5 Otherwise Great Trains With One Annoying Flaw | History in the Dark

As a firefighter, I know about the physics of water. To those unaware, inside a fire truck and indeed inside ANY large vehicle designed to hold liquids, there are specially designed bulkheads that divide the tank as a whole into compartments that limit the liquids motion. They generally have a small opening up top that allows water to flow forwards and backwards depending on if you're going uphill or downhill and assists when going on curves.

A bit hard to criticise a Pacific built to haul passenger trains when they're put on heavy freight duties. That's not a fault, it's mismanagement

Honorable mention: all locomotives of the Midland Railway and their axleboxes.

Personally I think the K4 should be swapped for the T1 in this list, the reason being the "annoying flaw" you mentioned isn't a fault of the locomotives themselves but in the locomotives being used in the absolute worst way you could use a locomotive of that design. First of all, the K4s pacific was exceptionally powerful for a 4-6-2, its the main reason they held on until 1958 despite being a 40 year old design at that point, however they were still 4-6-2s. They had incredible power at speed with long strings of passenger equipment owing mainly to their large boiler and tall drivers giving them good top speed performance, however if you know anything about tall drivers you'll already see the problem. Using a locomotive best suited to high speed passenger running on flat trackage as a freight hauler in the Appalachian mountains isn't just a bad idea, its a monumental misuse of the equipment they had. Pennsy already had locomotives that were specifically meant to fill those roles in the form if the L1s, I1s, M1a/b and even the later J1s and Q2s, the problem wasn't that the K4 had too little power, the problem was she had power for a completely different kind of running and Pennsy simply was not using the locomotives they already had to the best of their strengths. So why the T1? Well because unlike the K4s, the T1 actually did have an annoying and eventually fatal flaw, that being wheel slipping. Due to the extremely high profile of the drivers, and the distribution of the weight over two sets of four wheels instead of one set of eight, it meant the locomotives had a tendency to slip bad when starting a train... Simply put the T1 wasn't heavy enough for the amount of power it put to the rail. PRR engineers were used to the K4s which needed a lot of steam to kick their heavy passenger trains into motion but had very little trouble with slipping due to the incredible weight on the drivers... The T1s needed precisely the opposite, with an extremely gentle hand being required while starting a train due to the low factor of adhesion and extremely high steaming ability of the boiler being a perfect combination to spin out one or sometimes even both sets of drivers. Modifications to the class in the late 40s as well as improved engineer training eventually eliminated this problem. But by the time they had worked the kinks out of the design, this single minor annoyance had turned into a fatal flaw and ultimately sealed the fate of the T1s, with the impressive duplexes all scrapped within the first phase of dieselization due mostly to the bad reputation they had built as slippery and unpredictable locomotives.

4:45 - 5:01 now that is a villain right there.

Speaking as someone who knew the British Rail Class 33 in service, I have to say, with the greatest respect, whoever you got your information from, you need to get your money back from. The BR Class 33 was one of the best locomotives ever produced. Popular with traincrew and passengers alike. They could easily out-perform a Class 37, which on paper was stronger, had 6 powered axles (not 4), a heavier weight and a higher top speed. In multiple, a pair was superb, and in triples, they were truly phenomenal. Very versatile on passenger and freight. The 33/0 standard design was great. The 33/1 push pull design was used on high speed passenger duty for decades. The 33/2 Hastings Gauge loco showed that you could even put them in a narrower body, perfectly fine. Of all the thousands of locos I have had across the globe, none of the Class 33 I have enjoyed has ever failed. Not even once. As for saying the ETH (HEP in North American speak) was not need, what on earth ! The lines they covered were electric heating long before to the introduction of the Class 33.

Uh oh br is back

4:45 I really like that voice for the NER Class V locomotive. Coal, coal, more coal! O.M.GOODNESS!

The class 33 never had steam boilers. There was/is an issue however with them, and in fact all locomotives built by BRCW (classes 26, 27 and 33). That's rust, and lots of it. The cab roof is made of glasfiber reinforced resin. The connection to the steel body above the window line always started leaking over time and water could enter. You wouldn't see the water as it dripped down behind the sound deadening cladding inside the cab, but would pool on the floor behind the instrument panel, and cause the underside of the cab front to rot, in severe cases including structural members. Most BRCW locomotives still in existence had their cab fronts rebuilt or is needing a rebuild.

Love NYC 3001. Her location is Elkhart, In. There is a big push to get her running again. My grandpa took me to the museum when I was little. Taking my kids there to see her. Hope my grandchildren will get a chance to take a train ride in the future.

The GCR class V reminds me of one of my favorite steam locomotives: the NS 3900’s. These were very coal hungry to the point that firemen started calling them executioners. This problem was also present with the very similar 6300’s, but without the rest of the problems.

So The Dieseasel is now British Rail's theme right?

The U30 hood units were very good locomotives on coal trains and other heavy freight. Burlington Northern used a lot of them on those Powder River Basin coal trains out of Wyoming. BN replaced them with new General Electric C30-7s - basically a reworked and improved U30.

4:45 FEAST MODE ACTIVATED! HASHTAG HUNGRY! FEED ME MORE DOT COME!

Keep this addicting content rolling!

4:43 THE ONLY THING THEY FEAR IS: NER CLASS V

What if you did 5 most annoyingly average trains ever? (Also I suggest renaming it to 5 of the okayest trains ever.)

1:05 I have a vintage belt buckle with K4 5475 on it. I know it's a K4 because it has PENNSYLVANIA on the tender, and the Pennsy-style number plate on the smokebox says 5475 on it. I looked up her road number, and it came up as a K4.

4:45 — 5:01 ok this is the closest darkness the curse has gotten to Meat canyon levels

Their was another locomotive before the u30cg . called the u28cg, these engine were like the u30cg without the full with body.it just looked like a stranded u28c freight engine . 10 where order in 1966.but sadly santa fe didn't like them . they were number 350-359.