New York Central's Niagaras - The Best Mainline Steam Engines? 

If I win the lottery I'll go save those locomotives and build you a whole another Niagara locomotive promise it's unlikely I will ever win though

Is winning the lottery enough money to build a steam engine

@@TrainBandit depends on which one I win if I ever do

If only they were new bulit!..

whats the music at 4:05? its not any of the songs in the description as far as I can tell.

History in the dark reference. Noice. *BRRRRRZZXT*

What’s a steam engine?

Barry, I SWEAR TO YOU THAT IF YOU SAY "WhAt'S a StEaM EnGiNe?" ONE MOREMTIME I WILL KILL YOU!

History in the dark hahahaha

Barry!!!!

Sounds like the Timken 1111 "four aces"; so that was a Niagara?

@@jimblake3574 no that was a different engine all together, I think they have a video about that on this channel too

Reminds me of when a Toyota pickup truck was used to tow the Space Shuttle Endeavour by itself when Endeavour was being moved to a museum. Great publicity for Toyota.

Both the Niagara and the Timken locomotive were 'shown off' to the press and public being pulled by attractive women. (I believe there are RU-vid clips of both). That said, I've always had a bit of a suspicion that the valve- and piston-ring lubrication would pose a substantial drag, especially with the engine cold, so there might have been some strategic 'preparation' to make the show possible.

Both the Niagara and the Timken locomotive were 'shown off' to the press and public being pulled by attractive women. (I believe there are RU-vid clips of both). That said, I've always had a bit of a suspicion that the valve- and piston-ring lubrication would pose a substantial drag, especially with the engine cold, so there might have been some strategic 'preparation' to make the show possible.

Thanks for that!

Just donated a small sum myself. I would really love to see these old electrics be preserved, especially since so little of the Central remains today compared to other railroads.

@@_chan.burn.21_ yeah, it’s really upsetting to see so little preserved

wow kingzlo

@@MiddletownBranchProd. omg

When the NYC started selling their Hudsons off for scrap they received the whopping sum of $10,077 each to Luria Bros Scrap even though many communities and other organizations wished to have one donated or they even might have bought them Perlman wanted all Steam Locos scrapped as they were from the past and not the new modern NYC. The fact that their are 2 Mohawks still around is purely by accident.

@@bwallace5945 The Perlman and preservation info in this post is 100% bullshit

I wish we could see a replica of each produced. I think the PRR T1 is cool, but I wish that group had chosen one of the NYC engines instead when they started building a reproduction.

@B Wallace 3001 being preserved today is actually not an accident. It was sold to the T&P to replace an engine on display that had been scrapped due to some external damage.

@@josephmeador493 And that is exactly what that comment meant. If T&P had never bought it to replace a heavily vandalized loco that they had placed on display. So yes it was by accident if that never happened it would have been gone if NYC never sold it to them. NYC had no intentions of preserving anything in fact they wanted everything scrapped. I have read that there were inquiries from lineside towns and other organization about acquiring a Hudson or Niagara but Pearlman wanted everything scrapped. The only reason that there is another Mohawk in St.Louis is because it was being used as a Stationary Boiler at a NYC location until the early 60's. And by then Perlman was gone.

I'm with you and reckon that overall, the Js were better (and better looking) with both being at the pinnacle of US steam development.

Look up a picture of the Js without their streamlining. They are chunky and beautiful monsters

@@Zimmzamm I prefer the Streamlining, but even Un-Streamlined, the J’s looked great.

A very astute point of view. Good man :)

In the 50s and70s most of the world used 220v or 440v for power equipment i.e: electric iron, heavy electric motors etc @ 50 cycles/Htz. I got hit by 440v once, you heard of bitch slap? LOL! It was like several bitches slapping you at the same time HARD. I wonder if ringing in my years for past two decades has anything to do with it? I sailed for five years around the world and never had to worry about the equipment I used until I came to USA and parts of South America. Had to buy new equipment and or use step up transformer for the antique radio, ended up selling it.

it can’t put down that power at 12 mph, the diesel can, so that’s always a bad comparison

@@ironmatic1 Well the diesels can't put that power down at 85 either. As they used to say during dieselization, steam can pull a train it can't start, and diesel can start a train it can't pull. A Niagara (or any Northern) would be a terrible terrible choice for any kind of slow drag freight on steep grades.

