Interesting website

February 2018

During the ever ongoing research for the book with the working title “Baldwin/Westinghouse Electric Locomotives in Europe after 1945; the pre-history of the Netherlands Railways class 1200 and Spanish Railways class 7800/278” I stumbled upon a website which turned out rather more than usually interesting from the knowledge point of view. Besides, the article sports a video compilation of run-pasts of the Pennsylvania Railroad class T1 and T1a Duplex steam locomotives. I won’t say more about them, but everything on that website is well-worth a look as nothing quite similar to what is dealt with ever rode European tracks (that is except heavy duplex freight engines in France under the Andre Chapelon regime, and these most certainly did not reach the speeds these Pennsy monsters reputedly attained). Apart from that, they were un-American intricate machines. Many pages of illuminating reading matter about the why and how; e.g. read up about the reasoning for the split drive.
In my case the main reason to read all this was the Raymond Loewy developed “sharknose” streamline shrouding, complete with the reporting lights that turned up on the noses of those Italian built Chilean locomotives on the T1a version. On that score still nothing about Baldwin/Westinghouse/PRR involvement has been proved yet but hey, never mind, I’m still smiling. That is apart from the fact, incidentally, that Westinghouse delivered the entire Chilean electrification programme in 1923, including virtually all the traction. And that around 1960 neither Breda nor Marelli in Italy had any experience delivering locomotives of any kind to Chile, but they had experience with Westinghouse kit (but then again, in those post-WWII days virtually everyone had experience with either Westinghouse or General Electric kit; that was as such no big deal). Oh, and The Chilean loco’s didn’t look like anything Italian manufacturers put on their home tracks, yet had a decidedly US ambience to them. And, Westinghouse closed down its activities on the electric traction market in 1953 and Baldwin followed suit in 1954, yet both still traded their licenses. So if you wanted Baldwin and Westinghouse technology for your locomotives, you ordered them from somewhere else based on those licenses. That’s how the Spanish got their second delivery of class 7800/278 in 1960, right when the Italians delivered the Chilean machines. But that’s all in the book
The website is http://revivaler.com/pennsylvania-railroad-t1-t1a-duplex/. The subject is Pennsylvania Railroad T1 and T1a Duplex steam locomotives. The site-owner is Revivaler, est 2014, which deals with all things heavy, explosive, made of steel and, frankly, interesting.