The Pennsylvania RR covered the 2.5 miles between Landover and Anacostia at 102 miles an hour in August, 1895. This was the world's fastest speed of an engine at the time. Did an American engine (steam, diesel or electric) or an English engine (steam, electric etc) exceed the 102 record speed ? If so: 1. When was it first accomplished? 2. On what occasion? 3. What was the actual speed reached? (I'll bet Alan was pedaling like mad to keep up with this one!)
New York Central 4-4-0 #999 ran 112.5 mph between Batavia and Buffalo in upstate New York on May 10, 1893. 999 Photo She is on display in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. [ 06 July 2002, 13:24: Message edited by: Hank Coolidge ]
Here's the loco that Pat refers to. LNER A4 Pacific no.4468 "Mallard" during it's 50th Anniversary year in 1988. John.
World speed record for Electric traction is held by French TGV. 320.3 m.p.h. (515.3 km/h) on May 18th 1990. John.
Yes, but by all accounts she was a pain to work on. One particular gripe concerned her smokebox door which opens upwards like the hood of your automobile instead of swinging to the side like conventional smokebox covers. Something about that design made it more difficult for the shopmen to clean out the smokebox.
The A-4's have a regular smokebox door inside the clamshell doors. The real maintinance hassle though was the gressly valvegear and the constant hotbox problems on the inside third crank-axle. And if you are used to American steam it can be a real shock when you walk up to one of these, their amazingly small!
Anyone know the diameter of the drivers? They look monstrous. I think when the 999 made her run, she had 84 inch or maybe even larger drivers. She later had smaller ones installed.
That's applicable to UK-US trains in general as well, check out the "big brother" post in the UP section for an example, a Freightliner class 66 coupled to a UP SD70M, both newly built in London Ont.
That's applicable to UK-US trains in general as well, check out the "big brother" post in the UP section for an example, a Freightliner class 66 coupled to a UP SD70M, both newly built in London Ont. </font>[/QUOTE]Good Grief!!!! The Freightliner is TINY!!! I see SD70M's come by every day and I never had the first concept of how small UK Power was ... !? All the photos you guys in the UK post have such great perspective that all your locos look just as big as all the modern EMD's and GE's.
GM did well to cram all the stuff into our loading gauge! Some compromises were made on the 66's to get the weight down to our axle-load, like thinning down the truck castings, and reducing the capacity of the electrical systems. Some drivers (engineers) I have talked with say the 66's are very poor at loading, due to the inadequate electrics, and do not get away as well as some of our older locos. EWS wanted a large fuel tank, so something had to be trimmed, weight-wise. The locomotives cannot be too bad, as they are spreading across Europe, and seem to be the natural choice for new diesel locomotives.
Alan, your response implies that UK trackage and roadbed is of less stout construction than US trackage and roadbed. Can you explain further?
As a side note to the A-4's from what I understand there are two of them on this side of the pond ( in North America) one the Dewight Eisinhower is at the museum in Green Bay Wis. and the Dominion of Canada somewhere in Canada.
I found a photo that a friend sent me of the Dwight D. Eisenhower at the Green Bay museum. It is parked partially inside a shelter next to a Rock Island diesel, and it looks to be pretty big. If the drivers are in fact 80 inches, it must be a lot smaller than it looks, considering the 4449 and 844 both have 80 inch drivers.
Hank, we have some lines which are capable of taking heavier axle loads than others, but as the class 66 are required to have a wide route availability, they need an axle loading to suit the lighter tracks. In steam days, (and maybe still) all lines had a "route availability" number from RA1 to RA9, and locomotives with heavy axle loads had the RA number on the cabside, the A4's were RA9 and therefore could not operate on routes with less than an RA9 rating. Fitz, yes the A4's had 6 ft 8.5 ins drivers (80.5"), as did all Gresley pacifics. The LMS pacifics of Stanier design had 6'9" diameter. Later BR standard designs had only 6'2" drivers. The larges drivers on any British steam locomotive was 8 ft on the Stirling singles (4-2-2).
