Back in the days when the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy was running steam on fan trips, one of the railroad clubs announced that they would sponsor a trip with steam using the regular Eola (near Aurora) freight train out to Oregon, Illinois and Mt. Morris. I figured they would use O1A class Mikado #4960 for the trip. But apparently the ticket sales meant additional passenger cars had to be handled and with normal freight business, they opted to use O5B class 4-8-4 #5632 as power. The big Northern actually ran over at least one light rail siding delivering cars! However, that day, the light rail branch from Oregon up to Mt. Morris was not tested by the 4-8-4.

Les

For both the 1361 and the 290, I would look to the operations of R&N 425 in terms of "what a pacific can do" (although 425 is a light pacific). Looks can admittedly be deceiving, and that engine does perform some impressive runs. I believe the issues stated before with the smaller tenders/fuel capacity could be similar.

On my own personal note, I would love to see the 290 at least cosmetically restored. I truly find it to be one of the most beautiful engines out there. Here's hoping that SERM does find the time and money to do so.

To put some numbers on this forum, here's a link to a PRR diagram that shows the dimensions, including weight, of a K4s with stoker. I believe 1361 has a 110P75 tender while the diagram engine has a larger 130P75:

http://prr.railfan.net/diagrams/PRRdiag ... &sz=sm&fr=

Of course 1361 as rebuilt will be somewhat different but this can be a ballpark figure.

Phil Mulligan

Just to be clear, cosmetic restoration and display of 290 does not require replacement of any track. Unfortunately, like most volunteer organizations, we cannot always control the uninformed chatter outside of management circles.

.

Kelly's comments are most enlightening!! Off the top of my head, I would say it at least partially exonerates the (hack, kaff, kaff) "clowns" who were essentially trusting what the PRR did. After all, the PRR ran these things for years and years, surely they knew what they were doing, didn't they?

But then you have the change in crown sheet repair going from a marginal FOS of 4 to a clearly inadequate FOS approaching 3!! What were those guys at Altoona thinking? How the hell did they get away with it?

It sounds to me like the "Standard Railroad of the World" wasn't quite up to the hype even in the later steam era!!

What they were doing is that instead of repairing the boilers they were just replacing them. They looked at them as just another consumable item on the locomotive, and they probably crunched the numbers and found it was less expensive to build replacement boilers than to rebuild existing ones. Why overbuild something when it was just easier to replace it

The elimination of Nuts and bolts in 1943 by the PRR can possibly be pointed to the war effort and the intense pressure to conserve materials in the face of vast material shortages for the war effort. The USA was building anything and everything resulting in many unique cost / material efforts.
SPS manufacturing in Jenkintown PA ( in the old Warton railroad switch works) employed a “re-purpose shop” that salvaged and re-purposed Nuts, bolts and washers from anything and everything for the war effort. Could you imagine doing that today?
Sometimes we forget how close things were in 1942/43, nothing was more important than the war effort.

That still doesn't justify changing the construction and causing a situation that yielded less than the ICC called for... But I suspect the ICC never realized the issue. If someone did, they likely were told that the engines were running every day and not blowing up, so why get excited about it. I would imagine if there would have been a boiler incident that was directly traceable to the change there would have been hell to pay, but apparently there never was.

So, lacking the extra support of the nuts, the factor of safety drops below the ICC mandated factor of four... But I seem to recall (and I could be wrong) that the national boiler code only calls for a FOS of 3. They were shaving it close, but apparently not TOO close.

Were there ever any failures directly attributable to the lack of nuts on the stays?

.

Concerning relaxation of standards during WWII, the three major builders built a total of 2120 "S160" Consolidation locomotives to a War Department commissioned design during WWII. The boilers were built to the same standardized design by all three builders. The locomotive specifications state, "Boiler built to comply in all respects with the A.S.M.E. Boiler Code, except that the shell shall have a factor of safety of 4." Given the number produced and that they were specifically designed for the War Department for wartime use, if there was any relaxation of the factor of safety I would expect it would have been exercised in these locomotives.

Quick update here, ARM has a new website and shows Wick as a chairmen and Levin as secretary. On the museums facebook, a post with the simple phrase “We woke up feeling nostalgic today” and a photo of 1361 was put up. The rumor mill (not the best source of course) claims that there are some events going on tomorrow with possible news. Just thought i’d show what I found.

https://www.railroadcity.org/mission.html

https://m.facebook.com/pages/category/H ... ity/posts/

Also of note, the PRR observarion, Mountain View, has received a lot of work, including lighting and paint.

Further to that point, FMW made a post recently of the Railroaders Memorial Museum clock, with the caption "We hear it's a good time to be in Altoona..."

Seems like 1361 is in good hands!

Just mho, but I hope they decided to replace the existing crown sheet instead of going with a new-build boiler.

If money is not a concern, who wouldn't you want an all new boiler?

It will give the locomotive a very long service life with future operators etc having little to worry about in regards to major boiler projects. Seems like a very desirable outcome.