It's the PRR S2 direct drive turbine, so east coast somewhere. Based on it's lack of consist and very early pre-deflector appearance, I'd say it's likely that this was some sort of exhibition, for either press or industry types, sometime around late 1945, early 1946. As to where, it could be anywhere from St Louis to Chicago, to Harrisburg to New York.


It had the opposite of wheelslip problems actually. The turbine was extraordinarily efficient at speed, particularly at 100mph, but it was essentially hopelessly underpowered when starting. It's reason for retirement was that during starting, it would spend so much steam, the boiler would drop from 300 to as low as 80 PSI. Which for a boiler that size is an insane amount of steam. This constant and rapid cycling of pressures put extreme stress on the firebox staybolts, which suffered chronic and constant failure. What mystifies me about it is that they never thought to put a booster on it, despite the massive three axle truck in the rear, which would've at least abated the starting issues to some degree.

It was a remarkable design though. And at speed, unmatched in efficiency and smoothness due to the complete lack of any and all reciprocating mass. The fact that it (along with all the duplexes) were scrapped is a crime against all that is good. And as elated i am that we're getting another T1, the S2 is something that can simply never be replicated. It and the other turbines are forever lost to time, and that's a crime beyond words.


**** it, S2 memorial posting time.















Note the patent for a planetary style two speed transmission for it. How much that would've helped, who knows. But the PRR wombles were dead set on deiselisation because they wanted to keep appearances up next to NYC (despite having only just invested in an entire fleet of brand new postwar steamers!), so they weren't about to replace the most expensive component on the oddball S2 on a hope and a dream.

What a waste to have scrapped it.

On a side note, I still wonder how the middle two axles were sprung. The exhaust pipes (and presumably live steam pipe) are rigidly attatched to the frame and turbines. But the middle two axles/turbine is one massive assembly sprung with equalizer bars to the adjacent axles. Unless there's a very short and very flexible coupling between the turbine I don't see how the suspension could work. I suppose those drawings still exist in the PA archives, but who knows if they'll ever see the light of day again.

 

You are right Steve. It was the S1 that had a wheel slip problem. https://locomotive.fandom.com/wiki/P...lroad_Class_S1





Actually the PRR delayed a commitment to dieselization for some time as they had quite a large idle fleet of steam engines that had been built to service the large amount of rail traffic during WWI & WWII. They also were heavily invested in electrification and the very successful GG1 electric locomotives east of Harrisburg. The S2 really never had a chance.




Interestingly Westinghouse's Steam Division was located next door to the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Eddystone near Lester, PA where the S2 was built. After the S2 Westinghouse became heavily involved in steam turbine design for nuclear power plants. In the late 1960s after a contentious labor strike at Eddystone facility plans were made to build a new facility near Orlando. This was completed in the early 1980s. Then in 1998 that division of Westinghouse was sold to Siemens AG, of Germany.

 

 

 

He is one tough cookie

 

Not so.

The PRR invested heavily in their steam, in facility, equipment, manpower and infrastructure. However, they and NYC had a mutual tunnel visioning with each other. They each side eyed eachother constantly and simply had to have whatever the other had. As we all know, NYC militantly deiselized startiung just before the war, and postwar the PRR suits saw that and felt compelled to match them.

Just as the war was ending (spring of 45, specifically.) The state war railroad office feared an economic slowdown as the war ended, and a potential pacific invasion by the japs, the bomb being a secret to the government itself at this time. And as remedy for both, they granted railroads the ability to build passenger locomotives again, to stir the economy and so they had a fresh fleet of high speed passenger trains to rapidly marshall troops at the pacific coast if need be. And this is when the PRR put in it's order for the bulk of the Q2's, and the T1's.

Now the T1's were designed with one specific function, and that was only to head the Blue Ribbon expresses. Nothing else. They were designed to be blindingly fast for long periods of time with a 1000 tonne load, to the exclusion of all else. The order was placed; however, forces within the PRR management wanted to deiselize. And they did.

Even as the very first T1's were delivered, motive power department tried to cancel the latter half of the 50 loco order, which was too far along to stop. Within only six months of service, and before the last of the order was even delivered, the T1's were taken off the blue ribbon trains, in lieu of 3 or 4 unit EMD E8's power. (Which were still inferior to one T1, mind. Hyuck.) The T1's were then mostly assigned to reigonal passenger/mail trains, typically medium speed runs with frequent stops, frequently outside the crestline division they were designed for. Exactly the service they were least suited to, excluding their attempted replacing of 50 M1's as fast freight engines.

Furthermore, the T's were clearly neglected by management. There's a famous anecdote from a Franklin engineer, who was sent to check up on the locos early in their careers. He went to Altoona works, and found that the crews recieved no training for the wildly unique new locomotives, and in fact, the crews needed to borrow his tools that he just so happened to have in his truck to do a routine maintenance job on the valve gear. Likewise, the engineers were given zero training for the locos. These men were used to 40 year old, 200psi, dome throttle, piston valved engines with 50 psi cylinder drop K4s's, and were handed front end throttle, 300 psi, duplex behemoths with only 8psi cylinder drop and extremely sharp valve events, and were provided zero instructions, let alone a notice that they must be handled differently.

Despite the historical narritive that the T's were slippery, uncontrollable and unreliable disasters, when tested on other railroads, particularly the N&W, they were unanimously praised for their remarkable sure-footedness. And Franklin gear served extremely well on the NYC 5500 Niagra, the C&O Yellowbellies, the experimental K4's etc for years with no woeful tales of disastrous reliability. And given the absurd management neglect, not even giving their crews the tools to repair them, let alone training. Well, was it really the locomotive that's the problem?

The conspiracy alleges that management was so set on deiselization that they forced the T1's to be failiures, (despite the fact that they were superior to 4 EMD E8's in practice, and far cheaper to run), so that they could declare the class doomed, scrap them all, and put that money against the equipment trusts so they could then take out more equipment trusts on new deisels. And the same fate befell the Q2's and J's as well.

The PRR wombles were foaming at the mouth to deiselize, and they cut their nose off to spite their face. The story of spectacularly incompetent management goes on, and it ends in the black pit of penn central. But I digress.

TLR, the T1's did nothing wrong. **** the suits, here's some pictures of them.

 

 

I thought that was the definition of 'going on a bender'?

 

I love this picture, we've seen it before. I'm still trying to figure out, though, if it's a real photo of a Mom fixing her car while Dad's away at war, or a staged, publicity shot for some "can do" promotion. I'm not sure what she's fixing that far forward with a lug wrench, jack, 3 pound sledge, a couple of screwdrivers and some shrub loppers.

 

She is "fixing" her husband's girlfriend's car with those tools. "Give me that big hammer and I'll see if I can get those white thingies off each side of the engine." "Then hand me those loppers and I will see if those wires actually have solid centers".

 

Im pretty sure he's trying to figure out how many more cans he needs and where the mufflers go to achieve that perfect sound.