by Allen Hazen
I think I asked about this once before, years ago, and didn't get much information in reply, but who knows: maybe somebody has come across something since then, so I'll ask again.
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Many years ago -- maybe in the 1970s -- "Trains" magazine had a short article (single two-page spread i.i.r.c.) with a line drawing of a "super GG1" (GG2?): a 7,500 hp enlarged GG-style locomotive. The article said that this was planned for use both east and west of Harrisburgh, had the PRR electrification been extended west. Brief mention was made of an even bigger, 10,000 hp, 4-8+8-4 (2-D+D-2) design.
PRR electrification reached Harrisburgh in 1940. The original intention (and I don't think this was abandoned immediately after Harrisburgh was reached: I believe the PRR at least did cost studies for westward electrification projects after WW II) was to continue electrifying westward, to Altoona and over the mountains to Pittsburgh. The 1938 DD2 could be seen as a "technology demonstrator" for later articulated electric locomotives with 1,250 hp per driving axle.
In the event, the completion of the GG1 fleet left the PRR with as many electric locomotives as it needed for an electrification ending at Harrisburgh (the only later "mass production" electrics, the E-44, were to replace retired P5a, not to expand the total fleet), and dieselization was cheaper aft WW II. (Electrification might, I think, still have been a better LONG TERM option, but the money-short PRR of the late 1940s and 1950s was in no position to make a huge investment that wouldn't pay off for decades to come.)
So: question. Does anybody know more about these projects for very big and very powerful PRR electric locomotives?
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Many years ago -- maybe in the 1970s -- "Trains" magazine had a short article (single two-page spread i.i.r.c.) with a line drawing of a "super GG1" (GG2?): a 7,500 hp enlarged GG-style locomotive. The article said that this was planned for use both east and west of Harrisburgh, had the PRR electrification been extended west. Brief mention was made of an even bigger, 10,000 hp, 4-8+8-4 (2-D+D-2) design.
PRR electrification reached Harrisburgh in 1940. The original intention (and I don't think this was abandoned immediately after Harrisburgh was reached: I believe the PRR at least did cost studies for westward electrification projects after WW II) was to continue electrifying westward, to Altoona and over the mountains to Pittsburgh. The 1938 DD2 could be seen as a "technology demonstrator" for later articulated electric locomotives with 1,250 hp per driving axle.
In the event, the completion of the GG1 fleet left the PRR with as many electric locomotives as it needed for an electrification ending at Harrisburgh (the only later "mass production" electrics, the E-44, were to replace retired P5a, not to expand the total fleet), and dieselization was cheaper aft WW II. (Electrification might, I think, still have been a better LONG TERM option, but the money-short PRR of the late 1940s and 1950s was in no position to make a huge investment that wouldn't pay off for decades to come.)
So: question. Does anybody know more about these projects for very big and very powerful PRR electric locomotives?