By the way - I was never able to get drawings of any kind for this beast. Maybe they are in an obscure 1926 Cyclopedia, but my support group could not find them.
FWIW, the book Southern Pacific Ten-Coupled Locomotives by Robert J. Church has a chapter set aside for this one. Some pictures of the boiler construction and of the locomotive at Baldwin. Probably not worth while buying the book just for that but if you could get it thru the library. Me, I collect books. Santa Fe Locomotive Development by Larry Brasher also has a couple pages about testing the locomotive. This was the 1st information I had ever encountered about the locomotive.
Mark
@Skeeter1024 posted:FWIW, the book Southern Pacific Ten-Coupled Locomotives by Robert J. Church has a chapter set aside for this one. Some pictures of the boiler construction and of the locomotive at Baldwin.
I believe the book you may be think of is "Three Barrels of Steam", which has two chapters on the Baldwin #60000. Also, it is NOT by Robert J. Church.
Probably not worth while buying the book just for that but if you could get it thru the library. Me, I collect books. Santa Fe Locomotive Development by Larry Brasher also has a couple pages about testing the locomotive. This was the 1st information I had ever encountered about the locomotive.
Mark
For what it's worth, there are lots of interesting features about the Baldwin 60000:
1) It is a 3-cylinder compound, with the center cylinder being the high pressure cylinder, while the two outside cylinders are the low pressure.
2) Although a compound, surprisingly all three cylinders are the same bore & stroke.
3) The center cylinder drives the #2, cranked axle, while the two outside cylinders have their main rods connected to the #3 drive axle.
4) The firebox was of the water tube design, which tended to have broken tubes on a fairly regular basis.
5) If it hasn't been mentioned previously, the reason for the strange number of the locomotive was; it was the 60,000th locomotive produced by Baldwin Locomotive Works.
@Hot Water posted:For what it's worth, there are lots of interesting features about the Baldwin 60000:
1) It is a 3-cylinder compound, with the center cylinder being the high pressure cylinder, while the two outside cylinders are the low pressure.
2) Although a compound, surprisingly all three cylinders are the same bore & stroke.
3) The center cylinder drives the #2, cranked axle, while the two outside cylinders have their main rods connected to the #3 drive axle.
4) The firebox was of the water tube design, which tended to have broken tubes on a fairly regular basis.
5) If it hasn't been mentioned previously, the reason for the strange number of the locomotive was; it was the 60,000th locomotive produced by Baldwin Locomotive Works.
The Church book was put out by Signature Press fairly recently, excellent book by the way, nicely complements his Daylight and Mountain books. Thank you for confirming that I need to add "Three Barrels Of Steam" to my search, definitely sounds like one I want.
Mark
I would be in for one!
What I find interesting is there are few, if any photo's on the 60000 being tested on the various railroads.
These are the roads as best as I can determine:
PRR, B&O, Erie, CB&Q, AT&SF, SP, GN.
Source: http://www.cwrr.com/Lounge/Ref.../baldwin/part03.html
Rusty
@Skeeter1024 posted:The Church book was put out by Signature Press fairly recently, excellent book by the way, nicely complements his Daylight and Mountain books. Thank you for confirming that I need to add "Three Barrels Of Steam" to my search, definitely sounds like one I want.
Mark
Mark,
I just ordered a copy. It'll go great with my other SP steam books by Mr. Church.
Stuart
I have both books. When I was building my model I asked for help. One fellow modeler sent me a large package of xeroxed information - folks are always willing to help. I saved it - somewhere - and will send it to Scott if he decides to go forward with a model.
Information is sparse. Hot has collected most of it in his succinct post, but if you want more loquacious prose, see my writeup in the other thread.
Wow. According to the link in Rusty's post, it maxed out the PRR test plant at just 37.5 mph and much less than a 100% firing rate. It was the most powerful loco they had tested up to that point (1926.) So I guess it was more powerful than an I1 Decapod, M1 Mountain, and ??
Erie's Super-Power Berks came just one year later. I wonder why the Erie shunned this big Baldwin, and how the two classes compared when tested on that road?
@Ted S posted:Wow. According to the link in Rusty's post, it maxed out the PRR test plant at just 37.5 mph and much less than a 100% firing rate. It was the most powerful loco they had tested up to that point (1926.) So I guess it was more powerful than an I1 Decapod, M1 Mountain, and ??
Erie's Super-Power Berks came just one year later. I wonder why the Erie shunned this big Baldwin, and how the two classes compared when tested on that road?
Probably was shunned for the reason of excess maintenance costs of the inside motion of the 3rd cylinder. That and the water tube firebox. The 3 cylinder fad seemed to pass fairly quickly in the states.
@Skeeter1024 posted:The Church book was put out by Signature Press fairly recently, excellent book by the way, nicely complements his Daylight and Mountain books. Thank you for confirming that I need to add "Three Barrels Of Steam" to my search, definitely sounds like one I want.
Mark
I also remember this loco being mentioned in a book about the history of the Baldwin locomotive works.
According to the data contained in Rusty's link, the indicated horsepower for this locomotive was 4515. The Texas & Pacific 2-10-4 was close and the Burlington's 2-10-4 probably exceeded that figure by a bit, without all the complicated machinery, requiring a whole lot of mechanical baby-sitting. Both were contemporaries of #60000.
I re-read the text in Bob Church's book last night. The locomotive maxed out the Altoona test facility. According to Bob, they estimated it could have gone above 4500 hp.
Also of note: they know which tenders were used on the SP. We could probably find out if the San Jose display Pacific's tender was one of them. If I ever make it to Sacramento again . . .
I recently received my copy of the Southern Pacific Ten-Coupled Locomotives book. Like my other SP steam locomotive books by Robert Church it is full of information and data about the Southern Pacific ten-coupled steam locomotives.
Now I just read the chapter on the Baldwin 60000 and I found the Mr. Church fell into some of the same errors that others have stated about the Baldwin 60000. First is that the 60000 had triple Walschaerts valve gear (This arrangement was used on the Baldwin-built D&RGW M-75 class 4-8-2 and UP's "Baldface Nine rebuilds of some of their UP-2 class 4-12-2). On the 60000 what Baldwin did was far more creative. They used the Walschaerts valve gear on the engineers side to operate the valve on the center high pressure cylinder. They used the Walschaerts valve gear on the fireman's side to operate the left low pressure cylinder, and from the left crosshead they used a lever like that used in Young valve gear to operate the right low pressure cylinder. This use of a Young valve gear setup is why the cranks on the drivers had to be set to 90 degrees, with the center crank set 135 degrees apart from the other two.
Another issue is the claim that part of the failure of the 6000 was that it was too heavy. One page 223 Mr. Church states that the 60000 weighed 15,500 lbs more than the SP-1 class 4-10-2. But here's the part I take issue with. One page 198 he posted the data sheet for the SP-1 class engine, and on page 216 he has the data sheet for the 60000. Below are the respective weights of the two designs.
Weight SP-1 60000
On Drivers 316,000 318,000
Front Truck 65,500 66,000
Trailing Truck 60,500 61,000
Total Engine 442,000 445,000
So the actual weight difference was negligible.
What probably doomed the 60000 was that it was too different. The combination of being a compound engine in the mid 1920's along with the water tube firebox made it too radial for mose railroads.
Stuart