@@JETZcorp right though it does depend on gearing for the type of things a diesle can do, great starting power but its starts to act like a generator and fights itself after a certain point, steam though will just keep ticking off the wheel speed till it throws itself apart or runs out of steam feeding it, and has all that foot pounds that can go at once which would cause a wheelslip and thats bad on the rails, can derail the train or damage the drive gear, and the harder steam goes the more power it generates and more thermal energy into the steam meaning more expantion with lower volume and more work with that volume can be done so the valves cut off earlier to use more of that thermal expantion, steam though somewhat labor intensive has proved that it can do the job and do it in the modern era if you look at what livio dante porta did in argentina and did it in some of the most remote and inhospitable work environs in the world in patagonia and on really bad coal, but the machines have to be very sciantific and modern advances maintained and understood as well as thermaldynamics, but the beauty of steam is that if it can make heat it could be used, woor, oil, coal, biomass, maybe even hydrogen to burn and heat the water and steam, and higher pressure to the point of ultra critical which is basicly I read is the end all of steam power where the steam or what remians of it is in a fluid catigory of its own, though making a steamer like that would be prohibitivly expensive and heavy not to mention problably would not take the abuses of railroading, but even today think about it most power is not from wind or soler its from combustion powered turbines or boiled water steam from coal or waste burned or, nuclear where the heat from the reaction is used to turn and superheat the water to spin the turbine to make power or in some experamental cases rotery expantion engines, think like a wankle type engine of sorts thats a rotery expander .

Chapeleon's modified 242A1 had 5300 indicated HP and 292 kN in tractive effort. This at a an axle load of 21 metric tons.

As much as I hate to admit it, that’s a slightly misleading estimate. That nearly 6,700 HP was measured at the cylinders, the actual rating at the drawbar was closer to 5,100 HP, which put them on par with the J’s and about 1,000 HP _less_ than the T1’s. A slight detriment to being such a free steaming design, and the S-2 had it slightly worse since the intake of the cylinders was smaller. So while it could use steam more efficiently than an S-1, it could use that steam as readily either

Thanks so much!

@@HighIron We cannot save every engine from being scrapped, but we can most certainly try!

Thanks for sharing!!

Hell yeah

Good for you.

But it has to be added that the 1948 'second rebuilding' of the C&NW H class produced something very, very good...

Makes you wonder why the current new build project is for a duplex - which to my British eyes seems a far inferior locomotive to a Niagara? But maybe they’ll do what the guys who built Tornado are doing with the P2, and do a Niagara for their next project.

@@robinforrest7680 It's my hope for that, along with the NYC 4-6-4 Hudson.

@@robinforrest7680 Anything is possible with proper funding and time/effort.

I thought the J's were 16'0"

@@joemalone6923 They are just 16'. Still too tall for NYC tracks but still very good locomotives as a whole

@@09JDCTrainMan That's true

You can't compare cars either. They're all made for different thing. Toyota? Made for super reliability, but even at my age no second date. Other cars, bad transmissions, great back seats.

There are no Niagaras left

Perlman couldn't erase steam (and steams memory) fast enough!

@@michigandon In his defense he was doing everything he could to save his company. However if(idk if this happened or not) a museum ever gave him an offer greater than scrap value and he rejected it my opinion would change.

also the AT&SF 2900 Class were in that conversation

Nobody boiled water like the N&W.

Awesome!!!! I was just dreaming about trains

Duly noted. :P

I fully agree, the N&W Js were phenomenal locomotives. The N&W J actually beat the EMD E6 in every aspect except for lubrication costs when compared in the mid to late 1940s. It even had a higher availability and utilization by small margins in the same comparison. When the comparison ended, it showed the J to be roughly 30% less expensive to maintain than the E6.

The FEF-3s are actually what the Niagaras were based off of, just with giant boilers and a full foot shorter.

The J class is one of my favorite locomotives. The Niagaras were my second favorite

@@joemalone6923 The J is my favorite 4-8-4. My 2nd favorite 4-8-4 say is either 614 or 4449.

@@09JDCTrainMan I also like 4449 and 844

The problem is that the J wasn't "beating the diesel", it was beating the E3/E6. By the time of Kiefer's test, the Niagara was hard-pressed to beat two E7s... and was dominated by three. Then along came the E8 and it was game over for passenger work... Even in 1939, the diesel 'competition' for a locomotive with 6000+ihp was the Baldwin Essl modular locomotive, with eight 750hp V-8 gensets each driving its own axle. Cost too much without GMAC-style financing and incentives... which, truth to tell, was a shame...

@@wizlish Yeah, even as good as the J and Niagara was, the diesel is just simply superior

Thanks for watching!

The one in NM should be in operational condition by now

Me being an ACL boy, it's the R-1 for me.

@@joeman1437 And it's a Travesty of Justice that none of THOSE were saved, also. :(

@@michigandon Agreed my friend, agreed

Niagaras and yes, even the 5500 did run on the Big Four - My dad was a engineman first firing and later operating on the BF, the locomotive entries are in his log book. I don't believe Mr Gerbracht would have made this error in his book but if so, my correction is kindly noted.

Keep in mind that the 5550 was heavier, due to the added weight of the Franklin type A gear. A guide for how fast things changed in the late Forties is that, in Kiefer's review of motive power linked here, they carefully discuss the design details on the 5550, and note that they'll report performance in a subsequent addendum. They never did so. LeMassena had an article on the Niagaras in Trains Magazine in the 1980s, which discussed quite a bit about the design of the poppet-valve Niagara but never came out clearly and said the engine was designed to make comparable power to the piston-valve S1s ... not "moar power" as was so often a supposed goal of poppet-valve utilization... at much more economical fuel and water consumption. That goal was apparently fully borne out, but (as with so many 'thermodynamic improvements', it didn't pay its way or give desired road reliability.

