In addition to the cast-in air reservoirs, there were integral pilot beams, compressor brackets, valve gear and crosshead guide brackets, etc. Amazing castings.

I recall being told (by an old-timer) that there was close to a 50% reject rate on the engine beds. The duds went right back into the melt pot.

Howard P.

Modern welding technology has largely removed the need for such castings. One story I remember is a large pit casting was being poured and they noticed it was taking more metal than it should. Assuming the mold was leaking they kept pouring in hopes of saving the casting. Then someone ran in saying the sewer was on fire! The molten metal had broken into the sewer and filled the pipe for quite a ways.

I recall one of my mechanical engineering professors talking about this but I didn’t know what a cast engine bed was at the time. He said they had to make multiple simultaneous pours to do these castings. The molten metal from a single pour would start to solidify before it filled the mold. It must have been a heck of a coordination effort.

55 ton cast multiple throttle for super-critical power plant. Not quite as intricate as a frame or a loco throttle.

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Other examples of current large casting technology:

3801's cast steel bed:



Only bit of the loco not made in Australia, yes it was General Steel Castings Corp. Must have been fun importing them during WW2.

General Steel Casting has 2 Plants that made locomotive bed castings: Granite City, IL and at Eddystone, PA . The Eddystone Plant was near Baldwin Locomotive works and those GSC buildings still stand. There Is a good article with pictures and descriptions of that plant in the April 1931 Baldwin Magazine. There are numerous pictures of the complete locomotive bed frames but very few pictures of the casting process or the frames with the gates and risers still attached. Only ones that I have seen are In Volume 1 of the UP 9000 book by Kratville and a picture of the PRR 6-4-4-6 frame.

Does anyone have other pictures or know of sources of like pictures???

If interested in a copy of the BLW Magazine article back channel me and I could email it to you.

Would be interesting to know how production at which plant went to the 3 builders. From the pictures in the BLW article it shows machining complete locomotive beds there. From other research I know the BLW had purchased special equipment to bore cylinders and valves on these bed in house. So don't know it beds were sold as castings, partially or finished machined. Pictures mostly show finished machined beds.

One other observation the AT&SF 5011 class Locomotive bed casting in one piece from front to back including cradle but the AT&SF 2900 class locomotive bed casting has a bolted on cradle both were produced a about the same time. It was obvious the General Steel could manufacture the longer bed so why were the 2900s built with the bolt on cradle. War era production capacity or other reasons?

Has any progress been made at cataloging and making available the GSC drawings? I am curious specifically about tender trucks which seem to be an early version of the "AAR Type B" truck used by Alco.
Attached is a photo of what I am looking for specifically, and not sure how these trucks are classified or where overall drawings of them might be found. Thanks for any help.

o anderson, I could be wrong but my gut says that those are likely ALCo trucks under the tender as ALCo built the locomotive although several vendors offered trucks. The drawings would likely be specified whether home built or other source. I don't think GSC did these trucks.

We’re they machined in the US, or was the casting shipped rough?

I remember being told (perhaps by Rick) that the GSC beds were historically cast with only two or so gates, probably with the mold preheated to permit good flow into an intricate system of risers.

Prior to that I assumed the pour was made with a great number of gates, with the alloy of the pours optimized for the functional part of the frame involved. You can tell I wasn't a practicing foundryman, as gas escape and mechanical collision between pour flows would be great concerns if that were done without vacuum/CA or some very careful gate and riser structure.

I continue to expect any large modern frame would be a combination of lost-foam and rolled sections, joined by a technology like laser keyhole wending with preheat in controlled atmosphere, major castings jigged probably on a rotatable fabricating frame to retain alignment (see the approach Bulleid used on the Leader frames, scaled up appropriately...)

None of my books say for sure, but probably rough and finished here. GSC also made the frames for a 4-8-2 freight loco (NSW 57 class, cast steel bed but without integral cylinders, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_D57_class_locomotive) in 1929 so there was experience here of dealing with them by WW2.

Remember that every dollar of extra 'valuation' from preparation or machining would have been subject to duty, and would have had to be paid for in dollars and not pounds sterling in those financially-straitened postwar years.

I would expect them to be little more than QC checked and dimensioned before shipping for those reasons.

A little OT, but GSC was not the only provider of cast steel beds. E.g., the rebuilt B&O class P-7 Pacifics had Commonwealth beds. The 1950-52 Locomotive Cyclopedia (published by Simmons-Boardman) has a photo: https://www.railarchive.net/randomsteam/bo5314.htm

GSC acquired Commonwealth Steel in 1929.

Thanks, I figured someone who knew more about this than I do would chime in here.