra" was logging company's Camp Train moving supplies such as food, water and building materials to a new camp location. |
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Post by cowboy40 on Jul 3, 2021 21:40:57 GMT -7
When I was putting this post together, I forgot about this little steam engine and the role it played in the development of the geared steam locomotive. It was built by the Dunkirk Iron Works (later known as the Dunkirk Engineering Co.} It was based on patents filed by George Gilbert. These engines would be the bases of the Heisler engines. Heisler improved upon Gilbert's patents while he worked at Dunkirk...  a light standard gauge Dunkirk-B.... |
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