I know it's a long shot, but have there been ANY preserved audio recordings of any of the PRR's experimental locomotives? Such as the S2 Steam Turbine? Q1? Q2? S1?

I'm sure it's highly unlikely...but I figured it's worth a try.

You may already be aware as you didn't ask specifically for T1 audio, but just in case:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6HTHcouKu4

--Reed

Reed -

NICE! I kept waiting to hear some driver slippage, but nothing! Maybe this was one of those Pennsy engineers who actually knew how to handle the beast.

Les

Ya, that's actually a vid from my youtube page...listened to it this afternoon and that's what inspired this topic...would love to hear what any of the other locomotives sounded like. Thanks though..

Sounds a bit like 3 GE U-boats pulling up a grade!!!

Howard P.

(runs for cover as PRR fans explode)

Let's be real about one thing here:

Magnetic audio recording was developed largely around the time of World War Two, in the form of horribly low-fidelity wire recorders. Magnetic tape recorders were not developed until the early to mid-1950s, and were only rendered "portable" (in the sense that you could load them in a car trunk or on a baggage cart) ca. 1955.

Thus, the total number of railfans that were "in the field" recording steam railroad audio on an amateur level (i.e., not appropriating movie studio equipment over the weekend, as several European audio rail recordists such as Peter Handford did) and properly preserved the results can be counted on the fingers of one to two hands. O. Winston Link and Stan Kistler were but two of them.

The recording on the YouTube "video" was one of a large compendium of steam audio captured by the late John M. Prophet III of Buffalo, NY, and released over several years/decades by Semaphore Records (A. Alan Botto). With regards to PRR steam, if it wasn't on the New York & Long Branch, if it didn't run past the microphones of Prophet or Clarence Weaver of Sunbury, Pa., then you're not going to hear it except in your imagination.

There exist allegations that a short fragment of a recording of the S2 survived; said fragment was supposedly used to make a sound chip used in a Williams or MTH O-scale model of the PRR 6200.

Yeah, I thought it was interesting that you couldn't hear wheel flanges screeching in a recording purported to be at Horseshoe Curve.

Let's just say that a 1949 wire recording barely has ANY fidelity, let alone "high fidelity." Recording equipment that would have been up to the standards of, say, commercial audio or movie audio in 1949 (and captured flange squeal) would have required a large baggage cart to move about, to say naught of getting it trackside to the Curve. (I have seen photos of 1940s and 1950s sound recording by Peter Handford for UK movie studios--his day job--so I know from whence I speak.)

I don't know which is more fascinating--a preserved and operational steam turbine locomotive, or what appears to be a steam motor car at the end of the clip!

While on the subject of late PRR steam, there is also this article on the tests with the T-1 on the Chesapeake & Ohio that seems to largely exonerate the duplex drive jobs.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... n13642634/

Interesting conclusions: the T-1s ran decently on the C&O, doing essentially what was asked of them, with a couple of notable exceptions, one of which was an attempted start with tonnage above what their own 4-8-4s would normally handle. Biggest disappointment seems to have been sluggish acceleration (compared with C&O's own J-3 4-8-4s) that would be partially due to the lack of a booster engine and partially due to basic engine design (i.e., driver and cylinder proportions) that was optimised for fast running in more level territory than the Mountain Sub on the C&O; in fact, overall tractive effort was comparable to that of one of C&O's own 4-6-4s, which were used in level territory.

The C&O people praised the boiler for its ability to make steam--a high compliment from a road that subscribed so strongly to the Will Woodward Superpower gospel.

With the two noted exceptions (one was an overload case where C&O would normally have had double-headed 4-8-4s on the train, the other a marginal starting situation on a grade of 1.44% with the train draped around curves) there was also little slipping on the C&O. I have to wonder if a part of that was that engine crews on that mountain road were used to large divided-drive engines, i.e., all those 2-6-6-2s, 2-8-8-2s, and 2-6-6-6s the C&O rostered.

That's a steam tram, or what we called a steam dummy; they were fairly common on street railways before the electric trolley came along. That particular one is probably the one built by Atlas of Stockholm in 1888; and belongs to the Nässjö Railway Museum.