1200 Book Progress

As far as the pre-history of classes 1200 in The Netherlands and 278 in Spain is concerned, after receipt of Mr. Michael Bezilla’s wonderful little book about electric traction on the Pennsylvania Railroad I feel confident that I can tell a discerning readership about that side of the story. PRR needed electric traction for the projected tunnels under Manhattan and into Queen’s to connect with the Long Island Railroad and eventually with the New Haven Railroad, both of whom were into electric traction as well. As was, in fact, the New York Central, Pennsy’s big competitor, for the same reason. Tunnels to replace ferries across waterways were the great driving force behind electrification in the USA, which started with the Baltimore & Ohio in Baltimore and spread all over the country from there. Hence the reason why networks hardly ever were connected; you chose points somewhere en-route where steam loco’s had to be exchanged or refilled as change-over points for traction anyway. The offer from a manufacturer gave you a choice for different electrification systems, often in pure competition without any consideration as to possible future connection with another system. Because of this piecemeal electrification based on local needs, two different electrification systems hardly ever met. Pennsy was OK with New Haven on the 11 kV 25 Hz AC long-distance system and owned the LIRR with its 600 volts DC third rail, so those two systems is what Pennsy got and work with without undue problems as the result of their series-wound traction motors for both systems, but in the end they did electrify the tunnels with their AC to meet New Haven for onward trips under AC to the North-eastern seaboard. In those early days, however, the trains to Chicago, Baltimore and Washington DC left Penn station in New York on 600 V DC to a station literally out in the middle of yellow fever riddled swamps called, yes, Manhattan Transfer! What an evocative name, though; much more so than the present Flushing Meadows etcetera! That’s where the steam locomotive for stations further down the line hooked up. More interesting is their choice for the type of loco. During tests, which Pennsy started with two Bo’Bo’ all-adhesion DC loco’s on bogies, they found that at higher speeds these machines severely misbehaved as far as what in the US is called tracking is concerned; those bogies were hunting (veterden) like mad. A third locomotive, a 2’B with a big traction motor high over the wheels and conceived as one half of a pair coupled back to back, did none of these things. PRR’s steam locomotivwe based understandable conclusion was that a sort of steam loco lookalike, with its “track-preparing” bogie ahead of fixed driving wheels and the high centre of gravity installed in the heavy boiler, was what was needed as an electric version. This conclusion determined Pennsy’s ideas about proper electric locomotives right through to the late thirties when their famous GG1 2’Co’Co’2′ electrics were built. No further orders followed until 1949/1950.
A thing to remember in this whole story is that General Electric (GE) and Westinghouse initially stood diametrically opposite each other in the AC versus DC battle. GE, who incidentally had great influence on the French decision to initially electrify with 1.5 kV DC, was the low voltage DC from top-running third rail or catenary proponent, Westinghouse was the high voltage AC from catenary proponent. In order to be able to deliver systems to Pennsy, who wanted multi-supplier chains to avoid being dependent on one manufacturer, both companies came to an agreement whereby they were allowed to freely use each other’s patents to manufacture their own kit. Not just for Pennsy, as things turned out, but across the spectrum of US (and beyond) rail transport electrification. I experienced this a bit when opening equipment cupboards on the average electric train in Europe and finding kit from various, often competing, suppliers looking at you. This obviously blurred the lines as to whom delivered what, also because notably Westinghouse Electric traditionally had made a living from licensing other suppliers all over the world to use their patents and equipment. Undoubtedly this actually meant that stuff they marketed based on GE patents came under this arrangement in order to supply complete systems. We see later, for instance, that the Italian Ercole Marelli