American Steam Locomotives by William L. Withuhn

Author:William L. Withuhn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2019-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Lima A-1 2-8-4 during evaluation on the Boston & Albany. Tests showed that the new locomotive produced about one-third more horsepower than the 2-8-2 depicted on page 213, with a fuel saving of up to 20 percent.

Courtesy Kalmbach Media

Texas & Pacific’s early adoption of the 2-10-4 wheel arrangement gave the type its most common name: Texas.

Harold K. Vollrath Collection

Building on the success of the A-1’s evaluation, Boston & Albany 2-8-4 Berkshire engines are under construction at Lima.

Courtesy Kalmbach Media

At the same time the A-1 was on its first trials, Woodard’s team made drawings for an even more-powerful machine, a 2-10-4, after the Texas & Pacific Railroad expressed interest. Dubbed the Texas type, the elongated locomotive shared all the features of the A-1 except the external dry pipe and, although the 100 square-foot grate area was the same, a modest combustion chamber was added, which the A-1 did not have. (Woodard had not included a combustion chamber in the A-1 in order to minimize the number of staybolts, to hold down boiler repairs. The power of the bigger 2-10-4, about 4,100 drawbar hp, necessitated greater firebox volume.) T&P bought the first ten 2-10-4s before the first production 2-8-4s went to the Boston & Albany.13

In the mid- and late-1920s, Woodard gave several lectures to professional audiences, describing and explaining his horsepower gospel in persuasive economic terms: Individually, high-horsepower engines could handle heavier trains at less expense and, in fleet use, such engines could handle the same or greater traffic with fewer locomotives. The controlling economics, explained Woodard, lay in “increasing the usefulness of each mile of main line track.” And by 1929 he could fairly state,

Locomotives embodying [the A-1’s design] characteristics have made such pronounced reductions in fuel consumption and increases in gross ton-mile-per-hour output, along with lower maintenance, that these principles of construction are now very generally accepted by the leading railroads as essential to locomotives designed for producing maximum tonnage output with minimum operating costs.14

Publicist Basford coined the term “Super Power,” which Lima used in a blitz of ads in the trade journals starting in 1925. Lima produced a short movie to explain the economics, and Woodard and other Lima officers used it on the lecture circuit. The competing steam builders had never been so aggressive in marketing. Coffin and Allen no doubt delighted in the strong sales that resulted. Lima was now on the map as a major player in the locomotive trade.

Baldwin 60000

Alco and Baldwin took note. For several years prior to 1925, they, too, had been promoting ideas for advanced locomotives. Baldwin especially, under president Samuel Vauclain, pushed the notion of higher steam pressures and multi-cylinder, compound drive. As a designer at Baldwin in the 1890s, Vauclain had come up with a form of four-cylinder compounding that was somewhat popular for a brief time. In the early 1920s it seemed clear to Vauclain and those on his design staff, as it was clear to Muhlfeld, that after superheating, the next step was a revival of compounding together with better boilers.

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