Where is the missing S160?

Yep, that loos like the ones. I shipped them but they were exported on via Ian Riley, although it was only a paper export, if you see what I mean. That's great to see them working.

Only I sent them in the around 97/98.

 

Concerning S160 ex-Alaska Railroad #557/ex-USATC 3523/Baldwin Locomotive Works builder's number 70480, built in 1944.

Our overhaul is making slow, steady progress. This summer the new fire box was fitted, all seams received the initial welding passes, and it was riveted to the mud ring. We have started to install sockets for the 400 new flexible stays that will replace rigid stays.

We have temporarily moved to some lower cost work and have been working on the tender. We obtained parts for the engine to tender buffer from another S160, USATC 2627, Alaska Railroad 556 courtesy of the Municipality of Anchorage. The replacement receiver for the buffer was fabricated by our volunteers. The original buffer had been removed from the tender when the tender was converted for use with a steam crane. The tender water tank has been cleaned to bare metal, inside and out. Several baffles were replace, but the basic tank was in good shape. The entire inside has been coated and the outside painted. The frame has been cleaned to bare metal and painted. Truck/boogie frames have been modified for use with roller bearings and the proper adapters were obtained. You can check the progress at the Facebook and web pages below.

Now for a question - The round builder's/maker's plate from Baldwin Locomotive Works was removed in about 1970 in Anchorage before the locomotive went to the museum in Moses Lake, Washington. We haven't had any luck finding it or the plates from any of the other 11 BLW S160s that operated in Alaska. We have someone working on the artwork for a 3d printed pattern so we can cast a replacement. We think his drawing is pretty faithful to the original, but don't have an example to verify it against nor a high quality photo to reference. We have a photo of the plate for USATC 6046 (attached), but I was told that it is a reproduction. Does anyone have a good photo of an S160 builder's plate that is known to be of the original article? The 1944 plate for our locomotive should have been cast iron and nine inches in diameter.

PolSteam - you mentioned that you might have a source for drawings of the internal parts for the injectors (in Polish). Is there a chance of getting copies of that information?

Thanks,
Dick Morris
Engine 557 Restoration Company
557.alaskarails.org
Facebook "557 Restoration Company"

 

PM sent

 

Great Thread chaps! Almost feel like that Vulcan Consolidation boiler deserves a little more recognition! Got to be better than most 'new builds' going on?

 

Looking online it is very hard to find information about the class or preserved examples, I find Great Britain is defiantly the best for preserving locomotives and having information about those locomotives re books and online. One website tries to identify all locomotives in the world www.steamlocomotive.info however most articles are out of date due to sheer numbers and locations of locomotives. It has identified 2364 as 411.337 or in Hungary 411.09.65, the website also includes a picture of the frames it believe are the locomotive. http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=27903 Also has anybody considered the fact that 2364 and Tr 203-192 could be the same locomotive but different numbers. On the website it also identifies another boiler in Hungary 1786 / 411.005 http://www.steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive.cfm?Display=20196 Could that have been imported without anybody knowing.

On another note 3278 was imported to Britain from Greece were any other locomotives imported as 6 remain with 532 / 3524 and 584 / 3420 are missing Greece. However Greek locomotives are another mystery in itself as numerous locomotives have been removed from Thessaloniki over the years with there whereabouts unknown.

Hopeful the information above helps to find the missing locomotive if it still exists.

 

I'm making several posts about S160 minutia. There is a lot of lore about this class of locomotive, some of it is even true. Some just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. This seems to be the best place to reach those who might have an interest. Any informed conversation is welcome.

As best as I can tell, the "S" designations for USATC locomotives were created by Tourrett and he apparently derived them from ALCO class designations for some of the USATC locomotives. I follow suite in using the "S160" designation because that's what everyone else calls them, even though the designation apparently wasn't used by USATC when the locomotives were being built and deployed.

I've spent hundreds of hours researching the S160 as part of our restoration of Alaska Railroad 557, including looking at a lot of original documents. The closest original reference to "S160" that I have found during the 1940s was an ALCO builder's card for USATC 1624 (posted below), which identifies its class as "280 S 161." I have found nothing in the BLW or Lima technical documents (we have about 80% of the drawings) nor in minutes of several meetings attended by Major Marsh and representatives of the three builders where design decisions were made. Baldwin's class designation, 280 19S, was widely used in their card index (drawing index), technical drawings, specifications, and stamped on many parts such the frames, cab, rods, and valve gear components. I haven't found a class number in the Lima materials, including the cover of the card index which identifies them as them with "United States War Department," "2-8-0," order number, and builder's numbers.