group claims to have been the manufacturer of two types of late 1950’s Chilean FF CC DEL E electric locomotives, but when you look at the machines and see e.g. their quill-drive with fully suspended traction motors, then these shout Baldwin/Westinghouse, as can be seen on drawings in Bezilla’s book. In truth, my experience now is that nothing much is what it seems in this world of high-power electric traction, finding out who did what with whom’s kit is as good as impossible. That is why you end up looking at design features such a headlights or ladders going to the roof of an electric locomotive, to mention but one thing, to determine where PRR/Baldwin/Westinghouse stops and local manufacturers take over. As far as these Baldwin/Westinghouse quill-drives is concerned; these were the drives that were belatedly offered to NS Netherlands Railways for their 1200 Co’Co’s as well when the competing French Alsthom locomotives were thought of as having the edge because of their fully suspended traction motors. NS declined the change because it would extract even more money from them as well as delaying introduction and therewith perpetuating the costly, dirty and space-devouring steam operations they desperately wanted to get rid of since when the last new real NS steam loco’s were introduced in early 1930. These were scheduled to be gone at the latest around 1960. In actual fact the last NS operated steam trip was January 1958, something unexpected to do with winter circumstances kicking in, but in any case they still had loco’s under steam at tat time. But that, next to getting their ravaged network fully functioning again, was how bad the urge to get the traction change through was. PRR, funnily enough, never really looked hard at diesel as the future replacement for their steam traction. Even after WWII they either looked at steam or at electrification. Failing to seriously get into diesel would eventually cost Baldwin its place on the market and, after the failure of winning the PRR orders for new electric locomotives, cause them to withdraw from the traction market in 1954. They did keep licensing other manufacturers to use their patents and equipment, though, as well as organising US manufacture of equipment like bogies if that gave problems with the at the time otherwise engaged and often limited in capacity operating European manufacturers. That, in fact, is the basis of this whole story.
Incidentally (and as an aside), reading up on the dangers of using steam traction in tunnels to be solved through electrification, I unexpectedly ran into two cases of multiple deaths near Detroit in 1898 and in 1904. Being there in 1982/83, I dearly wish I had known of this aspect of the St. Clair tunnel between Michigan, US, and Ontario, CDN, instead of checking out the equally interesting steam driven train ferries across the river or accidents with big ships on the great lakes (look up the Edmund Fitzgerald on the internet). There isn’t much about the 1898 accident, but the 1904 accident concerns a breakaway of a coal train at the bottom of the short but steep old and narrow St. Clair tunnel. The driver and the fireman survived the first wave of choking on coal gas, carbon monoxide, by managing to get their bit of the train out after the brake pipe cocks (angle cocks) had been closed by people down below (who then died). But the driver then decided to go back to push the whole train out back toward the US side, which would require someone in the tunnel to either connect the brake pipe of the standing portion to release the brakes, or walk along the standing portion to release the brakes by venting the brake cylinders car after car. The same sort of perhaps somewhat blind devotion to getting the job done properly that we see notably in the Swiss Rickentunnel accident in 1924 or the Italian Armi tunnel disaster of 1944. Anyway, the driver succumbed during that part of the manoeuvre, but the fireman escaped this fate by hiding himself in the still half full boiler water tank on the tender, close the lid and await rescue there. He was in that cold, dark tank for two hours before rescue got him out of the tunnel and he could get out in the fresh air again. Six people, i.e. the entire train crew minus one, died there. Wim Coenraad, one of the readers of these rambles, almost poetically called it a negative systemic feature of that kind of rail traction. That cannot be improved on.
