Half-Z Scale - 1:440 Tiny Trains and even 1:900 Tiniest Trains!
HOW TO BOOT A STEAM LOCOMOTIVE or How to hostle without really tiring -
(Firing up a cold oil burner).
Give Credit Where Credit is Due Department
See the main rr page.
ODDITIES
I have so many oddities on my RR pages I'm losing track (there's that pun, again!) but here is an oddity beyond comparison, and it's for real, THE PATIALA STATE MONORAIL TRAMWAY, "possibly the world's most obscure railway...", courtesy of D. Dickens.
Well, I don't know (see my own Marion River Carry Railroad page as to obscure), but odd? - oh, yeah!
Go to the
new
rr page 4 for the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin [the largest trainshed in existence], where I saw a German 2-10-0 Decapod and tender which an "artist" (read "vandal") had welded together and plopped upside down (wheels up) as some sort of misguided monument!
There's a type of turntable you won't normally see (not
that most railfans "normally" see any turntables
- we are triply blessèd here on Long Island),
it's a QUARTER-TURN marine turntable.
I wasn't sure if it belonged here or on my
Naval and Maritime pages; I opted for here, but
moved it to my Model RR
page 7, with links back, there, and on my
LIRR pages.
It's at the old Jakobson Shipyard (
Jake's) in Oyster Bay, where Loco #35 will be
restored, and hard by where the new Oyster Bay rail
museum will be built. Jake's is where so very
many RR tugboats originated, those with the rakishly
canted foredeck and level wheelhouse with matching roof.
That estimable Entemologist (the indefatigable Bernie Ente) strikes again! This time, he came up with this undated postcard:
(Image courtesy of B. Ente 2000 - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnail - click on the picture.]
Technically (the Master Nitpicker speaks), it is NOT a trolley but a trackless tramcar or electric bus; a trolley(car) has a little 2- or 4-wheeled cart (the trolley) running up on top of the wires with a flexible conductor trailing down.
Now, here's an oddity it's hard not to love; it's a 1917 White Rail Motor Car which I stumbled across at the Whippany Railway Museum, "Morris County's Railroad Museum", in Hanover Township, while tooling across New Jersey on 01 Aug 00 She is a recreation of the original Morristown & Erie Railroad's bus #10, built from the original chassis, wheels, and axles and the motor, transmission, radiator, and hood of a 1924-vintage White-built firetruck and the body from a 1920's era autobus (there doesn't appear to be any cowl).
(Photo 01 Aug 00 by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.)
[Thumbnail image - click on the picture for a larger image.]
The body isn't even vaguely similar to the original but -hey - it looks just GREAT!
Articulated Locomotives
and Duplexii
Articulated and duplex locomotives belong to the class of multi-cylindered locomotives (speaking of more than two, really four or more). We won't even discuss single-cylinder locos here (there were such, 'way back)! There were a number of three-cylinder locomotives but they had their cylinders side-by-side or nearly so. Articulated and duplex-drive locomotives are distinguished by having two or three independant drive systems (engines) under a common boiler (or boiler-and-tender). Articulateds are unique in that they have a joint between the front and rear engine, allowing a shorter rigid wheelbase for better curving. Duplex locos, on the other hand, have two separate engines mounted on a common frame, thus they have a rigid and quite long wheelbase but separated drive. The B&O bought the first American articulated, their #2400, "Old Maude", an 0-6-6-0 first unveiled at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition:
Many weird variations followed, few odder than this giant of the Camelbacks/Mother Hubbards, Erie's ALCo #2600, built to conquer the Susquehanna grade:
Another really odd arrangement had a regular loco pulling a tender perched on an ancient engine from a scrapped loco; see the triplex, below - like that abberation, they were soon split apart and for the same reason noted below under Terminology. I had always thought these were pipe dreams until I ran across this SR Mike and found that there were seven of these beasts, starting in 1915, plus a 2-10-2 so "kit-bashed", and also in other wheel arrangements:
Talk about weird! The Santa Fé went bananas and hinged not only the frames but also the boilers, with three ingenious (if unworkable) versions, one with a ball joint and two with bellows connecting the two halves of the boiler (forget it, Charlie - the ball leaked and the bellows cracked!):
Want even weirder? These 2-8-8-8-2 triplex locos actually worked well as pushers on the Gulf Summit hill near Susquehanna but their firemen just couldn't keep up with their insatiable demand for steam for their giant boilers and cylinders. The Erie started it with the #5014 "Matt S. Shay" of 1914 and followed it in 1916 with two more but they all got split apart to make conventional locos:
(H. L. Broadbelt collection - no other provenance given)
The Virginian, another coal hauler, came up with a slightly weirder 2-8-8-8-4 in 1916, #700, which met the same fate:
(H. L. Broadbelt collection - no other provenance given)
Both of these photos show the crease of the book (and staples); sorry, I was not willing to break the book just for this page.