In all fairness, the J has 70" drivers, and is only high-performing due to the genius of Voyce Glaze in balancing. PRR tested one up to over 110mph, but noted that to do serious express work rather than just 'dash' capability, the engine would benefit from higher drivers -- they recommended the 80" standard, which was effectively what the production Niagaras were built with). The J ran out of valve tribology rather smartly at 112-114mph, with peak machinery speed rising as superheat went higher than the tolerance of the steam oil used; neither of those issues would have set in at that speed with higher drivers.

@@wizlish The J suffered no mechanical ill effects from running at 110 mph even though the rotational speed exceeded the AAR recommended upper limit. The lubrication issue could be dealt with and though steam locomotive lubrication remained less than fully developed, once it is appreciated that it is the temperature of the rubbing surface which is key this opens a door to further improvement. These locomotives were relatively high performing for a number of reasons but compared with the world best practice they had poor power to weight ratios. No US steam locomotive could maintain 40 ihp per ton of locomotive weight, designers concentrated too much on evaporation and not enough on specific steam consumption though it must be said that they were good at mechanical design.

The problem of hydraulic lock is handled the same way as the coolant (which isn't antifreeze!): you/'d leave the 567s idling. Later you'd use something like a Kim Hotstart to keep the oil and coolant warm, so the cylinders would stay warm. With the relief valves open, you bar the engine over one full revolution to ensure no cylinder is hydrolocked and ice would behave similar to water during that test. Note that any ice that clears will melt very quickly with compression once the relief valves are shut, and the water would probably drain into the airbox when the scavenge ports are opened...

It broke the steam barrier

Would be if it had. The actual non-propaganda speed was in the 125mph range (as Gresley agreed); the 126.1 is at best an artifact in the dynamometer (look at the trace on either side of that peak and you'll see). The actual Concorde moment is the German BR 05, which had the over-the-top engineering characteristic of the SST (and some of the same disregard for practicality). The A4 on the other hand was a perfectly fine express locomotive at normal speeds (and with the big-end improvement one could probably have teached the 130mph speed Duddington thought she could)

@@wizlish A4’s ran over 100 mph regularly and reliably. Emergency braking in the record run caused the damage. They should have waited for a better time..

@@stephenpage-murray7226 if only they did have another opportunity. There was only one shot due to World War Two happening soon after. It would have been better also if the used a new-out-of-the-works engine, as Silver Link performed the best out of any a4 for a while when she was put on the first train. Really that was the highest point of the A4s. Going 112 without trying and being smooth showed that setting up and tuning every part to be in prime condition was undervalued. With a double Klychap blast pipe, Silver Link would have went near 130 that day if trying, and probably faster if it had roller bearings on all of the trains axles. The Achilles heal of the Gresley valve gear (and really all congugatef gear) is that wear in the bearings significantly affected timing. Roller bearings solve that, like on the UP’s 4-12-2. One thing that I’m surprised Gresley didn’t do was a modification that Australia did. Instead of angling the middle cylinder to clear the front axle, which slightly throws off the valve timing, the Australians just put a crank on the front axle, which is the simpler, better solution.

It'll be interesting to see what High Iron does with Chapelon, particularly the 242 A1 (another key 4-8-4), the 160 A1, and the 4-8-0s in context...

@@wizlish Exactly.

No SNCF engine was as powerful - much impressive on power to weight. The US engines were amazing for engineering - roller bearings, cast frames (which were heavy, but they needed to be to handle 6500 hp at the cylinders) and welded boilers etc. The most powerful European express engine was the Chapelon 4-8-4, which had 5300 hp at the cylinders, 4400 at the drawbar from a 53 sq ft grate weighing 148 tons locomotive (and 70 ton tender).

The RS3 has been cut up; regrettably, so has the 2510 (which was a historic piece of New Haven's modern history).

It pays to read the Kiefer 1947 review of motive power that was helpfully linked. One of the things making the Niagaras competitive in 1946 was that their unit cost, even with expensive roller bearings and alloys, was considerably less than a two-unit set of E7s (let alone the three-unit set also mentioned). On the other hand, something not fully discussed was that in order to make 'diesel-competitive' mileage, the Central needed day-in day-out traffic for long distances at high sustained speed, with enough traffic density to limit turnaround wait. The immediate issue of concern was not that passenger service started falling off in these years, but that the Central made a marketing push toward their fast trains being "Dieseliners", and that the costs of steam service and maintenance skyrocketed (for external reasons) between 1947 and 1950 -- a major reason for abandonment of steam on many other Eastern railroads so quickly.