After the war things had quite dramatically changed for the electric operations on the Pennsylvania Railroad. To say that their rail network, smack-bang where military despatch of large contingents of personnel as well as where the mid-Western production capacity met the Atlantic seaboard with its large harbours that allowed the using of the necessary maritime capacity to Europe and North-Africa, had been run into the ground is overdoing it. But traction and infrastructure did receive a bashing, in fact notably because their electric traction had made PRR by far the most efficient operator to get the heavy supply trains dockside and back out again. There literally never was delay due to shortage of traction for a train because an electric that came in was immediately able to be run around and depart again instead of having to be cleaned out, refuelled and watered and only then be hooked up. PRR electric traction, however, mostly stemming from the 1920’s and 1930’s, had nevertheless received a thorough grinding in the process, which now urgently needed to be addressed. At that same time US manufacturing prowess, that really came alive during WWII, looked for markets: the other side of the otherwise truly generous Marshall-Help initiative. Submarines with their need for diesel-electric power from small, rapid running yet powerful and most of all reliable motors, turned out to be ideal for developing non-steam rail traction purposes. Huge fleets of diesel-electric locomotives on bogies were soon being introduced that didn’t stink (in comparison with steam), didn’t need to stop several times to take water and fuel, rode well, were cheap, ran on dirt cheap fuel, had most of the traction advantages of the electric locomotives and none of those dreaded first cost issues and the fact that you had to dedicate yourself to electric traction to make it worth your while. So in case, like PRR, you wanted new electric locomotives, then these were to take their place against new diesel electric locomotives, no longer steam locomotives. And one of the ways to prepare the ground for new electrics was to make as much as possible exchangeable with the diesels. Furthermore, For heavy haul across the Appalachians the DC-series motor had quite a few advantages over the up to then used AC-series motor whilst D.E. traction all used DC traction. So DC traction was going to be the norm. The obvious outcome was that PRR ordered a number of test locomotives from both General Electric and from Baldwin/Lima/Hamilton and Westinghouse Electric. All had to be full-adhesion bogie machines and preferably with DC traction motors. The exterior design of these machines was in fact pure Pennsy, based on the initial shark-nose design of a massive great passenger steam locomotive and then continued in early series of Baldwin/Westinghouse diesel-electric locomotives. The development of this feature in its international context can be traced, interestingly, from a drawing of the 1200 as Baldwin/Westinghouse imagined the locomotive would look like (page 21 of the Bouman book on the 1200), to the changes Netherlands Railways incorporated (probably to get a stronger buffer beam for the side-buffers employed), via the Spanish locomotive (same reason) into a diesel electric of this period that was delivered to the General Roca (FEPASA) railway in Brazil (also with buffers), but then designed back to US pattern for the Italian built Bo’Bo’ and Co’Co’ designs for the Chilean broad gauge CC FF DEL E electrics E-30 and E-32. Those locomotives, especially the Co’Co’s, are as popular there as the 1200 is in Europe, incidentally.
Back to PRR and its wish for new traction to revitalise notably their heavy freight operations. GE came with the E2b, six single cab Bo’Bo’ machines with full AC traction based on tap-changers that could be multiple-united with existing Pennsy electrics. These machines did not actually satisfy the haulage demand but as AC loco’s come they weren’t at all bad: a couple could handle 7,800 ton trains. Yet, no further orders came for these. Baldwin/Westinghouse, however, came with a novelty that turned out the long looked-for bridge across the gap between the desired high tension AC in the catenary and low tension DC for the traction motors. That was the liquid mercury-based ignitron rectifier, converting the AC to DC. Once you had this DC link at your disposition you could either use the tap-changer off the transformer to regulate the DC traction motor voltage, or you could make it straight DC operation at stepped down 3 or 1.5 kV through using resistances to regulate the traction voltage. The AC side in the Westinghouse test loco’s consisted of the usual high-tension main switch gear and the transformer with tap changer on the secondary winding. the stepped down AC voltage was then fed through the ignitron tubes, two per motor to rectify both the positive and the negative ends of the AC sinus wave, then fed it through equipment to take out any pulse remains in order to not interfere with the signalling track-circuits and then feed the DC to traction motors that were fitted in bogies as used in diesel electric traction as well. All sorts of possibilities opened up now, such as using loco’s under the wires, on DC from the third rail in tunnels and out in the open as diesels. We see this same sort of bi-mode talk in the UK at the moment now that electrification of the Great Western main Line, part of my old working