HEY! Weird? I never realized before just how weird! There was a FOURTH pair of cylinders on a low-speed booster on that Virginian's four-wheel trailing truck under the rear of the tender! EIGHT CYLINDERS!
Both the Santa Fé and the Virginian went still another step off the deep end with 2-10-10-2 locos (really loco)! The SF took ten pairs of Decapods and stuck them together in 1911 as their #3000-series; by 1915, they'd been rebuilt into 2-10-2 Texas locos. ALCo built ten even bigger monsters for the Virginian, with the biggest maximum boiler diameter ever (118½") and biggest low-pressure cylinder diameter ever (48"):
The Pennsy had to get into the act with a gigantic, single-expansion 2-8-8-0 Class HC1of 1919 that, like its electric counterpart, "Big Liz", was simply too powerful for the drawbars and wooden cars of the era and was set aside:
After more different types than you can shake a stick at, of all sizes, even cab-forwards and skyline casings, we came finally to the culmination of the breed in the competitors for "biggest", the Northern Pacific Yellowstone 2-8-8-4 Z-5 class (largest firebox and boiler ever), the DM&IR Yellowstones, the C&O 2-6-6-6 Allegheny (highest starting TE), and the Union Pacific's famed ALCo "Big Boy", the only 4-8-8-4 (fastest):
(Harold Vollrath collection - no other provenance given)
None, though, are as beautiful to my eyes as the B&O EM-1 Yellowstone, limited in size by available clearances but unmatched for design elegance; here, from the B&O/C&O section on page 2 is a classic view of an EM-1 from page 22 of Wayner:
(Bert Pennypacker photo - no other provenance given)
and, thanks to the
Denver Public Library, from their
Western History/Genealogy Photograph
Collection's fabulous Otto Perry Collection:
Baltimore & Ohio locomotive, engine number 669, engine type 2-8-8-4
Call Number OP-2409 - - Otto C. Perry photo
Three-quarter view of right side of engine, from front end;
pole. Photographed: Fairmont, W. Va., May 1957
(These photos, except for the Perry photos, are from Wayner Publications's undated
"Giants of the Rails - An Articulated Steam Pictorial",
and have no attribution or provenance unless otherwise noted.)
[I need a tender for my HO Akane EM-1 (ca. 1975) - has anyone got one to spare?]
Terminology - we should point out another distinction; Anatole Mallet developed the articulated concept in France with small locomotives with jointed frames and small rear cylinders using high pressure steam directly from the boiler and then scavenging the exhaust steam to feed huge (oversized) low-pressure cylinders at the front. This is what gave rise to the appelation "Mallet" (pronounced "Malley"), more misused than properly applied, for double-expansion engines. The first large divided-drive, single-expansion loco was that giant PRR HC1; the EM-1, Big Boy, and most modern articulateds were of this latter type. Mention must be made, however, of the truly strange porting of the triplexii; the right center (high-pressure) cylinder fed the two forward cylinders, while the left center fed the two rear cylinders under the tender. However, therein lies anothe rub against triplex locos. As the fuel and water in the tender was used up, the tender got lighter and so the drivers slipped more readily than those under the boiler; the same detriment held for the tender drives noted above.
