PRR T1 Newbuild Project

OMG!!! Now that is a very ambitious project and I sincerely hope that it could be viable and achievable as opposed to one of the many Facebook Fabrications that we are only too familiar with.

What a machine the T1 was!! Of all of the large US engines, it is sad that one of these spectacular locomotives was never saved, if only just to gawp at in a museum.

Interesting that the successful building of Tornado is name-checked as an inspiration.

I will watch with interest.

Cheers

Alan

 

I see they're promoting the old "achieved 140 mph" myth again.

 

So that's two US projects going for the record now. I wish them well, but I'll eat my overalls if either of them claim the world record. Does the States even possess a stretch of track capable of hosting such a bid?

 

A company in the U.S. that could produce a cast bed? I doubt there is a company in the world that has the capacity and skills base to achieve this. If this particular pie is ever going to fly they may have to build their frame bed by means of the method proposed by Chapelon.

 

These locomotives along with the NYC Niagaras are one of the world's great missing steam loco's and what a sight it would be to be able to get on a big metal bird and go see one!

But I do have to agree with 242A1 that there is probably not a foundry in the world that could make a cast bed of this size, certainly in the way that they were originally made, after all there were only an infinitely small number of such foundries in the days when they were doing it in earnest. As I understand it they were actually produced solely by making sand cores which were all locked together to make the mould in specially constructed pits in the foundry floor - no physical pattern as such. Setting aside the absence of the pit, the main resource issue would be people based. Given that it took quite a number of years for the American foundry industry to build up to an ability to make such monster castings, this not only took a great deal of effort to build the facilities, it also took a lot of time and experience to build up the knowledge to enable such castings to be planned and executed. I have always wondered how many castings for the beds of these engines were made before they got a usable casting, given of course that weld repairs could and would be used to remedy defects. Passing over finding enough patternmakers who were able to work out how to configure all of the coreboxes, there are the subjective decisions to be made of where to place feeders, runners and risers and where the casting is likely to shrink and what is to be done to mitigate such shrinkage. The ability to make such subjective decisions usually only comes after years of experience and then not to many! As an engineer I would love to believe that somewhere in the world there still exists a foundry master capable of getting one of these made, although I seriously doubt it. But please I shall not be the least disappointed or put out if someone somewhere proves me wrong.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the engine beds of these loco's were, at around 55 tons the largest castings ever made for a steam loco and at that sort of weight when you have added all the runners, risers and feeders, You are probably looking for a foundry which is capable of melting and pouring nearly 100 tons of molten steel at one go, and that is sure going to run up one hell of an electricity bill. So there is another challenge for locating the necessary resources.

Around 20 years ago, when William Cooks at Burton were looking at casting frame stretchers for the A1, I was jointly involved with Geoff Duckett from Cooks in persuading their production people to have a go at producing frame stretchers from polystyrene castings. The production guys were a bit sceptical as they had done such castings some time before but had ceased for various reasons and consequently were unsure of the available skill base for moulding and so on. I had first come across poly patterns back in the 60's when Pressed Steel were producing very large complicated castings for press tool dies by such means, and this had actually revolutionised press tool production. As an aside this practice started with Pressed Steel at Swindon and given a lot of similarities to loco frame castings I have often wondered if there was any influence brought to bear on this idea by refugees from the loco works who had gone over to Pressed Steel in the 50's. Anyway, back to the story, had a go at several poly patterns made by a chap called Ernie Coxhill in Birmingham, and ended up very pleasantly surprised by the results, so quite a few more found their way into the A1 frames when we were building it at Tyseley in the mid 90's. Hopefully you will see that there is nothing new or revolutionary about using poly patterns, it is just that it has taken a little bit of growing and developing alongside of our little cottage industry's growing demand for new or replacement parts of steadily increasing dimensions such as the Patriot cylinders etc. I would suggest that it will not need an awful lot more thought to actually manufacture one of these frames from a number of sections produced with poly patterns and assembled by welding. The real exercise for the old grey matter will be in deciding where the construction joints are to be placed and what precautions such as assembling in a distorted condition are taken in order to get the weld shrinkage to straighten it out, along with other tricks of the fabricator.

I have yet to read the Chapelon theories which 242A1 mentions, but I am sure that somewhere there are some suitable people and suitable resources to make this happen. As usual in our business, it is only a matter of finding them. Virtually everything is still possible, but as always the only proviso is that you do have to find the money to pay for it - if you have enough cash you can do anything.

Whatever, I hope that this project is truly serious and that they find the money to make it happen. I only hope that I last long enough to see it.

Regards
Bob

 

Further to the debated on the cast bed, I knew I'd read something on the T1 website somewhere, and now I've found it, in the costings section .......

 

The A1 is referenced again in another page:

 

I wouldn't; I would add another coupled wheelset and call it a Niagara!

Bob

PS Many of the drawings exist.

 

140km/h? It will dispel the myth forever, hopefully, as the generic cams meet their maker. Unless they fit it with a turbine...but that's cheating.