Is anyone aware of a use of the S160 designation, especially for the entire class and not just those manufactured by ALCO, that dates to the period the locomotives were being build and delivered?

 

A claim often made is that the S160 was based on a late 1930s USATC 2-8-0 design. Other than wheel arrangement, there is little in common between the eight USATC 2-8-0s with 50" drivers and the S160s. Only eight of these locomotives were built, all by Lima. Four came to the Alaska Railroad before the ARR received their first S160, apparently new from the factory. Two more came the Alaska Railroad as WWII surplus. Both had operated previously on the Claiborne-Polk military training railroad in Louisiana. I recently wrote about the earlier USATC 2-80 on our Facebook page, "557 Restoration Company."

The S160s are more closely associated with a USATC 2-8-2 intended for service in Egypt and the Middle East. The 2-8-2 order was cancelled before all the locomotives were completed. Some parts were transferred for use on S160s, some returned to the manufacture, and some were scrapped. A few S160 drawings carry a note “282 21S,” the Baldwin class for the USATC 2-8-2.

 

A common claim is that a major deficiency of the S160s was that the driver journal bearings used grease instead of oil, resulting in many failures. I can’t prove that none of the S160s had grease lubrication to the journals, but all the documents that I have found clearly describe a lubrication system in which the journals were lubricated by oil from a lubricator. Engineering drawings, locomotive bills of materials, specifications, and Baldwin’s house magazine, “Baldwin Locomotives,” for December, 1942, all indicate that the main journals were oil lubricated and fitted with two Nathan DV4 lubricators. According to the article, the lubricators fed steam chests, cylinder barrels, guides, engine truck boxes, and driver boxes. A drawings of the lubrication system show that the left side lubricator had eight feeds, each feeding one driver journal. Another drawing shows a six feed right side lubricator which fed the valve, cylinder, and guide on both sides. Specifications for the Alaska Railroad variation of the S160 dated September 1, 1943, show that the left lubricator fed each of the driver journals and the right lubricator lubricated the valve and steam cylinders, guides, and engine truck.

One deviation from typical US practice of the time was that the rod bearings were fitted with oil cups and were oil lubricated. (The Alaska Railroad modified their S160s with Alemite grease fittings on the rods.)

Do any of the S160 experts know if the second lubricator was omitted on early S160 production? Are there any photos that show a lubricator missing from one side?

 

Hi Dick, that is an interesting observation. The excellent Locomotives of the LNER (Part 6B), one of whose few failings is not to provide any source references, notes (p.99) "The axle journals were .... lubricated by grease lubricators which proved to be inadequate and led to frequent overheated axleboxes." and (p.100) "A Nathan DV-4 eight-feed mechanical lubricator was mounted on the right-hand rear steam chest extension [sic - I would term it the valve crosshead guide casting] to feed oil to the valves and cylinders. A similar lubricator was mounted on the opposite side of the engine for the guide bars, valve rod crosshead guides and coupled horn wedges." Ignoring the feed to the boxes, this seems to be the opposite of what you note but without references it is difficult to form any view of the veracity of the information in the book. There are some comments in the section in the book on these locos which are not correct e.g. the stop valve handwheel rod to the water gauge led down from the upper water gauge valve, not down from the manifold.

"Over Here" has a number of footplate reminiscences but none appear to mention grease lubrication - the main complaint is the poor brake and a few other niggles. One would have thought that grease lubrication entailed having some additional kit/grease guns at depots as I think grease lubrication was unusual in the UK.

Next time I am at York, I will look more closely at this aspect in the papers there.
Kind regards
Robin

 

The parts were supposed to interchange between manufactures. There were a few variations, such as modifications to US standards (bell, knuckle couplers, power reverse, generator and lighting, and a higher stack) for seven purchased new by the Alaska Railroad and apparently a couple that went to Ft. Eustis. Our Baldwin-built example used a number of parts made to Baldwin drawings instead of the standard ALCO drawings, but it appears that they would still interchange with the standard design.

