challenger3980 posted:Nick Chillianis wrote:
I don't believe the Clinchfield E-2 Challengers actually had centipede tenders. The E-3s did. They were second-hand purchases from the Rio Grande, their class L-97, which were copies of the Union Pacific 3900 class.
The Rio Grande L-97 was not a copy of the UP 3900's, they were UP locomotives, that the War Production Board(WPB) diverted from a UP order, when the Rio Grande wanted to order locomotives of their own design, and were refused. These were the same locomotives that the Clinchfield later acquired after the war when the Rio Grande returned them to the WPB. The Clinchfield , later converted these locomotives to a single stack design, that for reasons maybe Hotwater or Rich can explain, steamed better as single stack, rather than the original UP design two stack design.
Doug
You are correct. Rio Grande never cared for those ALCO Challengers, preferring their Baldwin-built L-105s. This may have been because of the greater TE of the L-105s as well as the fact that they were equipped with the Le Chatelier Water Brake, a compression braking system which allowed the locomotive's pistons to hold the train back on descending grades similar to diesel-electric dynamic braking.
