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Since this string is a historical record... It now (November 2021) seems that the "rump" GE remaining after the spin-off of the locomotive business is going to vanish. From a 9 November 2021 article in the "New York Times": "On Tuesday, the company said it would spin off its...

If I remember correctly (it has been a couple of decades since I read it), "Yeager" (the autobiography of Chuck Yeager) has a section by Glennis (his wife) recounting a trip she made to see him while he was in training during WW II. The railroad involved was the Western Pacific, and the tr...

Thanks for posting all that! (North American rail fans tend not to know very much about railways in the rest of the world, and there is a dearth of readily available information.) --- The Wikipedia article has a link to a data page (en Español, but not too hard for us Anglophones to decipher). A cou...

Thanks for following up! (Some of these old strings continue to attract interesting new information.) Re: "So they may well have been interchangeable. " They were. There is a photograph (I don't remember whether it is at the "Fallen Flags" site or in a book about the VGN) showing...

So, the change in traction motors came before the re-gearing. (PRR didn't, I think, re-gear the PB units: the Alco boosters continued to be used in passenger service, in otherwise E-7/E-8 consists, even after the PA cab units were transferred to freight service.) As I said earlier in correspondence ...

QUESTION: The PRR regeared its PA-1 units for lower speeds when they reassigned them from passenger to freight service. Does anyone know exactly when this was done? (And, second question, is it likely that -- at the same or a different time -- they would have replaced the original motors with newer ...

QUESTION: The PRR regeard its PA-1 units for lower speeds when they reassigned them from passenger to freight service. Does anyone know exactly when this was done? (And, second question, is it likely that -- at the same or a different time -- they would have replaced the original motors with newer o...

Actually, the New York Central did do comparative tests of diesels against Niagaras: the results were published as a pamphlet, "A Practical Evaluation of Railroad Motive Power," by Paul Kiefer: available somewhere on the web. Very, very, close, but maybe some indications that the diesels w...

Dear Pneudyne-- Thank you for these. I've been either busy or distracted, and haven't had time to read all you have posted, but I will (and will comment if I think I have anything to say). --- I see you now have access to "Railway Mechanical Engineer." On another topic we have discussed --...

Thank you! (Again!) Thinking about it: will respond in due course. The 7 inch mud ring from the Norfolk & Western is what I remember (from wherever I read it). It's remarkable, since these locomotives (I'm pretty sure) also had nine-foot-wide grates. (The J boiler was similar in size to the ATSF...

Oops! I meant to post this to the PRR forum, and just noticed that it is in PC. Can the moderator move it? I suspect people who go to the PRR forum would be more likely to be interested in steam than people who go to the PC forum! (I've been thinking about the S-2, trying to look up some things, and...

I remember a photo in "Trains" (most likely in the 1970s) of a Souther Pacific SD45 and F7 in m.u.: it happened at least once. (Don't know abut Santa Fe). More recently (1990s? 2000s?) "Railfan and Railroad" had a three-part (I think) article on the SD45: some railroads (I think ...

Thinking abut some late steam locomotive designs, a couple of questions occurred to me: (i) About the sides of the firebox. There is water between the inner firebox (the metal compartment containing the fire) and the outer shell of the boiler. With wide fireboxes (various late big steam locomotives ...

The experimental steam turbine locomotive, Class S-2, number 6200, was a 6-8-6. Various writers say it was originally planned as a 4-8-4, but because of the war-time unavailability of light-weight metal (nickel steel for boiler? aluminum for cab and boiler cladding?) the design got too heavy and it ...

On, or at least tangential to, the topic of BIG GEVO power... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Multi-Mission_Vessel This is an article about a proposed (maybe by now under construction) class of ships, to be used for various purposes (disaster relief, for example) as needed, but prima...