Big Four Class Ij 6949 at Cincinnati, OH on May 1919. Built by Alco in 1907, it was retired in November 1930. Jay Williams Collection.
The number is on the cab sides and the C C C & St. L is high on the sides of the tender. The paint seems to have faded and there's glare from the sun. But if you squint real hard you can see it.
That's a rare one, Roger. I have quite a few Vollrath photos of 4-4-0's, but only one of a 4-4-2. I was hoping to be able to find the driver diameter. Hmm, got some other reference books to check. Ha! Found it, and it was the favorite size of the Central for passenger engines, 79 inches.
I'll be darned, I just made a SWAG. I added about a foot to the top step of the engine access ladder, then compared that to height of the drivers. Thanks Jim.
My late uncle fired similar engines on the Wabash. He said speeds of 100 mph plus were not out of the ordinary. Too bad the Atlantics were obsoleted so early by the development of the Pacific type. They were truly handsome engines.
I believe Atlantics were running on the PRR (E6) and the MLW (A) on main lines in regular service until after WW-II.?
Yes. Of course, the PRR had a variety of trains, including commuters, on their main lines, and the Milwaukee Atlantics were modern engines with 300 psi boilers, barely seven years old when the war started, and blessed with fireboxes bigger than those of many a Pacific type. If it weren't for the success of the diesel, the Atlantic might have made quite a comeback in the era of lightweight, streamlined cars. They were generally easier on the rails than Pacifics or Hudsons.
Good point about the Pennsy and Milwaukee road engines. On roads like the Pere Marquette (my personal favorite), the Atlantic didn't fare so well. They were forced off the mainline by the Pacifics and then as competition from cars and buses became stiff in the twenties passenger trains on the secondary lines were discontinued. PM scrapped its last Atlantic in 1934. It should also be noted that the Big Four engine in the original post was retired in 1930, while it would still have been serviceable for a number of years had the economics been different. acptulsa's post makes me wonder, though, what the Pere Marquettes would have looked like pulled by modern streamlined Atlantics rather than E7's. Hmmm......
As railroads improved efficiency by running ever-longer trains in the 1920s (not that the process ever stopped), the Santa Fe found itself with surplus Atlantics with good, free-steaming boilers, but not enough tractive effort at the height of the heavyweight car era, and Consolidations that weren't terribly old but were totally eclipsed by the abilities of their new Mikados and 2-10-2 types. Meanwhile, their purpose-built six wheeled switchers, bought over four decades, were totally inadequate by then. So, they took the lead trucks and boilers off the Consolidations and balanced the powerful Atlantic boilers over their eight little wheels--and wound up with one of the larger fleets of 0-8-0 switchers in the world. They killed one bird with two excess stones? Sometimes we model railroaders think we invented things like kitbashing. Wrong.
Very resourceful on someone's part. I may be wrong, but I think Bill Schopp may have followed the prototype in more than one way by doing a similar kitbash. BTW, what size drivers did those consolidations/0-8-0's have?
I believe they all had 57" drivers. Between that and the fact that the wide Atlantic fireboxes had to be mounted over them, those 0-8-0 switchers wound up being tall, though they managed to keep the height down to about 15.5 feet.
