Steam & Excursion > B&O experimental steam loco W-1

I found an article that in the late 1930's the B&O was working on a new steam design, the constant torque steam locomotive, classed W-1.   I have done a search here and came up empty.  Can someone point me in the right direction for more information ?
Thanks
Doug

The Baltimore and Ohio yahoo group is a good source of info, you might have to sign up. Also the Baltimore and Ohio RR Historical Society (http://www.borhs.org/archives/index.html)  is a great source. They just opened their own archive building in Eldersburg MD.

Thomas Eckhardt

http://tewe.borail.net

This is a good summary of the W-1, never made it past concept drawings
http://www.american-rails.com/class-w1-besler-type.html

About the same time, the German Firm Henschel & Son had a different but similar approach.  They built in 1941 a streamlined steam 2-8-2 with eight cylinders, two for each axle in four separate "engines."  A two cylinder engine was attached to the end of each driver axle.  Two engines on each side of the locomotive.  The engine, 19.1001, was captured by the U.S. at the end of WWII and was brought to Fort Monroe in Virginia for evaluation.  It wasn't scrapped until 1952. It was reputed to have run very smoothly and made speeds up to 125 mph on a test stand and 117 mph in test operations during it's break-in while still in Germany. The article that I saved is no longer on line but a search using the terms "Henschel 19.1001" will return a number of hits and a fair number of photos of the "V-8" locomotive.

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Ingenious concept, but constant torque or not, these things still would have had all of steam's other disadvantages as compared to the diesel: water supply, coal supply, ash disposal, boiler and firebox maintenance, etc. etc.

CPR_4000 Wrote:
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> Ingenious concept, but constant torque or not,
> these things still would have had all of steam's
> other disadvantages as compared to the diesel:
> water supply, coal supply, ash disposal, boiler
> and firebox maintenance, etc. etc.

Not to mention the fact that this design is still limited to having <100% of the locomotive weight on drivers, which is a primary limitation for developing high starting tractive effort on a steam locomotive.  Diesels, on the other hand, have 100% of weight on drivers (assuming all axles are powered).