Who says American engines arn't pretty?

sillyevan27 · Post by **sillyevan27** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 6:54 pm

baggy6233 wrote:
chrisiveson wrote:Who says American engines aren't pretty?
ME!

PAH! PAH I SAY!

The Daylight Limited (and later the Freedom Train) are some of the better looking American steamers...but there were others too

The Commodore Vanderbilt (looks similar to an American-style A4

)

The Blue Comet (couldn't find a color photo)

The Hiawatha (painted in a nice orange and grey motif)

There are others

...but I don't know how many were made for Trainz or MSTS or whatever.

MuzTrem · Post by **MuzTrem** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:44 pm

baggy6233 wrote:C'mon Scotsman, you can do it old girl! Do it for your country and, whatever you do, don't let the big piece of scrap metal beat you!!! leave it standing in your dust as you go miles ahead of it and beat it by about half an hour!

Never thought I'd see you standing up for Scotsman baggy!

But I second what you're saying

Don't get me wrong, I've been to a few overseas steam centres and been very interested by what I've seen...but aestetically, British is best IMHO!

ianmacmillan · Post by **ianmacmillan** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:47 pm

They invented streamlining.

Pity the wern't any good at it.

sillyevan27 · Post by **sillyevan27** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:55 pm

ianmacmillan wrote:They invented streamlining.

Pity the wern't any good at it.

That is just a little ol' opinion

American streamlining was topnotch back in the day

(my opinion)

chrisiveson · Post by **chrisiveson** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 7:59 pm

Forty four, forty nine was in back gear ready to go give the old girl a tow up the hill.':lol:'':lol:'':lol:'

kirkheath · Post by **kirkheath** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:16 pm

ianmacmillan wrote:They invented streamlining.

Pity the wern't any good at it.

Spoke like a true Brit, who knows his stuff

(my opinion)

lateagain · Post by **lateagain** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:26 pm

When you read up on streamlining, not that I'm at all obsessed with Streamlining you understandâ€¦â€¦honestâ€¦â€¦, they found that it actually made b*gger all difference until the train was going PDF.

In most cases it was produced to provide an â€œimageâ€

MuzTrem · Post by **MuzTrem** » Fri Nov 11, 2005 9:38 pm

lateagain wrote:Itâ€™s the fact that many of them look like a sample of a plumbing apprentices portfolioâ€¦.with enough external pipe work to fit out a skyscraper.

That's precisley what I don't like about them. So much horrible clutter...british engines are so much clean, smooth lines. Even Americans admit to that!

mattvince · Post by **mattvince** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 12:53 am

Er, the PLM invented streamlining at the practical level back in the 1910s/1920s. A very simple premise - every time the Mistral blew, it'd bring the railway to a standstill. Streamlining overcame this - although it wasn't pretty - but it kept the trains running down the banks of the Rhone.

lateagain · Post by **lateagain** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 9:42 am

mattvince wrote:Er, the PLM invented streamlining at the practical level back in the 1910s/1920s. A very simple premise - every time the Mistral blew, it'd bring the railway to a standstill. Streamlining overcame this - although it wasn't pretty - but it kept the trains running down the banks of the Rhone.

There must be more to that story Matt.

Streamlining developed from the study of aerodynamics. The relevant bit to railways is that Power must be greater than Drag. You can reduce Drag by streamlining but the Power to move the object must be there in the first place. This is why it only really has any effect when you start to "push the envelope" of performance.

Beautiful as the A4's are they didn't actually achieve THAT much more speed than other designs of the era. It also has to be remembered that things like driving wheel diameter and achievable tractive effort had much more to do with the performance profile of steam locos than reduction of drag could ever achieve.

Having said that I just love em!

and even more I love the Hype and Bull that went into the promotional material that the companies used to "re-invent" their services. Although some of the US roads actually built some of the first "Multiple Units" with their high speed streamlined lightweight trains, these proved to be not flexible enough for their operations. Lightweight "streamlined" coaches from Budd and Pullman together with the early E series loco's are probably what most people would think of as Streamlined trains, but many roads just stuck some cladding onto existing locos, repainted their old heavyweight coaches in a matching livery, invented an exotic name for the train and joined in the hype.

There are some truly ugly examples to be found

Geoff

BTW how can you not love the Blue Comet above? It's got so much junk on the outside it looks like a tramps supermarket trolley

MuzTrem · Post by **MuzTrem** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 10:42 am

lateagain wrote:Beautiful as the A4's are they didn't actually achieve THAT much more speed than other designs of the era

Hmm...126mph compared to the 108mph maximum of their non-streamlined cousins, the A3s...I'd say that's a respectible difference...

trainmad · Post by **trainmad** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:03 am

And how often did they reach 126?

lateagain · Post by **lateagain** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 11:15 am

MuzTrem wrote:
lateagain wrote:Beautiful as the A4's are they didn't actually achieve THAT much more speed than other designs of the era
Hmm...126mph compared to the 108mph maximum of their non-streamlined cousins, the A3s...I'd say that's a respectible difference...

They only achieved that once and at the cost of b*ggering the engine!

Look at the Coronations. They were streamlined because of the hype of the LNER streamlining (I think I'm right that LNER had it first?) but these loco's were all stripped back to their basic form, mainly for ease of maintenance, and still performed as well.

Much is made of "top speed" but as any pilot or locomotive engineer will tell you it's the total time for the trip that is important. From a passenger point of view the time of departure and the time of arrival is all that is important. Some of the most remarkable feats of steam engineering were in much more modest locomotives that had the ability to accellerate, sustain a good speed and then brake heavy commuter trains on busy stopping services. Any study of locomotives shows that these "top dog" express locos were built in very small numbers. Both here and in the US the real stars can be found by examining the numbers built of various models. They may not have been as pretty but the Chief engineers of each company knew what specification they needed for the type of traffic that earned them revenue.

Back on Topic......

Check out Pennsy's K4. O.K. there's still the "plumbing exercise" but as the saying in flying goes "If it looks right, It'll probably fly right" and Pennsy had 425 of these (IMHO attractive) Pacifics only surpassed at 475 by their equally business like I1's which were their bread and butter 2-10-0 freight loco's.

K4
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/prr/prr-s3887ahn.jpg
I1
http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/prr/prr-s4343ac.jpg

Get yourself Kalmbach Publishings "Guide to North American Steam Locomotives" and I guarantee you'll be hooked.

I love UK steam from ALL designers and the US scene was just different. Different tasks, different terrains, longer routes etc. They just came up with different solutions and a fair bit of technical innovation.

If you love trains you can't ignore the US scene

Geoff

chrisiveson · Post by **chrisiveson** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 3:08 pm

Get yourself Kalmbach Publishings "Guide to North American Steam Locomotives" and I guarantee you'll be hooked.

Got it Geoff.':D'
Good book, especially when building 0 scale models and you're not sure where all the plumbing bits go.':-?'

Chris.

chrisiveson · Post by **chrisiveson** » Sat Nov 12, 2005 3:58 pm

':D'':D'