Weirdest Locomotive


JeffShultz said:
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the Hollman Horror was attempting to gain...
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Basically it was designed as a lure in a stock-market swindle.

It was built by the Holman Locomotive Company in 1887 in Philadelphia, and was at once ridiculed by everyone with the slightest knowledge of railways or mechanics. The thing was run for a few trips on a straight railroad in New Jersey, merely as a stimulant to stock sales.

As Angus Sinclair put in 1907:
"When we first heard of the Holman locomotive we supposed that it was the invention of some harmless crank who did not understand the elementary principles of mechanics, but we now believe that it has been, since its inception, an ostentatious machine designed to allure unwary capitalists into an investment which will be of the same real value as throwing gold coin over Niagara Falls."

It has only recently become clear that there were two Holman locomotives, and the whole business is still very murky. If the first Holman loco was built in 1887 for a stock-market swindle, it seems very strange that the crooks should be ordering another insane loco- with the same very distinctive features- only ten years later. Were they trying exactly the same scam again? If so they they must have thought investors had very short memories. Perhaps they were right.

It was built by Baldwin in 1897 for the Holman Locomotive Speeding Truck Company, no doubt for use in further stock-market scams. Presumably it was eventually returned to Baldwin, for it was later converted to a conventional 4-4-0 configuration and sold to the Kansas City and Northern Connecting Railroad, where it hopefully was able to live down its shameful past.
 
Phillip,
The Holman was indeed a stock scam although it apparently ran a few miles on straight track to impress investors. No one seems to understand how the inventor ever thought adding small wheels to larger wheels would improve the engine's performance. They had nice stock though:
holmanlocomotivevig.jpg
 
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It looks like the Iron Horse has been put on a treadmill! LOL. With MTH coming out with the Triplex in HO, I have no doubt they'll come out with this wacky locomotive! :) (Just kidding)
 
Weird is the word

brubakes said:
Your opinion, what is the weirdest locomotive you know about. Doesn't have to be one you have a model of, just a goofy loco. For whatever reason.
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Weird not ugly.....well maybe both. This is by far the weirdest locos.

They were never built...thank god!

First picture is the Baldwin Quadraplex. Baldwin 2-8-8-8-8-2

Even weirder, the 2-8-8-8-8-8-2 Baldwin Quintuplex proposal.

And now...are you ready?....a 2-10-10-10-10-10-2 Baldwin Quintuplex in action!
 
I wonder how much weirder these were in their day than DD-35's, DD-40's, and Centipedes were in our day? The steam locos never ran but their diesel counterparts were not very successful either. It seems that every generation likes to build monsters for the sake of building the biggest thing there is.
 
Kennedy,
That web site is hilarious. :) Some of those guys have way too much time on their hands. I wonder what an engineer would say about the span on that DDP-45?
 
We can all be very glad that these, uh, creations of theirs are only on paper and models, and not in real life! Although, I think that the Shay-geared handcar is an excelent idea, although a hand car can make it up steep grades by itself.

Phil
 
I kind of like the BL-2, ( I have at least 8 of them ) and the BQ23-7! ( Only have one of those. In the shop for a repower. )

Rotor
 
Boy, I forgot about that thing. I was a 20 and lived in Ohio when it ran and remember even then thinking what a hare-brained idea it was. The showed it on TV and the exhaust was so powerful that it blew pieces of ballast through house windows a quarter mile away. If you look at that first picture, there were actually people injured by the flying debris and it blew out almost every window of the coach standing on the side track. I think they ran it one more time over about ten miles of roadbed that had been sprayed with gunite to hold the ballast down but the noise complaints that came in from miles around pretty much put an end to that experiment. It did, however, go 184 mph, a speed record that still stand in the US.
 
What the heck was it? A passenger car with a jet on it?

Now that would be a neat piece on the layout!

I want one of those!

Rotor
 
It's actually a Budd RDC car that the NYC stripped of motors and interior equipment. The interior was occupied by instruments to measure performance. The engines are from a retired B-36 bomber. The strange front piece was made by the NYC shops in Cleveland, if I remember correctly. It was armored and the windows were bulletproof. The engineer was also a pilot and wore a standard Air Force jet fighter helmet with an NYC emblem. It was one of those wacky ideas that sprang up in the sixties. The UP had activiely considered an atomic powered locomotive around the same time but came to their senses before any work began. :)
 
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