Steam & Excursion > A rare Frisco flop

In 1910, Frisco joined in the Mallet craze, buying 7 2-8-8-2s from American Locomotive Works thinking they would be the answer to the problem of getting over the Springfield-Thayer,MO hill and dale line.    Didn't work well, so they tried them from St. Louis-Springfield with the same results.
They bounced around the system and finished their careers in Birmingham handling coal trains.  By the mid '30s they were history.
My Dad told me that they leaked from every pore and caused problems seeing ahead. 

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Lemme guess... powerful enough but overly expensive to maintain and slower than Forrest Gump.

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

Wow... looks like a kid wearing his father's dress shoes... 

;^)

Notice the proportions of the grate area to the two engines gasping for steam.
That grate area looks to be about 70 to 80 sq ft.

It also predated the wide application of superheating, and I'd bet that 
its NOT superheated ....again the greatest factor to generating sustained
pressure is limited volume of the firebox.  Note the steam pipe ( middle of the boiler)
leaving the boiler, and entering the top of the rear (H.P.) cylinders.  That proves 
that the engine is running on heat-saturated steam..... not superheated.

The steam leaving the boiler is the same temperature as the water that generated it.  
Every foot of piping between the boiler and the pistons lowers the steam temperature ...
There's a lot of hot water hitting the pistons.... but, not contributing any 'work'..

Also, note that successful coal stokers were not coming until 10 years in 
the future. 

Too many cylinders, not enough steam volume, at a decent pressure.
Instead of chug-chug-chug, it's mush-mush-mush..

W.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/23 16:31 by wcamp1472.

It may have been a flop, but they are still neat images. Thanks for posting them.

MC



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/23 19:23 by ironmtn.

Not a single thing about it says "Frisco".    But it sure had a lot of ugly sisters in the whole country.

wcamp1472 Wrote:

> Notice the proportions of the grate area to the two engines gasping for steam. That grate area looks to be about 70 to 80 sq ft.

Good eye!  According to steamlocomotive.com, they had 75.4 square feet of grate area.

https://www.steamlocomotive.com/locobase.php?country=USA&wheel=2-8-8-2&railroad=slsf

> It also predated the wide application of superheating, and I'd bet that its NOT superheated

According to the same site, they were built without superheaters but were eventually superheated in the 1920's.  Here are before and after photos of SLSF 2007:

http://rr-fallenflags.org/slsf/slsf-s2007a08.jpg
http://rr-fallenflags.org/slsf/slsf-s2007ggC.jpg

> The steam leaving the boiler is the same temperature as the water that generated it.  
> Every foot of piping between the boiler and the pistons lowers the steam temperature ...
> There's a lot of hot water hitting the pistons.... but, not contributing any 'work'..

That tired, wet steam then had to go forward to the low pressure cylinders and expand again.  Did Alco's design include reheaters for the "used" steam akin to what Baldwin separable boilers had?

 

It's amazing to see the difference superheating makes.
The N&W Y-class engines, with REALLY effective superheaters 
were very effective haulers.   They could put out full power, hours on end,
shoving trains up hill or hauling long strings of loaded coal cars.

Take away the superheater, and they'd be as effective as the original 1910
beast., 

An underappreciated aspect of the success of the Y-class is the very effective
proportions of the grate area to the firebox dimensions, as well as the
combustion chamber and superheater proportions.

That design craft is poorly understood, but errors there ( on the drawing boards)
can make the difference between an average steam producer and a race-horse...

The Ys routinely started their trains in 'simple' ( live steam) supplied to all cylinders,
then switched to compound when underway.   Obviously, a flow-control, steam
regulating valve supplied steam to the larger, low pressure pistons, at a
live steam- pressure appproximating the pressure of the once-used steam
supplied from the HP cylinders.

What is not much appreciated is the fact that, in 'compound,  the HP cylinders
are pushing the LP pistons, when in compound.... the pressure in the receiver-pipe
( feeding the LP pistons) is maintained by the HP pistons keeping that receiver-pipe
pressure at near 120 psi... and it's temperature is still 'superheated' ---
well above 'condensing temps' -----  but, the steam's  temperture is lower,
because the pressure is lower -----  and is still superheated, at that lower 
pressure.  In fact, you may have superheated steam being exhausted up
the smokestack.

W.



 

So this brings up an interesting question:

What happens when a railroad purchases a new type of locomotive, or even a proven design
only to discover it lacks the hoped for desire?  Obviuosly this would be more an issue on a
new untested  design that does not test well, but even it its a  proven design, is it all on the
railroad or the "salesman" who sold a railroad on a design that  poorly performs in its desired
use?

Wild shots - who knew?

/Mitch

Railroad signs off on the design so along the way someone was leading them down the primrose path. Most
obvious retribution was changing locomotive sources on subsequent buys.

Out 

Great info and explanation Wes!  many thanks.