Prairie (locomotive)
Prairie (in the German-speaking area also prairie ) is a North American term for steam locomotives with the 2-6-2 wheel arrangement based on the Whyte notation , which corresponds to the German designation 1'C1 '. Prairie locomotives have a leading axle , three coupled axles and a trailing axle. Mainly passenger train locomotives were built in this design, but express train and multi-purpose locomotives were also built with this wheel arrangement.
history
This wheel arrangement was first used in 1856 by the Wiener Neustädter Lokomotivfabrik for a series of tank locomotives for the Traun Valley Railway in the rare track width of 1106 millimeters, the Marchtrenk to Zizlau locomotives of the EEG . The drawbar axles of these locomotives proved to be inadequate due to the lack of a reset device and a replica was not carried out.
Further attempts by the Belgian State Railways in 1878 with the wheel arrangement did not produce satisfactory results either. The tank locomotives with this wheel arrangement, built in 1883 by the workshop of the Schweizerische Centralbahn in Olten and built for use with express trains on the old Hauenstein line , remained in service for over 20 years.
In the period that followed, the wheel arrangement prevailed in Europe, initially for tank locomotives in service with suburban trains, as the wheel arrangement enabled good acceleration to be achieved. One of the first constructions of this type was, for example, the number 30 of the Imperial and Royal State Railways, which was used on the Vienna Stadtbahn from 1895 based on a design by Karl Gölsdorf . Their symmetrical wheel arrangement made prairie tank locomotives well suited for those types of train performances that required the locomotives to run equally well backwards and forwards.
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From 1884, locomotives with a tender with this wheel arrangement were produced, and in that year Baldwin delivered locomotives of this type to New Zealand . In 1901, the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway (one of the predecessor companies of the New York Central Railroad ), whose network was between Chicago and Buffalo , received the first express locomotives with this wheel arrangement in the United States . The first locomotive of the new type was given the name "Prairie", which then quickly spread as the name for locomotives with this wheel arrangement. Occasionally, the name is also attributed to the fact that the first locomotives with this wheel arrangement used in the USA, which had been delivered to the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad a year earlier , were mainly used in front of trains on flat lines through the vast plains of America, known as the prairie Midwest were used.
It was advantageous for use as express train locomotives that, thanks to the trailing axle designed as a trailing axle, the standing boiler could have a wide fire box that was not restricted by the drive wheel sets . Most of the boilers in prairie locomotives therefore have good vaporization properties and are capable of high continuous outputs. Compared to 2'C locomotives with a tender of about the same power, prairie locomotives were usually a little lighter. With the introduction of the Krauss-Helmholtz steering rack for the leading and first coupled axles, the locomotives also got good running properties that were comparable to locomotives with conventional bogies such as the Pacific locomotives with the 2'C1 'wheel arrangement.
These advantages led to a rapid spread of the wheel arrangement in various countries, mainly for use in express train or passenger transport. The different "schools" of the designers in different countries, however, meant that there were sometimes considerable time differences in the introduction and that locomotives with this wheel arrangement spread differently depending on the country. The mistrust of many locomotive designers regarding the running properties of the Krauss-Helmholtz frame meant that in Germany, for example, prairie locomotives for higher speeds only became established relatively late.
From the 1930s onwards, the wheel arrangement was firmly established and recognized in locomotive construction not only for comparatively slow tank locomotives, but also for express and passenger train tender locomotives. They were particularly widespread in Austria-Hungary and the successor states of the Danube Monarchy , Italy and the Soviet Union ; the latter used the world's most wheel arrangement locomotives with over 3350 units built.
By contrast, comparatively few prairie locomotives were procured and used in the USA, the country of origin of the name for this wheel arrangement. In various countries, such as Germany and Poland, Prairie locomotives were among the last new designs of steam locomotives.
Country overview
Germany
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Tank locomotives with this wheel arrangement spread very quickly in Germany after the good Austrian experience with the 30 series. The Württembergische T 5 , the Badische VI b and VIc as well as the Saxon XIV HT , all constructed before the First World War , were successful and were used well into the 1960s. Only the Prussian T 6 was a faulty design; the few examples were taken out of service shortly after the First World War. The German State Railroad Company acquired in 1928 more than 500 copies of their einheitsdampflokomotive the DRG Class 64 . Private railways such as the Eutin-Lübeck Railway with ELE No. 11 to 14 also procured tank locomotives with this wheel arrangement in the interwar period.
In contrast, the first tender locomotives were initially unsuccessful. The Oldenburg S 10, which was delivered in three copies in 1916, was extremely uneconomical and was retired after less than ten years. The Badische IV g was a real misconstruction , which had insufficient running properties and was not satisfactory either on flat land routes or on the Black Forest Railway. The Baden State Railways gave the five copies in 1918 in the course of deliveries after the armistice from Compiègne to France . The French side also wanted to get rid of the locomotives soon and agreed to return them to Germany, which was again refused in Baden. They were finally retired in France in the early 1930s.
It was not until 1941 that the Reichsbahn received prairie tender locomotives again. The DR class 23 , procured in two pre -series copies, was to be procured as a passenger locomotive from 1941 in up to 800 copies as a replacement for the Prussian P 8 , but the Second World War made these plans obsolete in favor of urgently required freight locomotives. After the war, both the Deutsche Bundesbahn with the DB class 23 and the East German Reichsbahn with the DR class 23.10 each procured a good 100 new prairie locomotives. Due to the structural change, the last copies ended their service after an average of less than 20 years of use until the mid-1970s.
Austria-Hungary
Prairie locomotives were very successful in Austria as well as in Hungary and were procured in large numbers. The kkStB 29 and kkStB 229 , which were used in almost all of the successor states of Austria-Hungary after 1918 , were the successors to the first series 30 of the kkStB, which was procured for one of the Austrian-Hungarian state railways as a locomotive for suburban trains and branch lines.