environment, turns out to be substantially more expensive then imagined and calculated. Got a few things to say on that score as well but let’s leave it for now. Anyhow, Baldwin-Westinghouse delivered one set of two single cab Co’Co’ machines, indicated as E-2c, coupled back to back, able to be coupled up with straight AC loco’s when required and if a complete failure able to reasonably easy be converted to staight AC loco’s. Then came a second set of identical Bo’Bo’Bo’ loco’s with three two-axle bogies, called E-3b, with all the features mentioned above. All these loco’s primarily were meant as freight haulers, their maximum speed was 65 mph, 105 km/h, but their pulling power (35 tonnes axle weight) was sufficient to move 12,000 ton train weight unassisted. This explains a lot, notably about the Spanish locomotive that was hardly ever used for passenger traffic and was considered hard on the track: the PRR locomotives never actually were meant to be used for fast traffic like the 100 mph/ 160 km/h express trains the PRR operated like between Washington DC and new York, or Chicago and New York. The behaviour of bogies at high speed was something of a hit or miss thing at the time anyway, and the usual conclusion was still that the longer the bogie the better the tracking behaviour. Hence the A1A’A1A’ or Co’Co’ bogies long used on fast passenger traffic throughout the world. If you want to see the potential damage from using two-axle bogies for very high speed at that time, check out the damage resulting from the French very high speed tests in 1953 between Morcenx and Lamothe near Bordeaux. Where the 1.5 kV DC pantograph actually split as 4,000 amps were exceeded, visible in that amazing flash at the contact point. The PRR AC to DC rectifiers, however, didn’t show up as reliable, even if they exceeded all expectations as far as pulling power is concerned. Soon they stood in the repair shops more often than not and that for longer times than being out on the road and doing their job. As the GE AC machines didn’t fill the demand either, the lot were scrapped in 1964. Baldwin, seeing that they didn’t break into the traction market, closed its rail traction construction operations in 1954. PRR did now order rectifier locomotives from GE, the E44 freight Co’Co’s based on 3,300 Hp Virginian loco’s, that were everything that they had been looking for. Especially when the space consuming ignitrons were replaced with rather smaller solid-state silicon rectifiers. This did away with a raft of problems as far as the necessary cooling of the system is concerned (the Achilles heel of the otherwise equally impressive GE built ignitron EP5 New Haven Co’Co’s that resemble the Dutch 1200’s) and this became the basis for the set-up for the modern electric locomotive.
So what am I actually looking for at this moment? I look for locomotives built by Baldwin/Westinghouse or based on their equipment but built by their licensees from the period after 1945. I look for technically analogous machines that display a family relationship in their design features, based on PRR ideas about what a locomotive should look like. So far I found the Baldwin/Westinghouse/Pennsy E2c and E3b test locomotives as the basic design (mentioned as such by Bouman in his book on the 1200), from which the Netherlands 1200 and the Spanish 278 clearly stem. All these machines have about 2,200 kW power and in features and design show characteristics that make them related to each other. The Italian built Chilean machines, built at the 1960 end of this period, only partially adhere to this set-up and it turns out difficult to anywhere near prove that Baldwin and Westinghouse licenses were actually involved, but there is one book that mentions this relationship and design features (yes, those Baldwin quill drives, PRR ladders right next to the cab entrance and the mentioned Baldwin drawing of what they thought the Dutch 1200 was going to look like) suggest that such a relationship might well be there. Apart from that, Marelli and Westinghouse have history together, but so does virtually every other manufacturer of electrical products including, to mention but a few, English Electric and Siemens. In all cases I look at the fact that there must have been previous deliveries of Baldwin Westinghouse electric traction equipment as the basis for the post-war inquiries. In all cases it turned out there was, during the 1920’s for each and every one as things go. We hit FEPASA Co’Co’s, Spanish Co’Co’s and the Dutch Indonesian 1Bo’Bo1′ machines already mentioned before. As a result I am quite happy to start writing up on the US and the Dutch end of things. I am still studying on the Spanish machines and am still looking hard to find better proof of Westinghouse being involved in the Chilean machines. I’ll start writing in English as I find that (my head hanging in shame) easier than writing in Dutch. I’ll translate the English text to Dutch myself but will have to find a translator who can handle rail transport issues to convert the text to Spanish. And that is where I am for now. Last but not least, one type of Baldwin/Westinghouse diesel-electric must be mentioned, the 1.500 Hp Spanish broad gauge but Brazilian operated General Roca A1A’A1A’ machines that clearly show reverse engineering features from the blunt 1200 and 278 nose-ends to the somewhat more charming looking shark-nose of PRR, still allowing for those old-fashioned buffer beams.