Class J-1e 5401 leaves Chesterton IN on Oct 1, 1955 with the Chicago-Elkhart morning local. Harold Stirton Photo, Darwin Simonaitis collection.
Beautiful photo, obviously she's running at 50-60 MPH. Interesting that 5401 would have a long-haul tender for such a relatively short run, or is my knowledge of your area's geography faulty.....?
You have a real treasure trove of J class photos, Roger. Please keep them coming. At this late in steam, most Hudsons had the PT tenders.
Hytec, I believe this was the only tender made with the large water cap. This was for use on the B4 where you did not scoop water . If you could run from Indy to Cincy ,100 miles, without taking water it was a great time saver . LEW
Lew, is this particular PT one that has less coal and more water than the others? I thought from the photo that the top of the coal section looked shorter than the others.
Does the track curve away back behind the 4th car or so? I ask because it seems a bit overkill for such a large locomotive. does it pickup more cars on the way?
Thanks, LEW. Did the B4 inherit these as the eastern divisions dieselized, or were they built and assigned to the B4 from the git-go?
Unquestionably. As LEW said, this is the late model tender with no water scoop for track pans. It's 1955, and steamers are getting whatever assignment at this point, often relieving diesels on minor trains so those diesels can replace ailing mainline diesels in main train lashups. Handling trains far too light for their abilities was standard for steamers as they were being phased out.
The definitive answer has been found in Tom Gerbracht's "Know Thy Hudsons." There were four different PT tenders on the Central, and only ONE had 25 tons of coal capacity and 21,000 gallons of water. It was built at Beech Grove in 1943 and installed on this very 5401 on the Big Four. The other three PT tenders contained 43 to 47 tons of coal and 17 or 18,000 gallons of water.
More your knowledge of operations is less than optimal. Tenders were assigned to engines and stayed with them from major shopping to major shopping, unless something required the tender alone to be shopped, then a replacement would be assigned to the locomotive. With 'big' steam power in the later years they were given 'big' tenders in an effort to reduce the line of road time getting fuel and water or extending the runs between engine changes on trains. Using a 'big' engines on a local in the later days of steam was commonplace as all the 'little' engines had already been scrapped.
We should be here to fix that, not to sit in judgment of it... Don't know about you, but I wasn't born knowing this stuff.
