Was the NYC the only railroad that managed to build ugly Pacific types? Boston & Albany 593 Nice enough body. Nice enough legs. Butter face!
She's a beauty. Apparently this was unique to the Boston & Albany. The pic showed when I posted and edited the post. Weird. Try here: https://sites.google.com/site/pacific462steamlocomotive/home/personal/a/b Boston & Albany 591 and 593.
Fascinating how so many different looking Pacifics were created in just 20 years. Every railroad and locomotive builders had different concepts of how the same locomotive should look. Thanks for a wonderful link.
And yet, even the homeliest were at least somewhat pretty steamers. And the prettiest are among the most gorgeous. The N page is superb, but of course I like the S pages, even if the Soo mounted their headlights too high. Hate to admit it, but the SP had some almost as pretty as the Southern's. And Santa Fe 3441 is a famous shot from her Gulf Coast years. The A/B page is nice too. That seems to be the only link I can post. But there's at least a few beauties on every page.
The B&A, like the D&H, tended to have some rather ugly engines, not all, but definitely some. Actually most roads had some losers in the looks department. Ironically some of the ugliest engines are those that intended to look good, the streamlined engines. The UP's streamlined steamers were no the best.
Neither the Burlington nor the Seaboard are either. As for the C&EI, well. I just shake my head. Guys. That engine looked a whole lot better before you tried to make it look--like that. Some car customizers make ugly cars look good, and others make good looking cars ugly.
That site I linked to has a rare pic on page S1. When the Santa Fe first started rebuilding 3450 Class Hudsons and 3400 Class Pacifics with 79" drivers about 1935, the first few got Scullin disc drivers, NYC style. They later got switched to Universal disc drivers, same as the rest of their classes. But the site has a pic of 3420 in 1939, still wearing her Scullins.
Nothing looks more dated than 1960's "Futuristic", with the possible exception of; 1920's, 1930's, 1940's and 1950's futuristic.
True. But sometimes I think certain of those visionaries... ...had a better twenty-first century planned than the one we got.
Best Streamlined steam locomotives (4 were done). Retained their streamlining from their creation in 1947 until they were replaced by diesels in 1956 as well as following the train from its original Baltimore to Cincinnati routing to its Detroit to Cincinnati routing. The streamlining was designed by B&O's Industrial Engineer Ms. Olive Dennis.
As did most Sci-Fi authors, especially Isaac Asimov. Most of us can't understand, let alone accept true visionaries like Leonardo Da Vinci.
It's amazing how American those Pacifics came out looking, considering how British they looked while still naked.
One interesting thing to note is that toward the end of the steam era, larger boilers resulted in less height of domes and sandboxes to maintain clearances. This inadvertently resulted in a sleeker looking locomotive than those built earlier, which had (in my opinion at least) a handsome appearance all their own, just perhaps a bit more "quaint" then newer power. The D&H and perhaps some other eastern roads (not sure which ones), on the other hand, did have some locomotives that were very strange looking due to their experiments with high pressure boilers and other modern appliances
Not exactly relevant to the NYC (though several shots show locomotives and trains crossing their tracks), but chock full of Pacifics. Also switchers, Canadian Confederations (4-8-4) and a misidentified Wabash Hudson. All were headed to or from Dearborn Station in Chicago. All footage appears to be just after the war. Wabash 700 and all the Santa Fe 3400s are beautifully rebuilt.