Newest Additions to Locomotive Roster ...


Interesting. No two Baldwins are exactly alike. We had two AS-616 units for use on the hump at Edgemoor during the early Penn Central era. These were ex PRR refugees from Pittsburgh. PRRs were equipped with 6 traction motors, while similar AS-16s on the Reading and PRSL had four wheel trucks and 4 motors. I believe the MILW unit you pictured had four motors and two idler axles. All were rated at 1600 hp. Baldwins primarily used Westinghouse traction motors, which enabled them to out pull Alco and EMD power of similar rating. That's why they were found in coal country.

BTW, nice photos of the prototype and model. My grandfather worked for Baldwin, I still have his 30 year service pin.

Boris
Not quite. AS416's were the ones with idler axles in the middle of each truck. The AS616 has all powered axles. What's really interesting according to my reading is that the AS616 had an outstanding tractive effort for their size, so I guess mine doesn't look all that out of place in the mountains.
 
This is Milwaukee Road Baldwin AS616 #567 from Bowser.

http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/index.php?attachments/milw567nb5-jpg.30762/
http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/forum/index.php?attachments/3457-1228445836-jpg.30763/

I'm not really a Baldwin fan. My favorites have always been EMD's, but this loco struck me as interesting because of its similarity to SD7's and 9's, which I adore.
That's truly a fine-looking model! I, too, have an affinity for SD7/9 locos: a LifeLike P2K SD7 that works my main yard, and another SD7 & SD9 painted for my private road; in fact my current 'latest roster addition' is a Walthers sound-equipped SD9 being painted in the B&O's pre-Chessie dark blue scheme. [I can't post any images of it yet because I'm waiting to receive a detail part for it that I ordered online.] I know it is purely a coincidence that the number on your model is the cubic-inch displacement of the prime mover that was used in all EMD first-generation locos from the FT thru the GP35.
 
I don't think Baldwin management was able to adopt the "production" model. They got stuck into the custom order mentality.

Baldwin power had QC issues. They had auxiliary electrical issues and leaked water like a sieve. The Pneumatic throttle system prevented Multiple Unit operation with other power until very late in the production. Part of this was due to "customization", and partially to engineering shortcomings. One thig a Baldwin could do was pull. I witnessed a 600 HP Baldwin DS 4-4-600 handle a coal train from the B&O interchange at West Yard in Wilmington, DE to the DP&L plant at Edgemoor, that required two EMD 1200HP SWs, after the EMDs replaced the Baldwins.

Major problem with the Baldwin was the cost to operate and maintain. Their niche was heavy switching and transfer units, but that was insufficient to keep the order books filled.

Boris
 
I witnessed a 600 HP Baldwin DS 4-4-600 handle a coal train from the B&O interchange at West Yard in Wilmington, DE to the DP&L plant at Edgemoor, that required two EMD 1200HP SWs, after the EMDs replaced the Baldwins.
There seems to be a modern domestic equivalent for that... Vacuum cleaners. What I could get cleaned and the dirt I could get out of carpet back in the '70's with a 500watt, easy to empty machine, now takes an at least 2000watt one with the added "advantage" of covering me with dust on emptying.
 
There seems to be a modern domestic equivalent for that... Vacuum cleaners. What I could get cleaned and the dirt I could get out of carpet back in the '70's with a 500watt, easy to empty machine, now takes an at least 2000watt one with the added "advantage" of covering me with dust on emptying.
I never understood them trying to rate vacuums by the AMPS. 10 Amps, 12 Amps, 15 Amps. Shoot, I can make a 20 Amp model by throwing a resistor into an 8 Amp unit! Point is the power of a vacuum or HP of a locomotive in this case is not directly proportional to how much work it can actually do. Of course I've always wondered why it took them so long to use AC motors. Its not like Tesla didn't design such a beast back in the 1920s. Of course his was wireless but still.

Then... I now refuse to buy a bag less vacuum sweeper. They never seem to be "easy" to dump and they (even a Dyson that I have) eventually seem to end up throwing more dust into the air then they suck up. Why vacuum it all up if one is just going to dump it all back out into the atmosphere while emptying the bin. We make the children go outside and empty it straight into the dumpster.
 
