Challenge from another hobby

[WestySteve]

Hey guys,

I collect currency. I "borrowed" this beautiful picture from ebay...its such a great picture I used it as my screen saver on my computer. It is the back of a Series 1914 U.S. $20 bill. I'm captivated by the train, and I was staring at the detail of it, and I started wondering whether it was a "real" locomotive, inspired by a real locomotive, or a fantasy drawing. As a sometime model railroader (n-scale), I realized that some R.R. buffs might be able to identify it. So my question is...can you? Since the picture was on the back of a 1914 $20 bill, this locomotive likely already existed in 1913 (i.e., it wasn't a post 1914 model). I see it has a No. 20 and a "P.R." on the side. That could be fantasy info on an otherwise real train so as not to show any kind of partiality to any one railroad company. Can you identify it? I plan to share your responses with a currency collector forum...they'll be very interested in what you find. See below:

Steve

Moderator's Note: I have changed the image to only show the locomotive and its trailing cars. I cannot risk Jeff's and the site owners use of the domain with actual currency elements being shown. Sorry. JWP

[Allen Hazen]

Nice image! Showing, as icons of the nation's economic strength, the most modern examples of rail, highway, and air transport!
Is it a Federal Reserve Note, and could the lettering on the tender be "FR"?
The engine is a Pacific (4-6-2) type, and by 1913 a fair number of railroads had passenger locomotives of that type. It's not the biggest Pacific of the time (the boiler isn't as fat as on a few of the heaviest), but that leaves a lot of possibilities. I think it is common for artists preparing artwork like this to have a photo in front of them, so very likely it is "modified" from a particular actual locomotive. I suspect the "20" on the number-plate is the artist's addition (it's on a $20, after all!). There appear to be decorative bands around the steam-dome and sand-box (the two "bell-jar" shaped things on the top of the boiler behind the smokestack): this might help somebody identify it, or at least narrow down the range of possibilities.

[John_Perkowski]

Several Pacific locomotives. Please click to view if in URL format:

From a current tourist road You might want to open this one in a separate window and compare them side by each.

A Baldwin!

This one was built by ALCO for the Central South African Railroad:


Finally, my personal favorite Pacific, albeit heavier than what the artwork shows, ATSF 3415:

[WestySteve]

Oh my gosh! Thats so obvious now with the "20" and the "FR". How did I not figure that out!

Thought you might like to see us currency collectors puzzling over this mystery. There is also the mystery of the train on the back of the $50 too.

Here's a link to the currency site.

http://forums.collectors.com/messagevie ... TARTPAGE=1

or: http://forums.collectors.com/messagevie ... TARTPAGE=1

We'll be reading you here and responding there. Thanks for your help!

Steve

[Allen Hazen]

Steam locomotive technology was advancing very quickly in the early 20th Century! The $50 bill is apparently only a few years older than the $20, but the locomotive is clearly a less "modern" design. Easiest thing to note: look at the driving cylinders at the front. In the locomotive on the $20, these have a second pair of smaller cylinders on top of them: these are for the valves controlling steam admission to and exhaust from the big cylinders that turn the wheels. In the locomotive on the $50, there are boxes on top of the cylinders instead: this is for an older type of steam valve (technospeak: slide valves instead of the newer piston valves), used with lower steam pressures and temperatures.

As for identity... The locomotive on the $50 looks as if it has only four pairs of wheels (as opposed to the six pairs on a 4-6-2). This might be artistic license (hard to show a large number of wheels clearly if you are going to have the train angled in a way that will make the image fit the space available), but might mean that it is a 2-6-0 ("Mogul") type or a (very rare!) 2-4-2 ("Columbia") type. (Moguls were more often used as freight engines than on passenger trains; only a small number of 2-4-2 were ever built for main-line service.)

I'll look at some of my books and see if they give me any ideas about possible identities for these locomotives.

[Allen Hazen]

Sorry, I'm stumped: hope that one of your currency friends can find a reference in the printing bureau's records!

W.r.t. the train on the $50. Sort of hard to tell, but I think the train the engine is pulling is a passenger train: there isn't much detail on the one car shown behind the coal tender, but in profile it looks more like a coach than a box car. The locomotive looks to me like a 2-4-2 type (two relatively small wheels just behind the cow-catcher, four big driving wheels, and two somewhat smaller wheels at the rear, underneath the cab). This was a rare type, built only in the 1890s, but would have been used on passenger trains. (It was rare because trains were getting heavier and faster, and after 1900 most new locomotives were of bigger types, like the 4-6-2 on the $20.) The Chicago and Northwestern Railway (now merged with the Union Pacific, but if you talk to Chicago natives they will probably still call the station commuter trains to the north and west leave from "Northwestern Station") apparently had one of the bigger fleets of this type, but the only photo I have of a C&NW 2-4-2 differs in lots of details. ... In detail, the locomotive on the bill looks a bit too modern: details suggest something new in the first decade of the 20th C. I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that there was some artistic licence: details to suggest a modern, state-of-the-art, locomotive of the first decade of the 20th C, but using the older, shorter, wheel arrangement so as to compress it into the space the composition called for.

W.r.t. the one on the $20 bill. Details look state of the art for when it was printed, but virtually every major and many minor railroads got 4-6-2 locomotives for their passenger trains. (My top-of-the-head guess is that 4-6-2 locomotives were built for something over 200 U.S. railroad companies.) It doesn't belong to the Pennsylvania Railroad: even their first 4-6-2 had fatter boilers (and so proportionally smaller domes on the top of the boiler) than the one depicted. Unfortunately, this doesn't tell us much: The Pennsylvania had heavy-duty track, so its steam locomotives tended to be heavier (and so have fatter boilers) than those on most other railroads.

Sorry not to be able to be more informative. But thank you for thinking of us!

---

Not actual currency, but until quite recent years share certificates for many companies were elegantly engraved (like bank notes, but bigger), with pictures showing (sometimes more or less realistically, sometimes in allegorical ways) the industry the company was involved in. I'd bet many old railroad company stock certificates have train pictures, and given the number of corporate bankruptcies the railroad industry has suffered a lot of old stock certificates are in the collectibles market.

[WestySteve]

Thanks so much for your responses. This was very interesting and I won't look at those notes the same way again.

Regards,

Steve

[MEC407]

I'd bet many old railroad company stock certificates have train pictures...

Yes, and some of them are quite beautiful! http://www.oldwesthistorystore.com/railroad_page.htm