Steam engine Big Boy #4014

[Astro_Guy]

Caught it coming through Linfield PA on the 2nd. Was very cool to see in person. The temp was >100f, humidity not far behind, and the crowd was huge. Glad I was there.

A friend and colleague of mine was there at the Railroad Street Bar and Grill. He said that the police managed the situation well. We peeled off from the chase at Port Clinton and went to the Sly Fox in Pottstown for brews, pizza and wings.

Getting back to the subject of oil, did you know that steam oil is added to the boiler in order to lubricate the cylinders? Probably not in a superheated steam application like the Big Boy but that's the way it was done with simple saturated steam engines.

 

[Al]

I live a couple hours from Steamtown in Scranton which has the BigBoy. I am heading there this summer

 

[wlk]

It came through our town on Tuesday afternoon. The wife and I went and watched it behind the local college. Very cool but surprisingly quiet from what I've pictured it to be from TV and movies over the years.
Very cool

 

[frankbee3]

Yet another reason the Diesel electric locomotives are employed to help get the Big Boy started rolling, is to help prevent wheel slip. In a locomotive that weighs 1.2 million pounds, even a slight amount of wheel slip can destroy the track almost instantaneously.

Like most all locomotives, the Big Boy has the ability to drop sand, but it is much harder to control wheel slip when compared to modern Diesel electric locomotives, that have electronic torque sensors that can predict it, and automatically make power adjustments to help prevent it. Especially when the locomotive is coming near it's tractive force limits.

This damage was obviously not made by a Big Boy. But it shows just how badly this damage can occur.

View attachment 347077

Wow! Is that from a locomotive on initial acceleration that had wheel slip? I haven’t ever seen damaged tracks before.

 

[billt460]

I don't have any details on that photograph. But on a heavy locomotive it doesn't take much to damage the track once wheel slip happens. Especially if the train is stationary when it occurs. The "contact patch" of a steel drive wheel on a steel rail is all but non existent.... It's just a tangent point.

Once the wheel starts to slip, it begins to dig in and generate heat almost instantly. The friction is tremendous. Sand can help prevent this. But if the train is at a dead stop, sand is not as effective as it would be if dropped under a moving locomotive.

 

[User_19876]

Wow! Is that from a locomotive on initial acceleration that had wheel slip? I haven’t ever seen damaged tracks before.

That's from a D/E engine that didn't have an overspeed control. I've seen older trailing units and older units in distributed power service cut the rail that way. Most of those engines are gone, or are used by short lines.

 

[Reggaemon]

The time I spend searching for the perfect spot to see Big Boy was worth it.