My best guesses is that there was either a design change at some point that would affect the lubrication for locomotives built by all three builders, or they always had oil lubricated driver journals and somehow the story about grease lubricated journals arose and eventually was accepted as true.

A story that is easier to debunk is that the boilers were sub standard, particularly the fire box or stays. Boilers from all three manufactures were built to the same drawings through at least 1944. The specifications say that boiler design was built to the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) boiler code except that the shell had a safety factor of 4. No other exceptions to the code are identified. (I'm not sure what the accepted safety factor was in 1942-1944, but from a search of the Internet it appears that it may have been 5, later dropped to 4, and still later to 3.5.)

 

An article in "Trains" magazine, December, 1964, was written by the Col. Howard Hill, designer of the USATC standard gauge 2-8-2 and 0-6-0 side tanker. The author states that the S160 axle boxes were grease lubricated. It's an interesting article, but it is obvious that the author had an ax to grind. (The back story is that the 2-8-2 he designed was cancelled in mid-production. The S160 was the locomotive that replaced it. Some parts were used on the S160s, some returned to vendors, and some scrapped.) He makes a number of unflattering remarks about the S160 design and an unnamed major who is obviously Major Marsh, the S160 project manager.) That 16-page article is too long to post here, but if someone really has to have a copy I can make it available.

If there is an interest I can post the four-page article about the "new" S160 from the December, 1942, "Baldwin Locomotives" magazine.

 

It was the ex mid haunts one 3278?

 

An update to posts I made a couple years ago -

I have been researching USATC Consolidations for over six years. As I said in my earlier posts, I had become convince that "S-160" wasn't a valid designation for the design as it was not used on any documentation that I had found. Yesterday, I found a definitive source that used the S-160 designation. The image comes from a nine-page specification for the locomotive which was prepared by ALCO. It clearly says that they identified the "locomotive type" as "280-S-160." A similar specification from Baldwin gives their class as "280 19 S." No designation is given on the Lima specification. S-160 was only used by ALCO, one of the three major locomotive builders that built this design. I don't know why there is a conflict between this document and the one posted earlier that gives 280 S 161 as the class. They were prepared within about five months of each other.

Concerning the overhaul for a return to operation of USATC 3523/Alaska Railroad 557 -

We continue to make good progress on the overhaul. The rigid stays have been installed and our boiler specialist will make a couple of trips to Alaska from the "Lower 48" states to oversee installation of the newly upgraded flexible stays and some other work on finishing the boiler. Because of the U.S. boiler regulations, the tube and flue installation will be held until one of the last things in the overhaul. When we start installing them the clock starts ticking on the next major boiler inspection. New wheels, axles, and roller bearings have been installed on the tender trucks/boogies so we can finish the tender. See Facebook "557 Restoration Company" and 557.alaskarails.org for other updates.

 

The british WD2-8-0 were not balanced for reprocitary forces and that made them totally unfit to run more than 25 mph.
A single WD 2-8-0 was rebalanced to 40% and was very much nicer at speed but not copied.
Some managers wanted to build new i think.
Have You found the balancing percent for the s160 in Your study?
Zero recpr balance is kind to track and very unkind to wagons and crew.

 

I know where that Spec came from. I was interested in the 557 update for January wherein it says that the arch tubes have been removed, as they have been redundant since conversion to oil firing in 1954. That rather accords with Bruce's characterisation of circulating devices as something to support the brick arch rather than having much benefit for boiler performance.

 

And thank you for that. Every time I dig into my several foot tall virtual stack of S-160 information I learn something new.

We recently learned that GSMR 1702/USATC 1702, which was recently returned to operation, is also an oil burner and has transverse arch tubes fitted into the firebox. There is an image at https://restoring1702.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/mg_0898.jpg?w=272&h=408

 

There 3x surviving oil burners in Greece, all sadly stored at present.

 

Mr Morris has kindly sent me balancing details and they were 41% balanced or like 8Fs more or less.
If only they had been tested by the BR mobile testing squad and compared to 8F.
Round top wide firebox versus narrow Belpaire.
Invaluable information for all mankind.
Thank You Dick for numbers and I am glad that I did not earn my living calculating locomotive balance in 1942.