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No sooner is the ink dry on the page when another new locomotive arrives. This time I got the AB set, post war configuration, in normal Santa Fe signal red. The #3 spot. Not much else to say about the history that hasn't already been said. The "A" unit as Santa Fe called them, is unpowered. Very light, but has power pick up. One can see the glowing LED lamp on the end sil. Santa Fe was "L" for lead and "A" for the B unit. Oh yeah, one more thing when BLI first announced these they were supposed to have smoke units. Don't know why they changed their mind.

E1 number 3.jpg
 
Personally I'm glad they left them out. Our club forbids their use. I don't want a flame war here, this is strictly my opinion, but smoke effects are a toy like feature, and the film the smoke leaves on things is enough reason to avoid them all by itself.
 
Personally I'm glad they left them out. Our club forbids their use. I don't want a flame war here, this is strictly my opinion, but smoke effects are a toy like feature, and the film the smoke leaves on things is enough reason to avoid them all by itself.
Also they should beltch black smoke instead of white.
 
[Ok, I'll try this again. The photo I posted yesterday was apparently too small and the forum software tried to compensate by digitally enlarging the pixels to make it fill the page, causing it to appear out of focus. So I decided to delete the post until I could figure out a way to make the photo appear to way it was supposed to. I added some white space to the .jpg file to make it occupy the entire width of the message frame, and that seems to have done the trick.]

Here is the loco I've been working on for the past couple weeks, a B&O SD9 used for yard service. As many of you know, SD7's and 9's came with not one regular size, but two half-sized fuel tanks. This enabled some roads - including the B&O and the Milwaukee Road - to eliminate one of the tanks to make the loco usable on branch lines with lighter-weight track. All of the B&O's dynamic brake-equipped SD9's had only one fuel tank. But luckily for me, #1838 had sheet metal plating installed over the opening with the same contours as a fuel tank, making it possible for me to model it without disassembling the chassis and milling the frame. That is why the "fuel tank" closest to the cab looks a bit weird.

BnO_1838_ShortHoodFwd.jpg


This is actually a rear view since the B&O ran their early SD units long hood forward, but the long hood view didn't clearly show the road number so I used this one instead.
 
Personally, I do not like smoke emitting locomotives, in my basement. Out in the real world, it was a necessary evil, although some maintenance on the injectors would have helped.

PRR, PC and Conrail also used SD9s for switching, especially in hump yards. We had one assigned to Bay View South End on the "ladder" job. Nice job Ken. Also nice passenger set Horseman.
 
PRR, PC and Conrail also used SD9s for switching, especially in hump yards. We had one assigned to Bay View South End on the "ladder" job. Nice job Ken. ...

Thanks Joe for the kind words! I'm going to start a separate thread on this project.

I also forgot to commend the Horseman on his fine-looking postwar Santa Fe E1 passenger set.:oops:
 
As many of you know, SD7's and 9's came with not one regular size, but two half-sized fuel tanks. This enabled some roads to eliminate one of the tanks to make the loco usable on branch lines with lighter-weight track.
I knew about the split tanks, but I did not know why. Seems like I've seen some railroads use the space for air tanks.

Neither did I realize the B&O was a long end forward railroad. How long did they continue that practice?
 
Neither did I realize the B&O was a long end forward railroad. How long did they continue that practice?
Probably orginated similarly to the NZR's fist diesel electric locomotive, the DE class (highly original thinking) which looked more like an American yard switcher, although used mostly for suburban passenger. The crews, coming directly from steam wth the Wab or Ab classes, felt very uncomfortable, having nothing much in front of them
1539124985335.png

Wab
1539125299525.png
 
... Neither did I realize the B&O was a long end forward railroad. How long did they continue that practice?
Until they got their first order of [low-nose] GP30's in the early 1960's. They continued running their original GP7/9 units [e.g., the ones not inherited from C&O] long hood forward until the last one was retired, sometime in the mid-1980's.

A bit of Chessie trivia: You can tell which way a Chessie hi-hood loco was built to run, by seeing which end the Chessie "cat" silhouette was painted on. They only painted the cat on the "forward" end.

