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Discussion relating to the PRR, up to 1968. Visit the PRR Technical & Historical Society for more information.
 #1564952  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?
 #1565148  by urr304
 
I will have to dig up some book, but I believe 'Big Liz' from the late 1910's was actually intent to develop electric traction for over the 'Hill' west of Altoona. Think electrification on N&W, Virginian, Great Northern and Milwaukee Road. Electrification outside of what is now known as the NEC and out to Harrisburg [no 'h'] and with wires on the Port Deposit line and the Columbia line seem to have been enough. They never did wire the Northern Central line up from Baltimore and that was route of Wahington trains to the west and was only dropped as a through route after Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

'BIg Liz' if I recall would pull drawbars/couplers if not handled carefully.

I think that if they had wired up the Middle Division the PRR would have entered bankruptcy in 1940s.
 #1565249  by Allen Hazen
 
Big Liz was of an earlier generation of technology: the projects I remembered were from (assuming the DD-2 was a test for their technology) no earlier than 1938.
Big Liz had synchronous AC motors, meaning that the efficient motor speed was dependent on the frequency of the current fed to them. That's fine nowadays: I think modern AC-motored diesels have motors of roughly that type. But to use them effectively you need the solid-state electrical equipment that allows computer-controlled invertors to provide variable frequency AC to the motors. Big Liz, in contrast, could operate efficiently at only two speeds (some way of reconnecting the wires allowed the EFFECT of doubling the frequency). This is obviously undesirable on a mixed traffic railroad (though it might be acceptable on a single-purpose railroad with only one sort of train: something like a dedicated mineral railway on which almost all trains are unit trains from a mining area to a port). So later PRR electric locomotives -- including the famous ones like the P5a and the GG-1, and also the unbuilt types I was curious about -- had very different motor technology.
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PRR, from early in the 20th Century to some time after WW II ***wanted*** to electrify the main line out to Pittsburgh. Early on they were optimistic about their chances, so they built Big Liz to experiment with a locomotive suitable to crossing the mountains, even though at that time they only had a small electrified district around Philadelphia to test it in. Later on, it would seem, the PRR's economic position worsened: in the 1930s they were only able to electrify as far as Harrisburg (even using depression-era "stimulus" funding from the feds), though they continued, for a while longer, to have hopes: hence the thinking about a new generation of powerful electrics to succeed the GG-1.
 #1570303  by djlivus
 
Allen Hazen wrote: Wed Mar 03, 2021 9:57 pm 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.
--
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?
Hello. I found some data on an article archived on a site like academia.edu. But no photos. I saved the article as image and I will post it when I get to my office. Tuesday. Bassicaly they said that from 1943 to early 50s PRR had more projects of high power electric locomotives including a GG1 style 7500 HP 2-C-C-2 locomotive and a 10000 hp 2-D-D-2 locomotive
 #1570414  by John_Perkowski
 
I think the last 75 years of electric locomotive design has given the world more power in less weight. On my last trip to Europe, I saw both B-B and C-C designs handling some heavy loads at speed.

Loewy’s design was beautiful, and it’s pretty darn safe for the crew, but we don’t need a crapton of pilot and driving wheels anymore.
 #1570495  by djlivus
 
So: question. Does anybody know more about these projects for very big and very powerful PRR electric locomotives?
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Some info from an rail magazine
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Last edited by djlivus on Tue May 04, 2021 9:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
 #1570915  by Allen Hazen
 
Hi again! Pressures of work have kept me away from Railroad.net for a while...
Thanks John Perkowski and djlivus for your contributions!

John-- Yes, wheel arrangements like that of the GG-1 are obsolete. I'm not entirely sure how this came about: MAYBE engineers learned more about truck dynamics and learned how to design stable trucks (trucks that didn't have "hunting" problems) by the 1950s, whereas earlier designers went with steam-locomotive designs with guiding axles.
(Note that the first experimental electric locomotives on both the New Haven and the PRR had trolley-car inspired BB running gear: I think I have read that at least the PRR found the ride of such units was poor, and switched to steam-locomotive-inspired designs like the DD-1 in response. And that some early electric locomotives -- New Haven ?? EF-1 ?? and the New York Central S-types -- had additional guiding axles installed after their initial introduction. On the other hand, by about 1950... both GE's and Westinghouse's experimental electric types for the PRR had diesel-style trucks with no guiding axles.

djlivus-- I'll try to make some comments on the very interesting things you have linked soon. (The Westinghouse -- WEMCO -- booklet is an amazing document!) The article you have posted excerpts from was in, I think, "Railroad History", the magazine put out by the R&LHS. Can you give the date? I have found that JSTOR (an organization started to produce e-copies of academic journals, and whose e-editions of journals are available through many university libraries) has a significant run of "Railroad History" up: starting in 1972, but not (this is fairly standard with JSTOR) including the most recent few years.
 #1571049  by Allen Hazen
 
djlivus--
Thanks for the reference and the further links!
The discussion you linked to with further information has a letter from Richard Leonard, the man whose website the Westinghouse booklet is on: he thinks it might have been printed for distribution at the Chicago Railroad Fair in 1948-1949. Westinghouse's artists weren't constrained to use only their employer's designs: there are a number of Alco-GE diesels sketched in the margins!
-- The B-B-B-B+B-B-B-B monster looks as if it had the running gear of two copies of Westinghouse's GTEL prototype on span bolsters.
-- The 4-8-4 version of the direct-drive steam turbine (that someone in the discussion commented on) ... might even have been the original idea! PRR started thinking about a turbine 4-8-4, but went to 3-axle trucks because (under wartime conditions: the locomotive was built during WW II) lightweight alloys weren't available, so the design was going to be heavier than originally planned or feasible on a 4-8-4. (But I think -- looking at grate area -- they may have decided to make use of the extra axles to enlarge the boiler: it may be that the as-built version would have been too heavy for a 4-8-4 even with peace-time alloy availability.)
-- And I was glad to see that someone had looked into it and decided that a GG-1's electric motors could be operated on 600V DC: it's long been one of my fantasies to see a GG-1 operating at some trolley museum!