Hudson (locomotive)
As Hudson are Tender - steam locomotives with the wheel arrangement referred 2'C2 ', ie with a preceding one bogey , three driving axles and a trailing-axle tow frame.
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Naming
In France, the first steam locomotives were built with the 2'C2 'wheel arrangement (referred to there as 232 ). There this type became known under the name Baltic .
In North America this type (referred to there as 4-6-4) was first introduced in 1927 on the New York Central Railroad (NYC), which procured a total of 275 copies by 1938. With around 56% of all Hudson locomotives built worldwide, this was by far the largest fleet of any railway company.
The name goes back to the then NYC President Patrick E. Crowley. In a conversation with the superintendent for machine service, engineer Paul W. Kiefer, who had developed the NYC Class J between 1926 and 1927, Crowley suggested that the new series should be named after the Hudson River .
This suggestion was obvious, because from New York City to Albany the multi-track NYC mainline, known as the "Water Level Route", ran about 200 kilometers upstream through the Hudson Valley, where these new heavy express train locomotives performed most of the high-quality passenger train service, including the 20th Century Limited and Empire State Express should take over.
With the Scandinavian and German-born railroaders on Milwaukee Road in Wisconsin and Minnesota , however, the name "Baltic", which is common in France, was also popular, derived from the already established express train locomotive types "Atlantic" and "Pacific".
NYC grades J-1a, J-2 and J-3a
The Hudson type was developed at New York Central because the Pacific locomotives with a 2'C1 ' wheel arrangement established in the express train service had reached their performance limit with train lengths of 12 express train passenger cars . However, the increasing volume of transport has meanwhile made traffic peaks of 16 to 18 wagons and the cost-intensive division of trains, which had to be carried in two sections along the route, necessary. In order to be able to use even more powerful locomotive boilers with a larger superheater surface and higher boiler pressure while maintaining the permissible axle loads on the existing lines, the rear axle , which is usually located under the fire box in a Bissel frame at Pacifics, was replaced by a two-axle towing frame in the new Hudson design. Another innovation was the booster in the rear towing frame of all class J locomotives as a starting aid and a stoker for mechanically charging the furnace with coal.
The American Locomotive Company (ALCO) in Schenectady delivered the first NYC class J-1a (No. 5200) locomotive on February 14, 1927, which was subjected to extensive test drives on the nearby main line between Albany and Syracuse . In the following years, ALCO delivered a total of 205 class J-1 and 10 class J-2 machines to NYC by 1931 . Lima Locomotive Works contributed another 10 class J-2 units.
In 1934, NYC was the first railroad in America to equip its J-1a No. 5344 with streamlined cladding reminiscent of an inverted bathtub and named it "Commodore Vanderbilt" after the previous owner of the railroad company .
Between 1937 and 1938, ALCO delivered another 50 "Super Hudsons" of the NYC class J-3a as a further development , of which 12 locomotives were given streamlined cladding designed by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss . Its restrained design, which emphasizes the essential elements of a classic steam locomotive, makes the J-3a , which by today's standards resembles a timeless " retro design " , a style icon of the Art Deco era. Due to the multiple depiction in contemporary advertisements and advertising posters, the J-3a developed into one of the most famous locomotives in America.
During and after the Second World War, the streamlining was gradually removed. In the course of the accelerated conversion to diesel traction, in which the manufacturers generously offset the scrap value of the steam locomotive fleet against the purchase price for the newly ordered diesel locomotives, none of the 275 Hudson locomotives of New York Central has been preserved for posterity.
More series Hudsons in North America
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (Santa Fe, ATSF) had 16 Hudsons, with the ATSF initially classifying the ATSF class 3450, which was introduced almost simultaneously with the NYC Hudson in 1927, as an "extended Pacific". The locomotive No. 3460, built by Baldwin in 1937 , became well known as the streamlined “Blue Goose”.
The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road) procured a total of 28 machines with the 2'C2 'wheel arrangement between 1930 and 1938 (spread over the three series F6 , F6a and F7 ).
For the "400" traffic, the Chicago and North Western Railway procured nine streamline steam locomotives of the CNW class E-4 from ALCO in 1937 , which were dimensioned similar to the MILW class F7 but were independent constructions.
Locomotives with the 2'C2 'wheel arrangement in Europe
At a time when Pacific locomotives dominated the express train service and were even built with streamlined cladding as standard in England and Germany, Hudsons remained a rarity in Europe, apart from a few individual copies.
These include firstly the three (manufactured in two different versions) of Adolf Wolff in Berlin Borsig works constructed streamlined locomotives Class 05 of the former Deutsche Reichsbahn . Locomotive 05 002 set a world record for steam locomotives on the route between Hamburg and Berlin on May 11, 1936 with a speed of 200.4 km / h.
Marc de Caso, the last chief engineer of the French Northern Railway , designed a total of eight streamlined “Baltic” locomotives for the newly founded French state railway company SNCF , consisting of three three-cylinder engines of the SNCF class 232.R and four copies of the SNCF class 232.S Four-cylinder compound engine. The eighth SNCF 232.U.1, which Corpet-Louvet only completed in 1949 due to the war, remained a one-off. At the end of the steam locomotive construction in France, this world's last standard gauge steam locomotive with a 2'C2 'wheel arrangement is located in the French Railway Museum in Mulhouse .
literature
- G. Freeman Allen: “The fastest trains in the world - the fast traffic in the past, present and future”. franck. 1980. ISBN 3-440-04856-X
- Wilhelm Reuter: “Record locomotives - the fastest on the rails 1848-1950”. Engine book. 1978. ISBN 3-87943-582-0
- Alvin F. Staufer, Edward L. May: “Thoroughbreds - New York Central Hudson”. Staufer Books. 1975. ISBN 0-944513-03-4