Now, let us explore the wonderful world of duplex (rigid wheelbase divided drive) locomotives. The B&O initiated the type with their 4-4-4-4 "George Emerson" #5600 of 1937, never repeated (it had opposed cylinders and the rear ones accumulated road grit and also were right up against the firebox):
Denver Public Library, Western History Collection)
[Baltimore & Ohio locomotive, engine number 5600, engine type 4-4-4-4
Call Number OP-2521 - Otto C. Perry photo
New York World's Fair, "Geo. W. Emerson". Photographed: New York, August 5, 1939.]
but emulated widely by the Pennsy, starting with a giant, one-of-a-kind 1939 6-4-4-6 streamliner with 84"(!) drivers, #the "Big Engine", S1 #6100, that motored endlessly on rollers at the 1939-40 World's Fair in NYC, another one-of-a-kind, the Q1 4-6-4-4 freighter (#6130 of 1942) with all the drawbacks of the B&O loco, a very successful run of 26 4-4-6-4 Q2 <8,000HP freighters (#6131 of 1944, and #6175-99, 1944-45), and finally a production series of slippery 4-4-4-4 T1 Raymond-Loewy-streamlined 80"-drivered duplexes for high-speed passenger service (#6110 and #6111 of 1942 and 25 units, #5500-49 in 1944-45), just in time for full dieselization!
The Pennsy passenger units, the giant S1 and the glamorous T1s, are widely pictured but here's the workaday 8,000HP Q2 4-4-6-4 #6177:
(Don Gruber collection - no other provenance given)
- - - * - - -
In spite of all the wonderful successes and wonderful failures of articulateds and
duplexii of all shapes, sizes and configurations, my all time favorite, after the B&O
EM-1 Yellowstone, has to be my little 2-6-6-2T logging tank malley,
1929 Crown Willamette #12, a brass NWSL HO gem ca. 1960; the prototype is
shown below in all her glory:
(Harold Vollrath collection - no other provenance given)
(These photos,except the Perry photos, are also from Wayner Publications's undated
"Giants of the Rails - An Articulated Steam Pictorial",
and have no attribution or provenance except as noted.)
Degrees of Curvature
Track curvature is given in "Degrees of Curvature", a simple enough concept if you know that it means the angle that is made between a tangent 100' long and the curve:
(Diagram 30 Sep 08 by and © 2008 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
(30 Sep 05)
Track length in curves, unfortunately, is also given in degrees of arc (which mathematical geniuses can figure out by the radius of curvature and the degree of arc of the curve).
In the following table, the Degree of Curvature (α°) is shown for the equivalent radius (at the track centerline):
1° = 5,730' 7° = 819.0' 13° = 441.7' 19° = 302.9'
2° = 2,865' 8° = 716.8' 14° = 410.3' 20° = 287.9'
3° = 1,910' 9° = 637.3' 15° = 383.1' 21° = 274.4'
4° = 1,433' 10° = 573.7' 16° = 359.3' 22° = 262.0'
5° = 1,146' 11° = 521.7' 17° = 338.3'
6° = 955.4' 12° = 478.3' 18° = 319.6'
For the mathematician and modeler, R (radius, in proto. ft.) = 50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)]
R (radius, in HO scale ft.) = {50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)]} ÷ 7.26
R (radius, in HO scale in.) = 50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)] ÷ 87.1
R (radius, in N scale ft.) = {50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)]} ÷ 13.33
R (radius, in N scale in.) = 50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)] ÷ 160
R (radius, in Z scale ft.) = {50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)]} ÷ 18.33
R (radius, in Z scale in.) = 50 / sin [0.5(° curv.)] ÷ 220
In other scales, go figure!
