Has any group ever seriously concidered building a new NYC 4-6-4? Do the blueprints still exist?

Brian

As the folks in England have shown, it's possible, but the biggest obstacle in the United States is having no place to run it. Unless a railroad came out and said they would allow the engine to run anytime, it's just a pointless venture to undertake.

I'm no expert, just looking for opinions. Is there really no place to run a full size Hudson? What about Amtrak? Don't they own their own line along the Hudson River between New York and Albany or points west?
I've seen mainline steam running with Amtrak consists, even though a NYC 4-6-4 wouldn't look right towing Amfleet coaches.

Brian

Yes the blueprints still exist.

Think about a miniature.

That's easy. Run it in the UK.

Build it as a cutaway, then you don't have to worry about where to run it because it will not be capable of being operated. Problem solved.

PC

This will never happen.

It's not the lack of drawings.

Not even the question of where to run it (altho that's a biggie)

It's the lack of the (conservative estimate, aka "SWAG") six to ten million bucks it would take to design and build it.

It's the lack of a USA equivalent to the UK's Heritage Lottery.

It's the serious lack of "sugar daddies" with that kind of loose bucks.

Until those issues are resolved, cease all this pipedreaming and use this space for something more closely related to the real world.

I always thought that one of the technical obstacles was in the frames. We no longer have the casting technology to cast large integral frames that were a hallmark of superpower steam. Did the J-1s and J-3s have cast or bar frames?

How difficult would it be to build a bar frame? One technical difference with the British and the A-1 is that British steam has plate frames, which are more easily made. Of course, British steam is also built to a smaller loading gauge, so it's easier to cart a 4-6-2 around to different preserved railways on a lowboy, whereas a Hudson would have to move by rail everywhere.

If you want to build a replica locomotive in the U.S., I'd recomend that you build something you could move around to various preserved railways, like the 4-4-0 "Leviathan"

I've often thought this would be a great undertaking, and I wouldn't negate any enterprise from going forward with such a project. Unfortunately, the number of tweaks and hacks to make it happen would change it appreciably in design. Perhaps it's better to look at the live steam models, page through the photos, and nurse the wounds inflicted by NYC management. Some dreams serve us better as memories.

I'm pretty sure we could still cast big complex shapes as "one off" by lost styrofoam packed in green sand method, all you'd need is a good size heat of steel. Bar frames are easy (in relative terms) to water jet out of slabs. Plate frames have their own idiosyncracies, but more in robustness than fabrication. Fabricating a frame structure by welding up a combination of milled from slab and cast subassemblies might be the best alternative.

I'm in agreement about not needing another mainline superhauler, but something portable that fills a niche between 765 and Flagg Coal. I'd encourage adaption of modern materials and techniques rather than adherance to obsolete practices and a generic rather than specific design. Long time ago we threaded about replication of moderate sized power, perhaps using modularly expandable common parts.

dave

I'm absolutely sure this could be accomplished, perhaps with various aspects spread between several groups.

Certainly not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.

Stephen

I've said this before. The reason making giant complex steel castings has become a lost art is because welding technology has improved to the point they mostly aren't needed. Someone could probably take that design and break it up in to sections to be either cast or fabricated from stock shapes and then weld it up. Careful consideration would be given to where the joins would be and probably special areas created for that purpose.

That might be better than going through a costly learning curve to make it all at once. If you screw up a section you re-do just that piece. Still need a huge annealing furnace though.

Steve

Do they still have a wide range of casting fascilities overseas...say in China or Poland? (not that I think making a new choo choo is a good idea).

I've been following a few major builds/rebuilds going on in England and am fascinated by their efforts. There is an Atlantic being built new from the railhead up the boiler at hte Bluebell Railway and believe me, their progress is slow but steady.

I, too, believe we could build a replica of any engine we wanted to here in the US. All the technology is there. Boilers are being built for locomotives all the time. Sheet metal skills are alive and well too. Once you decide to fabricate the cylinders, you're down to cradles (can be fabricated), journal boxes/roller bearing boxes and wheels as the remaining major complex castings to make. We know wheels are being cast on a regular basis (Soo Line 2719 got a new driver center a few years ago) and even cylinders (SP 786, although there have been rumors of a flaw in the casting/machining/design that to date that have yet to be substantiated).

Dave makes a very valid point that the cost of production goes down if you manufacture multiple locomotives at once so now you've raised the level of difficulty because now you're asking multiple groups to decide on one design that they wish to share. I'm still thrilled to have had the chance to run a pretty cool 3" scale NYC Hudson but I'm sure the world would take notice if we cranked out a brand new NYC J-3 with fabricated cylinders and an all-welded boiler.

Rob Gardner

I can’t go into details, but I know for certain someone looked into doing exactly this. A person I know with more money than he should have (not a name in RR preservation at all) once contacted the Chinese with some basic plans, asking how much it’d cost. I don’t recall the exact amount, but when he realized someone else could come into the same factory after him and get the same locomotive for a lot less (as the tooling would be done by then), he backed out and focused his toy money elsewhere.