Of the four rotary plows built by Lima-Hamilton in 1949-1950 with the double-bank Pacific Coast Shay design engines, are there any videos of any of these plows in operation? I would love to hear what these engines sounded like!

Rotary Lima-Hamilton 1948--4 prototypes:
Union Pacific 900075 retired 4/79; Kansas
Union Pacific 900076 retired 6/85;Oregon
Soo X-19 scrapped 11/66
Rock Island 95377 scrapped 3/66

I would imagine it sounded like 2 shays, how that boiler provided enough steam to run two engines is beyond me, looks much smaller than a typical Shay boiler.

Both UP "Shay" rotaries are preserved. 900075 is at IRM. 90076 is at Hermiston, Oregon.

Wesley

There used to be some video on You-Tube, and at least one commercially-available video of one of the UP Lima plows working on the Rock Island in eastern Colorado and Western Kansas sometime in the 1970's.

It did have sound, although the quality of that sound compared to what we take for granted today, might not be that great.

Thank you, Mr. Penn. I have searched, but am unable to find any videos.
Next question, the tenders assigned to UP 075 and 076 were UP 3572 and UP 3592. Are those the tenders that are still displayed with the two preserved UP plows in Union, IL and Hermiston, OR?
Thanks!

The one at IRM has a tender. I don't know anything about which.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... ?id=172886

Lima built the plows; UP supplied the tenders for it's pair. Don't know about the Soo and CRI&P plow tenders.

In the case of the UP plows, both tenders were from exC&O 2-8-8-2s that UP bought late in WWII and scrapped soon after the war ended.

Both of the plows still have those tanks. 2 other exC&O tenders became UP boiler cars, while the underframes and trucks from 2 more were used in the construction by UP of 2 diesel rotaries at Omaha Shop.

The Soo X-19 used an ex Rock Island "haystack" semi Vanderbilt tender, either from one of the Rock Island Mikes the Soo purchased second hand during WWII, or an extra tender of the same type. After the X-19 went to scrap, the tender sat in front of the roundhouse at Schiller Park (Chicago) waiting conversion to a water car or whatever, until the roundhouse was destroyed by a tornado in the late sixties. I lost track of it after that.

I have since been told the video was partly made by UP and partly by an outfit called WB Video. Don't know if they are still around or not.

3572 and 3592 were the UP numbers of the exC&O 2-8-8-2s that "donated" the tenders to what are now UP 900075 and 900076. Both plows still have those big tenders.

Greetings:
As an aside in re-the Rock Island Lima rotary, I helped Richard Jensen strip parts off that unit c.1966~67 at the Hyman-Michaels (?) scrap yard near the Illinois-Indiana state line. One of the items he got was the smokebox front which he wanted for ex-CB&Q No.4963 (RJ hated the flat smokebox front).
J.David

The RI rotary had a tender from a 5000 series 4-8-5, I believe.

David

J.David -

Well Dick might have hated it, but hanging here in my computer room is a color photo of 4963 hauling a string of hopper cars up a slight grade on the Bevier & Southern and she looks mighty fine even with that flat smokebox front showing a bit of rust. Hopefully that Rock Island smokebox front didn't end up at IRM. Wouldn't want the boys at Union to get any ideas!

Les

To "Finderskeepers" Regarding the boiler keeping up with the engines: It takes very little power to spin the blade in light snow. When they hit a drift, it would be throttled up. If they ran out of steam they can slow down the forward travel. It is a constantly changing load, unlike a locomotive that has to produce maximum power mile after mile.

Or even back out of the drift, build pressure back up, and then charge forward again.

Do locomotive regulations apply to those boilers?