I hope I live to see the T1 steam at speed.
The attraction and support for this locomotive has to be:
1) The unique design and "shark nose" configuration. It was modern at the time, it was promoted as the next thing in high speed passenger transportation.
2) Pennsy built a slug of them, tinkered with the basics, made them as efficient as roller bearings can make a steam locomotive, then killed them off entirely without looking back. Not one was preserved. Everything about this design is intriguing.
3) Slippery as they were, today a microprocessor can address the issue faster than a human can recognize it. Here's a chance to fix what was wrong with the successor to the K4s Pacific, and that's saying a lot.
4) The Brits have done it with "Tornado", Americans can do it at least as well. Finish a T1 and you may very well see a door opening towards construction of a J3 Hudson.
5) "If you build it, they will come". I have a hard time believing NS and/or CSX will ignore something this news-worthy without giving it a chance to show its stuff. Ultimately, this is the toss of the dice.

What they come up with for wheel slip is very intriguing to me. In the PTC on 4014 thread someone suggested a hydraulic valve could be used to shut off the throttle for a penalty stop, I am wondering if the 5550 team has something similar in mind, coupled with a speed monitor and a microprocessor. Another option would be what GE used on their U series, using the engine brake system to stop wheel slip, but I find this latter idea less elegant than steam valves, which if it works it would really be a game changer.

"I have a hard time believing NS and/or CSX will ignore something this news-worthy without giving it a chance to show its stuff."

If it's not "news-worthy" to shareholders or shippers or "stakeholders", it's not "news-worthy" at all.

Now, I am a fan of this project if for no other reason than I like the idea that it might be possible to reproduce lost arts with modern technology (and I've donated), but I really don't see the venue being Class 1's.

As for microprocessors, my friends with better technical backgrounds tell me they hate the things steam locomotives produce in droves.

Hello,

Didn’t the PRR Q-2 incorporate a wheel slip control scheme? It was a 4-4-6-4. Not sure if both or just the front set of drivers had an actuated throttle valve downstream of the main throttle. It was a simple articulate.

Would it be better to but an actuator on the reversers of each set and let full steam pressure go to the chests? That way you wouldn’t need to monkey with the main throttle and leave it as original. Be sure your poppet valves are tight and it may provide a pretty sharp and immediate response for the output of a wheel slip control loop from a PLC.

With the poppet valve gear it may be more amiable for this type of modification, especially if the % cut-off or reversing adjustments are made with a rotary control rod input to the valve gear box.

Interesting to speculate…..

Cheers!

Randy

My wife's grandfather was a special duty engineer for the PRR for more than 20 years. He was one of the first men to run one of the original two T-1's. He told me the biggest problem with the T-1's was not the fault of the enginemen; rather it was the lack of training that caused the problem. The PRR management seemed to believe that anyone qualified as an engineer should be able to run anything they were assigned. Too many of the old enginemen in particular only knew to yank the throttle open, rather than finessing it. That was the main cause of wheel slip. He participated in tonnage testing of the T-1's between Harrisburg and Altoona, and according to him, once they were up to 12 or 14 mph, they would just take off.

Most PRR Engineers were used to locomotives with "Dome" throttles and a whole class of "Front-End" throttles were introduced; big difference when starting.

Wayne and Faller,

Thank you for the posts.

Based on my brief and only exposure to 611’s throttle this summer, if front end throttles are an improvement, Yikes!! At least for me it was a two hand effort. Can’t image fine tuning the adjustments or reacting to a wheel slip….no wonder the old hoggers were up on their feet with two hands on the throttle going up grade! Remember vividly seeing this when the 02 was heading south of Goodyear, PA beginning the assault of the grade to Peach Glen years ago when the BM&R took an excursion to Gettysburg in the old Reading line.

Like the J, the T1 will have 300 psi pressure on the front end throttle. These throttles are balanced but they are still a handful!

Randy

The T1 Trust posted a bunch of pictures of boiler on their FB page, here they are for those not on FB. So cool

This ties in with an article from the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society's newsletter that used to be online but sadly no longer is. It was about the testing of the T1s on that road about 1947, when the management was apparently considering the type. Since the article is not available, I'll have to rely on memory for some highlights.

In contrast to stories about excessive slipperiness, the two engines mostly performed pretty well. They were considered a bit sluggish on starting, but that was blamed on a combination of taller drivers than C&O normally used in mountain territory and the lack of a booster engine.

Overall, the two engines tested normally had no trouble making the schedules. Both the management and the engine crews were impressed at the ability of the boiler to make steam--a high compliment coming from a line with so many Super Power locomotives on the roster that had come from the drawing boards of both Lima and the joint Advisory Mechanical Committee of the Van Sweringen roads.

There were two incidents that might be of note.

