Roundhouse and turntable at Oelwein, Iowa in 1912. I've heard this roundhouse still exists. Anyone have details, recent photos?

http://abpr2.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?july03/07-05-03/cgw652.jpg
ryarger@rypn.org

That has to be one of the oddest Mallets I've ever seen. Those drivers look hugely tall for an engine of this type--wouldn't she have been slippery? And the boiler looks a touch on the small side--wouldn't working those tall drivers at something close to the optimum power curve of the engine system exhaust the boiler's steam-generating capacity?

eledbetter@rypn.org

> Roundhouse and turntable at Oelwein, Iowa in
> 1912. I've heard this roundhouse still
> exists. Anyone have details, recent photos?

Looks a LOT like Santa Fe's early mallets. They had either 66" or 69" drivers if memory serves. Did CGW buy any from AT&SF?

JAC

I say, on appearance alone, that it's one of the AT&SF 2-6+6-2 Mallets, originally built with flexible accordion-style frames, later reboilered with longer courses and eventually resold to CGW. Dammit, I ran into an article on these locos only yesterday--now which of those kazillion magazines was it in?

LNER4472-NOSPAM-@bcpl.net

> That has to be one of the oddest Mallets
> I've ever seen. Those drivers look hugely
> tall for an engine of this type--wouldn't
> she have been slippery? And the boiler looks
> a touch on the small side--wouldn't working
> those tall drivers at something close to the
> optimum power curve of the engine system
> exhaust the boiler's steam-generating
> capacity?

According to Drury's "Guide to North American Steam Locomotives":

CGW discovered the 2-6-2 type in 1902 and within a year had 95 Prairies on its roster in six classes, . . . Classes F-2 through F-5, were freight engines with 63" drivers . . . the F-3s were ultimately rebuilt into Pacifics, but half of them became 2-6-6-2s first.

1/3 of the roundhouse (part of the original left after a fire in 1939) was demolished in 1997. This part had renemants of the fire as some of the wood inside was never replaced. The 2/3 of the roundhouse that is left is currently used by Transco Railcar.
The turntable is long gone.
Photo below was taken in 1999.

Boyd


bowens@rypn.org

Interesting. I didn't know anyone but AT&SF ever had any of these. The details on this CGW engine suggest it was never a AT&SF engine: wrong cab, dome, et. c.

On these engines the boiler was only the back half of the upper part of the locomotive. The forward part of what looks like a long boiler is sometimes described as a very large feedwater heater, with an intermediate smokebox containing a hinged joint of some kind. (The Santa Fe used both bellows and ball joints, both problematical.) On this CGW photo, notice the pipe connecting the injector with the check valve in the forward half, and the second pipe coming off the top of the heater and feeding the boiler itself.

Actually, it's hard to say if the forward chamber is a feedwater heater or part of the boiler, or something in-between, since it must have operated at boiler pressure. I never thought about it before, since these engines are seldom mentioned in polite conversation these days, but I presume there was a check between the two halves, and the injector operated against both of them. Must have been a bugger to start the injector, and the losses in draft from the two sets of tubes must have been considerable. Nonetheless, some of the advanced designs of L.D. Porta described in "The Red Devil" contain a similar two-chambered boiler.

Aarne Frobom
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Box 665
Owosso, MI 48840

Is that big torpedo-sized tank on the running board part of the feedwater system or just an ordinary air tank?

And it's not the world's greatest picture, but the front LP cylinders appear to have piston rod extensions.