Though the obvious stitch from two wide-angle shots are quite obvious
(and disconcerting,
especially when you look at the centre section) you still made an
interesting shot in
a tight spot Moose!
May I suggest that you post this shot on the Wikipedia page for Engine
#4294, since
they only have a front shot, giving a complete mis-impression of what
the engine really looks
like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Pacific_4294
Now, to address another reply to your message, of course this engine
is a Mallet-type engine!
Even though it does not use the typical low + high pressure cylinders
combination, I believe
that any rigid-frame steam locomotive with one of the sets of driving
wheels mounted on an
articulated (swiveling) sub-frame is considered a Mallet.
Though doubtless the USA has the biggest / most impressive Mallet
engines (culminating in the famous
"Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 class), here in South Africa we also operated a
number of large mallets, but they were not
successful and were discontinued around the 1920/1930s already.
Ours is the realm of the Beyer-Garratt (because we have much tighter
mountainous curves), where up to
the 1980s/1990s we operated massive 4-8-2+2-8-4 engines, and I
consider myself privileged to have seen,
rode in (and once even operated one of) these engines as a child. It's
interesting that, although we use a
narrower guage (3ft 6in) our largest steam engines were as big and
powerful as any in the world, save for
a couple of the USA giant mallets. This resulted in quite ingenious
solutions to pack all this size and power
into a smaller loading guage, and which is also why we ultimately used
Garratt engines much more,
because only in this design can you sling a huge boiler between the
two sets of driving wheels,
i.e. you don't need to leave space below the boiler for the driving
wheels.
Before this, there were all sorts of interesting concoctions in-
between mallets and garratts, seemingly
to avoid patent issues at the time! There is an interesting anecdote
of one of these engines, an Union-Garratt,
which was built slightly too big for the loading gauage (around 1925
or something). On its first test run
(at some speed) it apparently took out a number of platform and bridge
fittings, and returned to depot sans its
steps etc.
The most impressive garratt to successfully operate here was the GL-
class garratt, one of the most powerful
"narrow guage" (to you people, anyway) steam engines ever made. Much
more powerful than the Australian / New Zealand
garratts (impressive in their own right):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Railways_GL_class_Garratt
anyway, after that off-topic venture, let me get back to work :-)
On 29 Jul 2009, at 12:24 PM, Moose wrote:
> This should please those who like really BIG, powerful engines that
> can
> thrust deep into tunnels ...*
>
> The little girl seems to like it too.
> <http://galleries.moosemystic.net/MooseFoto/index.php?gallery=IATMS&image=_MG_6861-62ia.jpg
>
> >
>
> No Relation Moose
>
> * Well, that was indeed a good part of its job.
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|
