Recently, while reading a work on “British Railways Standard Steam Locomotives”, by E.S.Cox, 1966, it was noted that as British Railways (BR) was created in 1948, there was concurrently, a requirement by them for a series of new standard steam locomotives. Mr. Cox, in association with others such as Mr. Riddles and Mr. Bond, was intimately involved in their design and development and as such was tasked with distilling what was then known about locomotives to provide the best machines regarding performance, efficiency, construction and maintenance.

It is interesting to speculate on what might have occurred in the United States if we had been in the same position. The premise would have been much akin to the USRA era (1918) which, indeed, developed a series of locomotives aimed at being usable on all the major roads. The concept of standard locomotives for such a vast system is daunting at best. However, this time, the appointed committee of professionals would have the benefit of test plant results from here and abroad, along with extensive documentation on operating and maintenance experience.

Having taken into account the many and varied criteria, what would they have felt to be the basics to use in designing our fleet of standard engines?
Boilers:
a. All welded boilers had come of age. The ICC (now the FRA) had accepted this
aspect of construction.
b.Would higher pressures be used? What is the practical upper limit of a
staybolted firebox?
c. Since staybolt breakage is a significant maintenance item, would different
designs and methods of attachment have been applied?
d. With boiler / combustion efficiency related to the grate limit, would there have been an attempt to mitigate the problem with different combustion systems,
i.e. Stugg pulverized coal, etc.?
e. What level of superheat temperature could be practically achieved?
f. Could better drafting methods be developed?
Machinery:
a. Had cast steel frames proved themselves in first cost and maintenance?
b.Would poppet valves have been refined to perform better than
conventional piston valves?
c.If piston valves had been retained, would there have been designs that
reduced leakage and extended wear life?
d. Certainly, roller bearings would have been used, or is it possible
that other designs of friction bearings could yet be applied?
e. Counterbalance would have been more significantly addressed.
f. Along with balance would have been new designs of main and
side rods.

These are just some of the thoughts that have occurred to me and it would be very interesting to hear your comments.

Respectfully,
Dave Griner
Wasatch Railroad Contractors

Lima Locomotive Works' proposed 4-8-6 with double Belpaire firebox and Franklin Rotary Cam Poppet valve gear comes to mind. But by 1948 a standard locomotive had already been adopted by most railroads - the EMD F units.

A careful study of the American locomotive industry (especially "from Steam to Diesel.." by Albert Churella, shows that the U.S. practice was to generally to build locomotives to buyer specification.

This was in part the result of the somewhat speculative engineering of the time-so building to spec transferrred the design risk to the purchaser.

Part of it was convention that dated back to the delivery of the "Consolidation" which was designed by Lehigh Valley master mechanic Alexander Mitchell. The Consolidation was delivered in 1866, the same year Matthias Baldwin died-in the early days of Baldwin, he was a regular visitor to the patent office-but as requirements changed and Baldwin was in something of an interregnum in the years following Baldwin's death, it was easy to minimize the risk of failure and stroke the master mechanics' egos.

However the real difference between the U.K and the U.S., is the massive differences in the operating requirements. The U.K. is smaller and flatter and doesn't have massive snowstorms, deserts or the Rockies or other dramatic variations in climate and geography.

The fact that the steam locomotive typically has a steep and sharply peaked horsepower curve means it best operated at a narrow range of speeds around the ideal. U.S. designs varied to match operating requirements that were far more diverse due to the greater variety of conditions-and trains were lighter in the U.K. as well.

The railroad that worked hardest at standardization was the N&W and they had the Y's for coal drags, A's for manifests, J's for passenger. Other designs that worked well enough (Mountains, Pacifics, Twelve-Wheelers) in a service stayed on the roster too. Standardization simply wouldn't work stateside.

I believe this view limits its self in many ways by not recognizing the diversity of conditions on US railroads The USRA had settled on a number of standard designs but each one resulted in compromises that some railroads did not appreciate. These compromises resulted in many issues for the railroad company. Locomotives did more than pulled trains they were important pieces in a transportation system. To that end each railroad had goals that each needed to be meet. While both the Rio Grande and the Santa Fe needed locomotives to pull trains the Santa Fe was a race track compared to the Rio Grande and put different demands upon their locomotives. They also had different traffic sources and operation practices and infrastructures. Over powered locomotives on some lines (such as the NN and locomotive #98) were artificially limited due to infrastructure limitations (ex. siding length) and customer needs.

