Posted on 06/16/2018 10:54:25 AM PDT by Simon Green
Hold onto your engineer caps, railroad history lovers.
Seventy years after the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, the steep Rocky Mountains of Wyoming and Utah were still giving the Union Pacific Railroad trouble.
Despite having massive steam engines, the Union Pacific, one of the biggest railroads in America, still struggled to move heavy freight trains over the mountains and would often have to use multiple locomotives to get trains to their destination. This practice required more workers and more fuel. In 1940, the Union Pacific’s mechanical engineers teamed up with the American Locomotive Company to build one of the world’s largest steam locomotives, a class of engine simply known as “Big Boy.”
Now, six decades after the last Big Boy was taken off the rails, the Union Pacific is rebuilding one of the famous locomotives in honor of the upcoming sesquicentennial celebration of the first Transcontinental Railroad. It’s a project so ambitious that Ed Dickens Jr, a Union Pacific steam locomotive engineer and the man leading the rebuild, has likened it to resurrecting a Tyrannosaurus rex.
The Big Boy locomotives weighed more than one million pounds and were 132 feet, 9 inches long. Stood on its end, one would be the equivalent of a 13-story building. Each one cost approximately $265,000 to build, or about $4.4 million in today’s money. In the railroad world, the Big Boys were known as 4-8-8-4 articulated type locomotives. That designation meant the locomotive had four wheels in front, two sets of eight driving wheels (the large wheels connected to the pistons that make the locomotive move) in the middle, and four trailing wheels, all underneath one enormous boiler.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
Yep, I remember as a boy flushing the toilet to see the tracks flying by.
3D printed parts are not perfect copies of cast parts. Metal powders are often combined with binders that help the metal stay in the desired shape, but will be consumed in heat treatment of the metal part, leaving small gaps in the metal parts. Sometimes this isn't a bad thing, but back in the early days of steam locomotives, after heating and cooling repeatedly under use, they would develop small cracks that would finally lead to the boiler exploding. Maybe it is possible to make now, but to me the last thing I would want to make in a printer would be something that fails due to small cracks.
I grew up with the N&W 611, which as you know is a J Class, 4-8-4 engine. One of, if not the most distinctive train whistles I’ve ever heard. I greatly missed hearing the 611 and other steam engines when my family moved away from the coal town we lived in.
My dad and his Army buddies were on the train (Late 1940s)in the dining car ... the guys were not sure what the finger bowls were there for.
They drank the water.
Thank you! Obviously you’re very knowledgeable.
Been on a Challenger. Amazing machine.
“As an old Savin HILL1 boy “
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Many good memories of Savin Hill——I had a good friend who lived there her entire life,79 years-—she is now gone.
The trains I remember were in Brighton/Allston.
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The Big Boy operated at 250 PSI. The boiler had a decent safety margin. I spent a lot of time looking one of these over at the museum near Saint Louis. That is one very large machine! The pistons are 24” in diameter.
The Shay was an engine for a lot of traction in a smaller package. Those are odd little engines.
It’s still there. And you are right, they almost have to be seen to be believed.
I like old tech, and there’s an old inoperatble steam engine not too many miles from here, but they were as you say, dirty, loud, and wait a second... were we talking about 60s muscle cars?!?! ;^)
The problem with the steam locomotive is the need for soft brass parts, led to a huge labor cost for maintenance. When diesel and then disel-electric came online, employment by the railroads dropped a bunch. Indirectly, big-bore gasoline engines, the proliferation of paved roads (out where I’m from, that didn’t happen until the 20th century, and it isn’t quite done yet) led to freight coming off the rails and into panel trucks and trailers. Diesel trucks came on strong after WWII for freight, and buses (gasoline and diesel) for passengers.
bfl
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