Here you can watch the Union Pacific pick up a steam engine to take it to be repaired. When repaired, it will be on tour of America. Steam fans, enjoy. I tried to measure the modern locomotive against the steam engine. I found the steam engine, sans oil car, to be about 1.5 times longer. A giant to be sure. Add in the oil car and you have more than two times longer engine. I used to see a lot of Steam Engines at Roseville, CA and saw the enormous Mallet that Southern Pacific used to cross the Sierras. It is a giant of an engine. I doubt I can find a video of one working. The only survivor is at the RR museum at Sacramento, Ca. This is the Mallet Steam engine at Sacramento, followed by the video of the other engine. http://www.csrmf.org/events-exhibits/locomotive-favorites/southern-pacific-cab-forward-no-4294 [video=youtube;WRxKpiD_ntY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRxKpiD_ntY[/video]
My grampa was a train buff... ... sometimes he'd take me to the train station an' let me ride the train... ... so I'd ride the train all day long, it was ever so much fun... ... but then the train people would call him... ... an' tell him to come get me... ... an' take me home.
Cool stuff. Not much of a 'train buff' in the gearhead sense of learning all of the engines and the like, but a big fan of 19th century railroad development, building, and financing. The Camden & Amboy, NYCRR, Pennsylvania, and Illinois Central being my favorites from that century. They were the first 'big business' of the U.S., requiring all kinds of important innovations in accounting and management to handle the operations across first the eastern seaboard states and then the entire nation later on. The building of the Pennsylvania was an engineering marvel all by itself.
I was a 2-4 grader and it was during World War 2. Roseville, CA had a very large repair facility and one of those rotating decks they turn engines around on. Keep in mind I called that engine in the museum a Mallet. I learned that name as a kid yet learned a lot later that it was not a Mallet but you can look up the engine to see the true name. These cab forwards were more impressive than those with the engineer at the back of the engine. At least from what I saw growing up. See one of the giants. I never saw Big Boy but it and the other might be about the same size. I plan to check that out. Big Boy weighs in at 760,000pounds which is 380 tons plus the tender. The cab forward weighs 657,900 pounds which is 329 tons so perhaps that is why they named the other Big boy Tender comes extra of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Pacific_4294 Dad worked on people's cars at his garage next to the highway. The garage still stands in Roseville. A guy came to talk to him and said he had to head into the mountains on a winter day to rescue people. Later on, maybe into a couple months, he shows up. He had a bad case of frostbite and they amputated a leg from below the knee I believe. Back in those days, a super heavy snow could bog down a train if the tracks were not first cleared.
would love to have taken a steam ride through Central NY a few decades back but never got the chance road the foul smelling subways of NYC for a long time - that was bad --- at least the new light rail in the Twin Cities is quiet and efficient
We have steam trains come through periodically when they do excursion trips. That whistle is eerie. I have been meaning to go ride the Cass Scenic Rail trip in WV some time, but by the time I think about it, they are usually sold out or it is too late. I have done Amtrak several times. Not a fan. The clickety-clack gets old fast though I am told that is going away some with these new seamless rails they have been putting in.
Some here probably already know about archive.org, but they have all kinds of old books and magazine collections with expired copyrights free for downloading. A good beginner would be The American Railway, a collection of articles covering a variety of facets of railroading history from engines to rail building to braking and travel as well as statistics on costs and the like, with lots of pictures, published in 1889 by Cooley, highly recommended for those who don't already have it, and there are collections of Railway Gazette magazines, in 6 month pdfs for buffs as well, that covers various then current developments and tests, including on the mallet type locomotives; the collection of issues for the second half of 1912 has several articles on mallets, for instance.. Both provide a lot of gearhead stuff on everything, including prices of engines ad various cars.The Railroad Gazette collections are fairly large, averaging some 1,300 pages or so, so probably a pain for slow connections. You can also find several 'annual company reports' if you're into that kind of stuff for a variety of roads, I've got some from as early as 1852, 1871, etc., even earlier for the Camden & Amboy, the CB&Q, Galena, Illinois Central, Fitchburg, etc.Don't have links, I downloaded mine a long time ago, but they're easy to search for there. They're in multiple formats, but usually the pdf files are the best bet; statistical tables and other types rarely translate well into the html versions.
A Railway Gazette I have in pdf gives stats for some 25 new mallets (circa 1912) ordered by the Pennsy as around 58+ feet for the engine, with another 30 feet for the tender. Can't recall the weight, though; I'm guessing maybe 300,000 pounds? Probably way wrong. I'll look it up again later. The pics in those articles look very much like the one in your pic there.
The true Mallet never was on the Southern Pacific line and I don't know why so many people still call them Mallets. This is the true description. I never saw the Mallet operate but I saw many of the cab forwards on the tracks during WW2. http://pentrex.com/pccfdvd.html [video=youtube;6ddPHS5kimU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ddPHS5kimU[/video]
These giants had to be seen and heard to be believed. This one gives a good idea what it was like to watch them pass. [video=youtube;n_ErZ5SgkVw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ErZ5SgkVw[/video]
I used to work on Steam pile drivers. This video gives you some idea. We had the Marion Steam crawler, much like this one. We had a vertical structure we called the leads that aimed the pile into the ground. This is being used as a crane. [video=youtube;_NAa7lHFoZU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NAa7lHFoZU[/video]
This is an actual steam pile driver that I worked on. I worked on all of the Raymond pile drivers so I am clear i worked on this one too. As you can see, the piledriver is large. It would weigh about 100 tons and normally have leads of 104 ft tall. A lot of the jobs i either worked "front end" or the loftsman job where i had to climb up into the leads and do tasks needed to drive piling. [video=youtube;Ol2RMbliD6I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol2RMbliD6I[/video] Dad used to tell us about the Port of Stockton job and I believe on this job he was the foreman of the job.
Well, I was incorrect; it was 25 for the Great Northern, not the Pennsylvania, and stats for them were an estimated weight of 450,000 pounds for the engine and another 150,000 for the tender, engine wheelbase of 52 feet, and 83 feet with tender, with 100,000 pounds force on the drives. Another article discusses 'the first simple mallet' to come out of the Canadian Pacific shops the previous year, 1911, in an attempt to overcome the top speed issues of compound mallets on that road, weighed in at 262,000 pounds and WB of 48 feet. There is a pic of Number 2009 around page 572 of the Gazette.
My grandfather was a conductor on the Illinois Central Rail Road. He took me on steam engines and I watched the brakeman shovel coal into the boiler. He took me on his run between Memphis Tennessee and Cairo Illinois. We took a passenger steamer to Cairo, and the Panama Limited diesel back to Memphis. What wonderful memories!
What trains did you (road) rode, ride ? I rode the B, N, R, mostly. - - - Updated - - - What year was that ?
Wiki has a list ofheritage RR's to ride on. I'd like to get some steam. They were fantastic in their day! O Winston Link has some nice steam books. Even a sound CD with one book. https://www.google.com/search?q=o+w...pu_PAhWpslQKHdE4C8cQ_AUICSgC&biw=1188&bih=541
My Grampa was a big fan o' steam locomotives... ... dat's all dey had back den... ... matter o' fact he an' his cousin stole one in Pensacola... ... cause the circus used to winter in Florida... ... and dey got a dead elephant... ... an' tried to remove it's tusks but it was too hard... ... so dey loaded it up onna train... ... an' stole the train an' drove it to Alabama... ... where dey heard the Tuskaloosa.