Coal as fuel source is an uneconomical fuel compared to oil in many areas in the west. The last SP coal supply was forced on them due to the agreement with Phelps, Dodge. If they had not leased the EP &SW they would not have had the coal burning between Tucumcari, NM and Tucson, AZ. For many railroads in many districts there would have been a serious capital investment to use this fuel for what benefit?

Designs of any machine, there are a number of factors that need to be considered. One of the big factors is the ability of your fellow employees to take on new skills and abilities. There are a number of examples where new technology created issues caused by training and ability of employees and not the technology itself. Employee familiarization is handled best through education and not with an iron fist as seen so many times on many railroads.

The diesel locomotive did two things. It changed the economics significantly in so many ways that it allowed a cultural change to occur. This cultural evolution allowed the industry to survive the changes that were forthcoming. Because of this evolution the steam locomotive in many ways shows how each RR approached their goal of serving their customers with the technology, beliefs and skills that they had. Every time we modify “Old Betsy” we loose part of the story of how and why they did what they did. If we try to continue to improve our locomotives we will destroy what they are. Locomotives are more than a source of power but a study of a culture that had a level of skills and abilities to create, operate and maintain the machine.

Respectfully,

Robby Peartree

There are many possibilities for "what if's" in this topic, most of them related to the builders involvement in World War Two.

What if Electro-Motive had spent four years producing FT locomotives rather than thousands of ship sets of marine propulsion equipment for the US Navy during WW2?

What if Cleveland Diesel (Winton Engine) had not spent the war building over 12,000 engines for ships, and instead had worked the four years as a supplier to Electro-Motive for diesel locomotive production?

What if ALCO had not become involved in the production of army tanks and 155mm guns, and had introduced their competing road freight diesel in 1941 as they originally planned, rather than 1944.

What if Baldwin had spent four years building more of their diesel switchers and introducing their road units earlier, rather than building diesels for minesweepers and propellers and shafting for east coast shipyards.

What if Lima had not gone on weird development tangents investigating products like free piston gasifiers?

What if FM had entered the diesel locomotive market four years earlier instead of building many thousands of ship sets of propulsion equipment for the US Navy.

And what if Alco and Baldwin had not tied up a lot of engineering talent in the early postwar years trying to come up with their own versions of the Fairbanks Morse OP engine?

Probable result: Dieselization five or more years earlier than happened.

MX (Obviously Not My Real Name)

MX,
Interesting "What ifs" but there was a war and if not then more than just the face of the railroad would have changed.

One thing to consider. Had the war board allowed dieselization during the war you would not have one class one steam locomotive on display or stored in some back shop. The scrap metal drives during the war would have taken care of every hunk of iron on wheels turning them into aircraft carriers and tanks. The railroads would have made certain that every last steamer on the property was melted down.

And for the original question. I think that Santa fe was actively involved in poppet valve research using the 3752 as the test bed . Santa Fe also used cross counter balancing where a lot of class ones did not. Santa Fe also was interested in the front end drafting using the Santa Fe patent Layden nozzle and a very interesting petticoat design. And so what if dieselization had not happened, what if the war drug on for another five years. How far would all the steam technology have advanced?

My guess would be that if the war had gone on another five years (the amphibious invasion of Japan, followed by a ground campaign, for example) the outcome on the railroads would not have looked much different from what happened. The reason is that the US Navy and merchant marine building programs had already been cut back because submarines and naval aviation had virtually wiped the seas clean of Japanese military and commercial shipping, that freed ALCO, Baldwin and FM from some of their war emergency programs. The only programs that would have continued were the vessels that supported amphibious operations, that would have tied up Electro-Motive from concentrating on locomotive production for a while longer. FM, ALCO, and Baldwin all had cab type freight diesels being developed when the war ended.

For a fascinating look at where the builders were headed, try doing a patent search of ALCO and Baldwin after 1945. There is very little from either builder that pertains to steam locomotives in that time period, but lots of patents related to diesels.