The relatively low permissible axle loads on the kkStB lines made the prairie locomotives very suitable for both express and passenger train traffic. With the kkStB 110, Karl Gölsdorf developed a powerful express train locomotive that was procured not only by the kk state railways but also by various private railways of the Danube monarchy such as the Kaschau-Oderberger Bahn (KOB). Based on the 110, further successor types were created up to the last kkStB 910, which was procured from 1916 . Gölsdorf developed the kkStB 329 and its successor series, the kkStB 429, as a passenger locomotive .
The Hungarian state railway MÁV also ordered copies of the kkStB 329 and also procured several series of prairie locomotives based on their own designs. The MÁV class 322 (MÁV IIIs) was used as an express train locomotive from 1908 , followed by almost 900 units of the MÁV series 324 , the most popular Hungarian express locomotive, delivered from 1909 . From 1907, MÁV put the 375 and 376 series into service as tank locomotives for branch lines and local traffic . The last copies of the 375 series were delivered in 1959 and were among the last Hungarian steam locomotives in service.
Most of the locomotives remained in service on the various successor railways for a long time after 1918 and some of them were still purchased, for example in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia . The last Gölsdorf locomotives with this wheel arrangement were in service until after the Second World War.
Switzerland
Tender locomotives of the type Prairie were never procured in Switzerland. In contrast, the wheel arrangement was widely used as a tank locomotive.
After various private railways had already procured corresponding locomotives, for example the Eb 3/5 of the Bodensee-Toggenburg Railway or the Ec 3/5 of the Thunerseebahn , the SBB procured 34 copies of the SBB Eb 3/5 from 1911 . They were used as multi-purpose locomotives for the SBB almost until the end of steam operation.
Poland
Apart from the locomotives taken over by the PKP after 1919 from their predecessor railways, which also included former kkStB prairies, for example the kkStB series 329 classified as PKP series Ol11, the Polish state railway procured two prairie series, one each as a tender - and one as a tender locomotive.
From 1928 122 examples of the heavy tank locomotive of the PKP class OKl27 were built . After the war, the PKP received 112 copies of the PKP series Ol49 . Both series have proven themselves well and have been used for decades. The last copies of the Ol49 stayed in the PKP's plan service until around 1990.
United Kingdom
In Great Britain the Prairie-Type was not widely used as a tender locomotive. Only the LNER class V2 , designed by Nigel Gresley for the LNER, was purchased in large numbers and proved to be an ideal multi-purpose locomotive that was suitable for both express trains and freight trains.
Apart from the V2 class, tank locomotives were built almost exclusively. Both British Railways and three of the four predecessor companies (with the exception of the Southern Railway) built larger series with this wheel arrangement , starting with the GWR class 4500 procured by the Great Western Railway from 1906 , such as the BR standard class 2MT , the BR- Standard class 3MT , the LNER class V1 and the LMS class 3MT .
Russia / Soviet Union
In Russia and the Soviet Union, the Prairie design was widely used, especially as an express locomotive, and developed into a standard locomotive. From 1910, Russian railways received the first copies of the С series . 678 units of the series had been built by 1919. The Warsaw-Vienna Railway received a further 15 slightly modified, standard-gauge copies.
After the end of the tsarist empire, class С locomotives ran in the Soviet Union and Latvia . Based on this successful design, a reinforced and improved version in the form of the SŽD series Су was developed in the newly founded USSR from 1924 , which was procured in large numbers in the following years. It was modified several times up to 1951 and a total of almost 2,700 copies were built.
For express train traffic in the USSR, the locomotives provided most of the services until the appearance of the SŽD series ИС from the mid-1930s. They remained in service almost across the country in front of express trains until the 1960s. In total, over 3400 prairie locomotives were built for the Russian and Soviet railways, and according to other sources even around 3700 units, which was the world's largest fleet of prairie locomotives.
Italy
Prairie locomotives were also widely used in express train service in Italy. From 1906, the Ferrovie dello Stato (FS) initially received the four-cylinder wet steam composite locomotives of the FS 680 series . In line with technical developments, the FS soon switched to superheated steam . From 1912 up to 1927, 235 units of the class FS 685 , designed as quadruple superheated steam locomotives, were built, making them the most frequently built Italian express steam locomotives.
In parallel, additional copies as a series 685.8 with Caprotti - valve control supplied. Five locomotives were converted to Franco-Crosti locomotives from 1939 and designated as FS 683 . They also received streamlined cladding .
Yugoslavia
As early as 1912, an express train locomotive designated as the JDŽ 01 series from 1933 , like the FS 685, a quadruple superheated steam locomotive, was delivered to the then Serbian State Railways as early as 1912 . After a total of 120 units were delivered by German locomotive companies as reparations from 1922, it was the most frequently built express locomotive on the Yugoslav state railways. At the same time, the mechanical engineering department of the Serbian State Railways had also developed a variant as a four-cylinder wet-steam composite locomotive in 1912, which was used in eight copies, but was less successful than the 01 series. The locomotives classified as JDŽ 04 were retired by the end of the 1940s. The 01 series, one of which was given streamlined cladding in the 1930s, remained in service with the last copies until 1985. The Yugoslav state railways also used prairie types taken over from Austria and Hungary, for example the former kkStB 110 as JDŽ 110 and the former kkStB 329 as JDŽ 107. With 87 pieces in Yugoslavia, the former MÁV series classified as JDŽ 22 was also widespread 324 .
literature
- Wolfgang Messerschmidt : 1 C 1. Development and spread of the prairie locomotives. Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung , Stuttgart 1966