One was a stop at Waynesboro, Va., on the upper line of the two level station there (the lower level was for the Norfolk & Western's Shenandoah Valley line). Here the engine couldn't start what I recall was a 14 car train at a stop that was on a grade and a curve. This required a shove from a switcher assigned to the interchange yard there. The author of the article noted that this train was longer than what the C&O normally assigned to a single 4-8-4 (standard practice was to double head on anything over 12 cars to guarantee starting under the worst possible conditions), and that the management may have anticipated this, judging from how quickly the switcher was made available. The total delay was only about 10 minutes.

More interesting was the account of the return trip with the same engine. This was with a slightly shorter train, 11 cars. Normally this westbound trip out of Charlottesville would have a nonstop meet with an eastbound train near one of the two principle summits on this line, but this day the eastbound was running late, and the T1 had to stop near this summit, with its train hanging down the grade and draped around curves. After the late eastbound passed, the engineer got the train going again, with no assistance, and supposedly said there was "no more slipping than normal" for the situation.

While the C&O would wind up going back to its own 4-8-4 design (and the last survivor of that last order is Ross Rowland's beautiful 614), I can't help but think of the remarks of Mr. Laepple in connection with this experience and the difference in motive power on the PRR vs. the C&O.

The Pennsy had a lot of power designed in the WW I era and before, which was rugged and simple and could be handled roughly. For the PRR's engineers, going from a K4s to a T1 would be like going from an old pickup truck with a six cylinder engine to a hot rod with a souped up V8.

In contrast, the C&O had a fleet with a lot of modern steam power going back to 1930 with its T-1 2-10-4. In addition to that design and the 2-8-4s, 4-6-4s, and 4-8-4s on the roster, the road also had been running divided drive engines in the form of Mallets of one form or another going back as far as 1911. Those included some 60 2-6-6-6 Alleghenys, a bunch of simple expansion 2-8-8-2s called Chesapeakes that the Alleghenys had largely replaced by the end of WW II (most had been sold off to help other roads during the war), and an small army of 2-6-6-2s that cumulatively would number something like 250 engines (not all were on the roster at the same time). The last of those was only delivered in 1949; two, the 1308 and the 1309, made it into preservation, with the 1309 being the last steam locomotive from Baldwin for a domestic road, and even being the last steam locomotive from any commercial builder to an American common carrier.

No. 1308 is on display in a park in Huntington, W.Va. The story of the restoration of the 1309 to operation on the Western Maryland Scenic, with all its travails, has been well discussed here.

What are the odds that C&O's passenger engineers, having been promoted from freight service as was typical on most roads, had experience with both modern engines and divided drive engines that would have been helpful in handling a touchy T1?

Is this it (assuming my link works)? https://web.archive.org/web/20200319033 ... 005-05.pdf

This is an excellent thread and some very interesting commentary about operational challenges posted above.
I have been gathering information on Canadian Pacific Railway T4a Class 2-10-4 No. 8000. This was a multi-boilered engine with one closed circuit high pressure boiler carrying 1,350 psi.
No. 8000 was built at CPR's Angus shops in Montreal and first tested west of Montreal, before being sent west for its intended service in mountain railroading between Field and Revelstoke. It is not clear that crews were especially trained or dedicated to the engines, but obviously an engine crew could not have been tossed in the cab without some understanding of the nuances of the design. From some reports it appears that crews did a very good job and No. 8000 ran with some interesting comparisons to the Selkirk class engines.
There have been other reports of operational problems with CPR's 3100 series 4-8-4s in regular passenger service between Montreal and Toronto. Through experience, engine crews were able to find a correct cut-off and throttle to get the best out of these engines compared with the normally used Hudsons.
That time machine would be useful now to go back to the roundhouses and engine cabs to hear the discussions on operating and maintaining these new designs when they were assigned to the roundhouse.

YAY!! You found it, though not at the source I expected. The site this was at before was something that linked to the text only, not the actual issue.

Thanks for finding that! I'll be saving it as a reference, and others here may find it interesting, too.

It also helps fix what turned out to be faulty memory!

Now I also seem to recall that the Norfolk & Western Historical Society had something on their tests with a T1, but I never did get to buy the magazine! I wonder if that's available somewhere.

But don't worry about it, what you found was great.

The link to the C&OHS article works, and I recommend it to everyone; it's a superb piece of analysis with insights into the T-1, the C&O J3s, and the Niagara. Also some great photos of PM 2-8-4s (and you can never have enough of those!).

Now I'm starting to foam over the T-1 project. It's time to re-read Bill Withuhn's chapter on the poppet valve and the T-1, including footnotes from Franklin Railway Supply Company researchers documenting operations between 135 and 142 mph. This is not an ordinary steam engine.

Aarne Frobom
Mallard Hunt, Michigan

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Kelly: I hope you got the chance to read the several articles regarding the T1's in the PRRT&HS journal "The Keystone". You might be the person to know before others, the micro-cracks in the firebox steel, apparently an across the board design flaw in Pennsy's Belpaire's, has that been addressed in this T1 project?

Glad to see you still interested in the steam locomotive as an aesthetic as well as mechanical design!