MX

I wholeheartedly believe the Santa Fe was onto a few key "hotrodding" items on steam locomotives. The stack extenders (ie 2900's) that were run allowed for better steaming qualities, but still allowed clearance through tunnels and under bridges. The Leyden was a very good attempt at making a better exhaust nozzle. Had the war gone on another few years and steam still mandated, I cringe to see what the Santa Fe would have come up with. Who knows, it might not have been a Lempour nozzle, it could have been a Santa Fe patent? The Leyden shows a bit of natural progression in the line of thinking towards keeping the exhaust just below subsonic speeds. Roller bearings were just the beginning...

The progression from the 3751 to the 3776 and 2900 class locomotives is rather spectacular including the transformation that the 3751 underwent.

David,

This is a question I've pondered quite often. ~20 years ago, I'd have thought the ideal 1948 standard steam locomotives would have been updated equivalents of the USRA standards. Maybe light and heavy 2-10-4's, 4-8-4's, 4-6-4's, a 4-6-6-4 and a 4-8-8-4 (or similar), and maybe a couple of standard switchers.

After doing a lot of reading (Bill Withuhn, L. D. Porta, David Wardale, and others) I don't think nearly this amount of diversity would have been necessary. The valid point's been raised that some railroads felt the USRA mandated too much standardization. OTOH, at least one author's made the point that a far quicker and more efficient way to have moved the required freight during WWI would have been to build a fleet of USRA light 2-8-2's, so maybe the USRA didn't go far enough with standardization. Diesel builders certainly proved that custom-designed locomotives (at least in the case of diesels) weren't necessary.

I guess the biggest handicap to standardization in the U.S. is the great diversity in the maximum axle loads that different railroads could tolerate. This went from ~60,000 pounds/axle to over 80,000 pounds/axle on a few. Especially in the case of steam, if you design to this lower limit you have to get pretty inventive to attain high tractive effort and high power. Wardale makes a pretty convincing argument that a U.S. spec Beyer-Garratt would have made a formidable engine for these conditions.

Aside from what types of engines got built, standardized steam locomotives that incorporated all the proven refinements of 1948 (much like their 1918 USRA counterparts) would have been a great leap forward for many, if not most U.S. railroads. As to your specific questions, here are my thoughts:

Boilers:
a. All welded boilers had come of age. The ICC (now the FRA) had accepted this aspect of construction.
Definitely. Welding had several significant advantages over riveting including reduced weight for a given size boiler.

b.Would higher pressures be used? What is the practical upper limit of a
staybolted firebox?
It seems 300 PSIG was the highest widely accepted pressure. While not the upper limit used, it was far higher than was used on many roads with otherwise modern steam (the C&O for instance).

c. Since staybolt breakage is a significant maintenance item, would different designs and methods of attachment have been applied?
It seems likely welding would have quickly been adapted to staybolts here, as it was in some other countries. The Tross staybolt design developed in Germany is claimed to be a significantly more resistant to failure in high stress areas.

d. With boiler / combustion efficiency related to the grate limit, would there have been an attempt to mitigate the problem with different combustion systems, i.e. Stugg pulverized coal, etc.?
U.S. designers undoubtedly recognized this problem, but aside from some earlier experiments with pulverized firing, it doesn't seem that they had anything on the drawing boards to address the problem. Porta's Gas Producer Combustion System didn't come along for at least another 10 years. Wardale did some investigation of pulverized (or more accurately micronized) coal firing, and both he and an equipment supplier thought that off-the-shelf micronized firing equipment could be adapted to steam locomotives. Given a few years, U.S. builders might have arrived at the same conclusion.

e. What level of superheat temperature could be practically achieved?
The Pennsy T-1's and the C&O's J-3a's (maybe others) had VERY high superheat (~750 degrees F IIRC). Until synthetic lubricants came along (which wasn't much later) or unless saturated steam cooled valve liners had been developed (as later used by Wardale) that was probably about the upper limit for what could be tolerated.

f. Could better drafting methods be developed?
Undoubtedly. 1948 was pretty much the dawn of the jet age and a lot of effort was going into understanding and developing nozzles for jets and rockets. No doubt much of the science developed here could have been adapted to exhaust drafting if the will had been present.

