RE: (erielack) Photos of 2602

["Schuyler Larrabee" <schuyler.larrabee_@_verizon.net>]

Something I wrote a long time ago about the Triplexes, but which would also apply to the Angus
types.  I still think this is the case.:

  
> Y'know, I have a very unpopular viewpoint on these engines:  They must 
> have operated reasonably well for the service in which they were 
> designed to be used.  After all, they had the Matt Shay for a couple 
> of years before they ordered the second and third locomotives.  If 
> they were such an abysmal failure as many would tell you they were, 
> then why in h**** would they order more?  Even in them thar days, 
> accountants could "do the math."  And they were in use, fairly 
> regularly, as far as I can tell, for around 15 - 18 years.  I don't 
> think that the idea of "well, we paid for them, let's use them up" 
> quite applies in this case.
> 
> Guys say they were failures because they couldn't draw a train very 
> far because they ran out of steam.  That wasn't their purpose.  The 
> purpose was to PUSH trains the ?six or seven? miles from Susquehanna 
> up the hill to Gulf Summit.  And that is all.  There is nothing wrong 
> with using a purpose-built machine for the purpose it was intended 
> for.  And by that standard, they were successful designs.
> 
> SGL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: erielack-owner_@_lists.elhts.org 
> [mailto:erielack-owner_@_lists.elhts.org] On Behalf Of Rich Young
> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 12:07 AM
> To: erielack_@_lists.railfan.net
> Subject: Re: (erielack) Photos of 2602
> 
> 
> > Something I always though would be interesting is how much better 
> > would the Erie's and Virginian's triplex locomotives have performed 
> > had they the benefits of superheaters, feedwater heaters, 
> combustion 
> > chambers, circulators and for the sake of the poor fireman 
> (firemen?), 
> > stokers.
> > Would they have archived the performance hoped for?
> > Of course with
> > stories of the triplexes riping out draft gear on the 
> freight cars of 
> > the day, would it have mattered.
> > 
> 
> 
> The one common problem that ALL of those experimental 
> locomotives (including the experimental  Baldwin
> 2-6-8-0) had was that they were under boilered and drasticlly 
> under fireboxed.  Most of those locomotives were a marriage 
> of usually two consol boilers. so even in the base thinking 
> of having a consol with an optimum sized firebox for the 
> boiler now you have doubled the size of the vessal without 
> any increase to the size of the firebox. And to add to this 
> was the fact that you did not have the technology to 
> acurately measure true performance. By estimates the front of 
> those boilers were barely hot enough to convert water to 
> steam let alone create enough capacity to keep up with 
> demand. There was an interesting article written ( late 
> forties) in Railway Mechanical Engineer about this that while 
> the base thinking was correct the lack of thermal dynamics 
> needed in it's conception was what was lacking.  Basicll they 
> needed a higher boiler HP to provide enough steam to keep up 
> with the demand and the appliances to help the efficiency.
> 
> Rich Young
> 
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