Original B&O, long hood: http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/bo/bo6517aga.jpg
Original B&O, short hood: http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/bo/bo6518aga.jpg
Hand-me-down C&O, long hood: http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/bo/bo6669cbb.jpg
 
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A bit of Chessie trivia: You can tell which way a Chessie hi-hood loco was built to run, by seeing which end the Chessie "cat" silhouette was painted on. They only painted the cat on the "forward" end.

Never knew that, Ken. Makes sense when you think about it.

Boris
 
And I'll be the first. The latest addition to my roster is an EMC E1 in Santa Fe original sunset orange war bonnet. This model is built by Broadway Limited. It is the Paragon 3 so it automatically connects to the sub-woofer. Unfortunately my sound system isn't hooked up just yet so I've not gotten to hear that. I took it into the office to run it on their layout. It is slow. It creeps really nice but I sort of don't want a passenger locomotive that creeps clear up to 1/2 throttle. I'll have to go in and futz around with the CVs and speed curves to get it to behave more like one would expect a passenger loco to run. The detail is really good. This is the as delivered pre-war version. The prototypical units went through change in real life so the models come in pre-war and post-war versions.

View attachment 30578

Notice that even on the 28" radius curve the truck is really swinging out past the side of the loco. The headlight is too blue for a locomotive of this age.

Santa Fe ordered 10 more of the units after the first one (#2) proved that it could compete with existing locomotives' time schedules on the Super Chief. #2 was delivered in June of 1937. It was eventually traded in to EMD for an E8 #89L. The trucks were reused on that unit.

I couldn't very well have a complete set of Santa Fe locomotives without this unit. It was a land mark being the first production E unit from EMC. All others before the E1 were custom orders. B&O is the only other railroad that ordered the unit.

View attachment 30579

BTW I've been wanting a set of these for three years since they were first announced. I waited and waited for a sale. Finally got the B unit like that, but the sale for the "A"s never came. I saw the inventory drop and drop. Finally with basically no selection for road number I had to buy one at normal price. Had I the choice I would have chosen #7 instead of #2, because I have a blurred picture of it on the point of the El Capitan outside of Las Animas. It had to have been running over the century mark.
FWIW, I just noted BLI's website has a refurbished E1 #2L identical to this for what I believe is a good price. I suppose the shell could be re-numbered. Sure is a beautiful model, especially as you have it situated on your layout.

JimW
 
Walther's recently did a run of the Alco PA1s. It seems to have been a very quite run in that I don't remember much fanfare about it. I knew they had announced it over two? years ago, but I never actually heard the units had arrived. In passing, I just happen to noticed that Train World of NY had them on clearance. What the?! sort of marketing timeline is that. So I grabbed two of the last units they had at that price. Unfortunately only 1 road number available so now I have two #71s.

These appear to be the old Life-Like Proto-2000 tooling "upgraded" to 14:1 gears and now branded as Walther's "Mainline". Has sound and DCC. The sides are finished in the "real metal" stainless steel material. It looks really good but will not match any of the other PA or PB units that I currently own. If the body to frame connection is still the same I might just swap the chassis into some units that I already have that match.

I intend to use these in an ABBBA combination to pull my 19-24 car San Francisco Chief (#1 & 2), and in smaller configurations for the Fast Mail and Express (#7 & 8) , California Limited (#3 & 4), and the Grand Canyon (#123 & 124) trains. They will look very cool alongside the 4-8-4s they helped delegate to fast freight service.

The prototype Alco PA1 was released in 1946 response to the EMD E units, but found the bigger competitor to be the F3s. Despite the almost perfect match of the loco design to the Santa Fe red war bonnet paint scheme, a few mechanical issues made the Santa Fe mechanical department choose the Fs as the railroads preferred locomotive. Santa Fe was still the largest owner of the Burly Beast with a total of 28. Southern Pacific almost had as many but then also purchased PA2s becoming the largest owner of Alco PAs generally.

ALCO-pa1.JPG

Hmmm, fuzzy picture. Need some more f stop in there.
 



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