Machinery:
a. Had cast steel frames proved themselves in first cost and maintenance?
It seems they had, but they weren't necessarily the only (or best) answer. Andre Chapelon planned all-welded frames for his post-war locomotives. Welded construction would have allowed lighter frames (leaving more available weight for bigger boilers, etc., if desired).

b.Would poppet valves have been refined to perform better than
conventional piston valves?
It seems the jury was still out on pistons vs. poppets. Even in France, where very sophisticated, high maintenance locomotives were embraced, piston valves were selected for the planned post-war advanced steam locomotives even though poppets had previously been used successfully. Both Porta and Wardale claim poppets offer no significant thermodynamic advantages over well-designed piston valves, while piston valves are much less susceptible to abuse or failure from normal service. Still, poppets showed great promise and they might have caught on with a little more development work.

c.If piston valves had been retained, would there have been designs that
reduced leakage and extended wear life?
Porta's work showed that having numerous, narrow valve rings is the key to low leakage, long life piston valves. I know he studied diesels as a good example of how to design long-lasting rings, but I'm not sure when these were first developed.

d. Certainly, roller bearings would have been used, or is it possible
that other designs of friction bearings could yet be applied?
Roller bearings would seem to have been mandatory. It seems the biggest advance in this area would have been to design them with oil/grease tight seals so that they didn't spray lubricant all over the locomotives and track. The one significant advantage I see for friction bearings is relative ease of replacement, which might be a good thing for secondary service locomotives.

e. Counterbalance would have been more significantly addressed.
Some more engineering and less "rule of thumb" would have been helpful in this area. Some countries successfully dispensed with reciprocating balance ("over" balance) altogether, which results in less stress to the tracks. Some scientific research in this area would have been very helpful to steam design.

f. Along with balance would have been new designs of main and
side rods.
I don't know how much improvement we could expect in this area. While Timken's "knuckless" roller rods offered some advantages, some other countries which used roller rods (such as South Africa) avoided this design and used convention knuckled rods for ease of maintenance.

I don't think 1948 standardized designs would have been much (if any) better than the best steam on some railroads (C&O, N&W, Sante Fe), but they would have been far superior to most steam locomotives plying the rails in 1948.

Thank you gentlemen for your observations and comments on this subject, they are appreciated.
In studying Mr. Odoms comments, the aspect of poppet valves is one that has not received a great deal of recognition in this country. Probably the most interesting and accurate dissertations can be found in “One Man’s Locomotives”, by Vernon L. Smith, 1987, where he describes the systems of oscillating and rotary cam poppet valves on various locomotives during his tenure with Balmar Corporation, manufacturer for Franklin Railway Supply Company. He was directly involved with the development of the Type A, OC system applied to the PRR engines (5399, T1’s), their operating problems and resolutions. He also documents the work with Santa Fe 3752, where he applied the rotary cam system, which he believed would have better served the PRR, T1’s. I have been fortunate in both having spoken to him on this and having been given test reports on 3752 vs 3754 by Mr. Bill Palmer, formerly associated with the 3751.
Information from these and other sources indicate that with further research it was quite likely that the poppet valve systems could have significantly improved horsepower outputs.
However, in all of the accounts it is striking that overall thermal efficiency was still very low, even testing of NYC Niagras (5500,6000 & 6023, test report, Office-Engineer of Test, W. Albany, NY 6-3-48) show efficiencies ranging between 4.94% and 6.57% recorded in June 1948, #5500 had Franklin valves.
A comment by Ralph Johnson, Chief Engineer, BLW keeps coming back whenever the topic of improved efficiencies surfaces, being—the advantage of the (Stephonsonian) steam locomotive is its simplicity. It really appears that we can achieve better thermal performances but there is a threshold where maintenance overcomes the achievements.
Portas work provides what can be done today, but could 20% be acquired and still embrace Mr. Johnson’s observation---it is questionable
Thank you again for your time and comments.
Respectfully,
Dave Griner
Wasatch Railroad Contractors

www.wasatch-rr-contractors