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Canadian Railroads > Baldwin Centipedes?Date: 11/23/16 14:21 Baldwin Centipedes? Author: CPR_4000 Was having lunch with a bunch of retired guys recently and it turned out that one had been an electrician on the Seaboard Air Line in Florida. He said "we had the biggest diesels in the world" . . . the Baldwin Centipedes. He also said that SAL had a deal to sell them to Canada but they "wouldn't go around the curves." Can anybody substantiate that story?
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/16 20:46 by CPR_4000. Date: 11/24/16 03:33 Re: Baldwin Centipedes? Author: kgmontreal I've never heard anything remotely like this tall tale. Canadian experience with Baldwin diesels was restricted to one switcher for a coal mine in southeastern BC and CPR's thirteen roadswitchers and eleven switchers. The CPR units were built by Canadian Locomotive Company of Kingston, Ontario. CLC switched to F-M locomotives and had more success with them.
The idea that Baldwin Centipedes would not go around curves in Canada makes it sound like our railways were all logging pikes. While it's wise to "never say never" I can't categorize your Centripede rumour as anything other than nonsense. KG Date: 11/24/16 07:29 Re: Baldwin Centipedes? Author: CPR_4000 I thought it sounded bogus, but he's not a railfan (as far as I know) and he doesn't know of my rail interest, so I thought there might be a kernel of veracity to it. Just sandhouse BS, I guess.
He also said he would get called in the middle of the night to go fix SAL 3000's that died on the road when sand got into their relays, and he looked a little surprised when I said, "oh yeah, the E units." Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/16 09:36 by CPR_4000. Date: 11/25/16 04:32 Re: Baldwin Centipedes? Author: DavidP kgmontreal Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > > > The idea that Baldwin Centipedes would not go > around curves in Canada makes it sound like our > railways were all logging pikes. > > While it's wise to "never say never" I can't > categorize your Centripede rumour as anything > other than nonsense. > > KG Could have been a deal with a secondary road - PGE or ACR for example - where curvature might have been a problem. Maybe not an inability to navigate curves, but unacceptably high wear and tear on the rail. Dave Date: 11/26/16 17:21 Re: Baldwin Centipedes? Author: DrLoco WhileI think it'd be neat to see a Baldwin centipede operating anywhere, I have to wonder if this has any substantiation behind it...maybe it does, and we know the Canadian railways certainly are frugal (I mean, Ontario Northland used a Dutch TEE Train in passenger service in the 70's and 80's!), so anything is possible, I guess.
I wanted to do a quick correction to KGMontreal's post about the Baldwin's CP had purchased. CP's Baldwin units were actually American made, CLC only acted as the booking agent. This was early on in CP's dieselization process, where they were dieselizing by division, and the isolated Esquimalt & Nanaimo line on Vancouver Island was a perfect candidate, with tired old steam engines beat to death during the War. When in late 1947 CP went to order diesels for the island, Alco and EMD were heavily booked. CP purchasing practices at the time seem to indicate that had they had the choice they would have taken ALco RS-1's and S2 switchers...However, Canadian Locomotive Co at Kingston was anxious to capture some of the impending diesel business. Since their diesel shops would not be ready until late 1948, CLC instead secured production space on Baldwin's shop floor at Eddystone, Pa for 24 units. CP was in such a hurry to get dieselization going that they took CLC up on the offer. They got 13 road switchers (DRS4-4-1000--the largest order for this model, exceeding all US sales), 2 switchers for WInnipeg and 8 switchers for Vancouver Terminals (DS4-4-1000).a 25th unit to be built entirely at CLC was cancelled. They went from Eddystone ready to operate to Montreal, where CP put them in service and sent them west to the island. Their units were unique in that they carried builders plates from Baldwin (the constructor) and CLC (The booking agent). They were the only Baldwin units to operate on CP, but they had a lengthy career, only being retired in the 1975 "purge" of BLW and CLC locomotives. Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/16 17:25 by DrLoco. |