As promised, I've added the equivalents of curved snap track sections in HO, N, and Z:
HO Atlas Snap Track 15" = 108' 10½" = {tbs}°
HO Atlas Snap Track 18" = 130' 7¾" = {tbs}°
HO Atlas Snap Track 22" = 159' 8¼" = {tbs}°
N Atlas Snap Track 9¾" = 130' = {tbs}°
N Atlas Snap Track 11" = 146' 8" = {tbs}°
Z Märklin Track 145mm ( ~5¾") = 104' 75/8" = {tbs}°
Z Märklin Track 195mm ( ~711/16") = 140' 9" = {tbs}°
Z Märklin Track 220mm ( ~811/16") = 158' 9" = {tbs}°
Z Märklin Track 490mm (~18¼" = 353' 8") = {tbs}°
(this last is a substitution curve for turnouts.)
Just for example, the nominal curvature of the famed (former Pennsy) Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, Pennsylvania, is about 9° 12½' or some 630' , which is about 87"R in HO, 47¼"R in N, and 34½"R in Z [more accurately, the lower (eastern) segment, which appears to be some 100.65° long, is 9° of curvature and the upper (western) segment, which is some 119.35° long, is 9.25° of curvature].
Ghost Train
At 23:55 on the night of 08 Jul 99, I was traveling eastward on Route 4 just east of Fairhaven, Vermont, in pitch darkness, when suddenly a brilliantly lit westbound passenger train streaked by close off to starboard! Now, any train I've ever ridden at night has it's interior lighting out or dimmed, so this really startled me. Two days later, coming down through Chatham, New York, there was CR SD80MAC #4018 on display for a fair and a local afficionado told me it was probably an Amtrakker being sent back empty for the next days busy period.
I'm just back (04 Sep 99) from seeing "The Iron Giant, Warner Bros.'s fabulous animation; it had two glaring technical faults, one of which was that the robot ate a piece out of the railroad track so that he could not have fitted the ends back together as he did just before the wreck. Also, the steam engine was pulling a string of hoppers and so would have been most unlikely to have been a GS-4 or similarly-styled streamliner as shown!
(The other was a naval blunder.)
The Master Nitpicker strikes again!
Speaking of nitpicking, there was a book about 10 to 20 years ago, entitled Czardas (the Hungarian dance), set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, on the jacket of which was an elegant couple in evening dress of the era, standing in a magnificent European train shed, and the loco in the background is a giant Lima Berkshire (NKP or similar)!!!
Anyone know more about the SI trackless trolleybus (above)?
There is a request for help about some NY-supplied Urugaian steam(-cum-i.c.) railcars; see the end of Steam Boxcabs on my Boxcabs page 5.
Artist and fellow NRHS/Long Island Sunrise Trail Chapter
member George L. Wybenga is so taken with cabooses (cabeese? - hacks, crummys,
cabin cars, etc.) that he specializes in limning them and has a Website,
cabooseart.com where you can see his vast array of cabooses from many varied
roads, among them the LIRR. Here, by his specific permission, is his painting of
LIRR hack #14, just as an example of his work:
(23 Jan 05)
[painting by and © G. L. Wybenga, by permission - all rights reserved]
You can see all George's paintings on his site, where you can order copies in various
sizes and formats. Scroll through to page 5 for nine LIRR paintings (page 7 for
PRR cabins).
Steam lovers, see my Science and Technology page! Ah, the power of steam!
There is an incredible simulation program by Charlie Dockstadter on steam valve gear available on the Alaska Live Steamers VALVE GEAR ON THE COMPUTER page.
THUMBS UP!
THUMBS UP! - Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!
S. Berliner, III
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
of this series of Railroad pages.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 2000, 2001, 2002,
2003, 2004, 2005,
2008
- All rights reserved.
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