The “Lindbergh-Engine,” shorn of its boiler-jacket, gets moved for restoration. (Photo by Carl F. Banks.)
Pennsylvania Railroad’s E-6 Atlantic (4-4-2) steam-locomotive #460 is being restored by
Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.
So says my most recent bulletin from the
National Railway Historical Society.
460 is a significant locomotive, the most significant steam-locomotive mighty Pennsy saved.
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Photo by Bill Hughes.
(Bill Hughes is my younger brother.) |
| My nephew Tommy and yrs trly on the pilot of engine 460 stored outside at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. (Tom is now fully grown [in this picture, taken in 1990, he’s five]. I’m 46 in this picture, and now about 50 pounds heavier [I’m now 68].) —Like me, Tom is a railfan. |
For whatever reason the Pennsylvania Railroad saved a copy of almost all the steam-locomotives they operated.
Most railroads didn’t.
Quite a few steam-locomotives are still around — even a few are operable.
Many railroads gave away steam-locomotives for display.
Only Pennsy saved this many locomotives.
For years they were stored in a roundhouse in Northumberland, PA, including #460, the so-called “Lindbergh-Engine.”
In 1927 Charles Lindbergh returned to this country by naval ship after flying his plane solo across the Atlantic Ocean to France, a feat of tremendous daring-do.
It made him a hero, and the ship he was on sailed up the Potomac river to the Washington DC Navy-yard.
He was recognized by President Coolidge, and given various medals.
Since this was before TV, the race was on the be first to get film of the event into New York City theaters.
I’ll let my treasured “Apex of the Atlantics,” a rare book by Fred Westing I’ll never part with, describe it:
“The most important train on the Pennsylvania Railroad that unforgettable morning stood on track 8 of Washington Union Station, almost within hearing of the crowds gathered along the Potomac and around the base of the Washington Monument.
It didn’t look like an important train. It was just an engine, a baggage-express car, and a coach. But the clean white flags that hung limp on the smokebox of the locomotive, and the minor army of Pennsy officials who waited expectantly on the platform, testified this was no local, no accommodation, no mere plug run.
Extra 460 East, as the run appeared on the dispatcher’s train sheet, had been chartered by the International News Reel Company, and its engineer had orders to run when ready and run fast.
The extra was to rush a cargo of celluloid to New York — newsreels of Lindbergh’s triumphal return. Other press and film agencies had hired planes to do the job. Kinogram even arranged with “Casey” Jones, a celebrated stunt pilot of the day, to parachute its negatives down into an open lot beside the laboratories of Consolidated Film in Long Island City.
As opposed to tactics such as these, International had reasoned that the slightly slower speed of a train could be more than offset by processing the films en route to New York. To that end, PRR No. 7874 — a standard B-60-B-class steel baggage-express car — was converted into a mobile darkroom with complete facilities for developing, printing, and editing the Lindbergh reels.
On the business end of this rolling studio Pennsy coupled a tried, true speedster: superheated Atlantic #460 of the late Alfred W. Gibbs’ classic E6 classification. In fact, 460, an Altoona alumna of 1914, was the newest E6 on the system. A P70 day coach was tied on the rear, more for ballast and braking than anything else. The railroad also alerted six counties in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, briefed them on the train’s mission, and received authority to make time through their reduced speed zones. Dispatchers were cautioned to keep all freight traffic clear, and a specially picked crew was called.
Both International and Pennsy stood more than a gambler’s chance of licking their aerial competition. They had managed the maneuver before. While the average passenger train ran far slower in the roaring, rollicking 1920s than it has since the streamliner, the spur-of-the-moment, high-speed special was far more routine. On Pennsy it was commonplace.
Noon came and the tension tightened on track 8. The photographers were due. James Warren, an assistant road foreman of engines on the Baltimore Division, slipped behind the throttle while Fireman A. Hayden took a final look at his fire. Two other riders — regular Engineer Harry Andrews and W. L. Anderson, a New York Division traveling engineer — adjusted lubricators and injectors. Not a man in the cab could restrain a native enthusiasm for what lay ahead. A clear track, a good grade, an E6 Atlantic: What more could one ask.”
(I remember this myself on an excursion about 1990 with restored Nickel Plate steam-locomotive
#765 on the old Chesapeake & Ohio main through New River Gorge in WV. Green lights on the signals.
They were giving us the railroad!)
“Suddenly the automobiles came off Massachusetts Avenue, wheeled into the circular drive before the three great arches of the station building, and slammed to a stop. International’s photographers stepped out, picked up the heavy metal film cans, and raced through the waiting room, across the concourse, and down the platform at a dead run. The celluloid was hoisted onto the chest-high floor of the baggage-express car and at 12:14 p.m.
Conductor L. J. Ahern raised his arm.
Highball!
Steam cascaded out of #460’s whistle in two brief blasts of acknowledgment, and Warren hauled back on the throttle. Two pairs of 80-inch drivers bit gritty rail. Pistons moved, main rods rose and fell:
the Lindbergh Special was away, accelerating so rapidly that one of the film messengers barely had time to unload intact and uninjured.
While the train hurtled out of Maryland and across the thin span of northern Delaware, there were other men aboard with work to do and time to combat. Back in the baggage-express car, 10 International News Reel employees, most of them working in their undershirts, labored against time to prepare 10 complete films. The reels of freshly exposed negatives were put into tanks of developer and hypo, washed, and hung on large drying drums. Swiftly, surely, William Hearfield and Leonard Mitchell cut, edited, and spliced the finished film for the waiting projectors along Broadway.
At one point a plane chartered by a rival film agency dropped down out of the blue; it hedgehopped in close to the train, and flew parallel to it at 85. Then, dipping its white wings in salute, the airplane climbed and headed north.
The enginemen and trainmen of sidetracked freights waved their caps and cheered the Special on as it flashed past. The speed went up to 90, 95, 100, 105 — and on up until, according to a Railroad Man’s Magazine report by foreman Anderson, it hit 115 mph. From Wilmington to Brill’s, just south of Philadelphia, 23.3 miles were swirled away in 17&1/2 minutes. Andrews took over the right-hand seat box and straightway proceeded to whip the Special through the intricate terminal trackage of Philadelphia at a gait which one junior publicity man riding the coach behind can only recall as an ‘odd experience, indeed.’
Anderson took the throttle at North Philadelphia and urged 460 up to the highest sustained speed of the entire trip. He averaged 85 miles an hour from Holmesburg Junction, PA, to South Street, Newark, covering 66.6 miles, including one slow-up to pick up water on the fly, in 47 minutes flat.
There was naught in the prior experience of steam propulsion to match time like that. Nor was there anything in the record of high-density metropolitan railroading to compare with it. As it bulleted toward New York, the train was not slowed by a single caution or stop signal indication, yet it delayed not one other passenger train. And not once was the throttle of #460 wide open!
It was as polished a performance as Pennsy had ever pulled off — this 100-mile-an-hour running right up the spine of the most heavily trafficked railroad division in the nation.
The busy darkroom personnel testified that their studio was free from excessive vibration and roadbed dust; their work was done as easily and as swiftly as if they had been in a conventional lab.
The triumphant Lindbergh Special swept through Newark, came on past interlocker CK, and ground to a halt at Manhattan Transfer at 3:09 p.m. The 216 miles from Washington, including a stop for water, had been covered in 175 minutes at an average speed of 74 mph.
But there were still miles to be made. Carmen stepped between tender and baggage-express car, parted the air hoses, and lifted the coupling pin. The big E6 moved ahead and off the main line. A two-unit, 4,000-horsepower DD1 electric locomotive clanked back into its place. At 3:12 traveling engineer Lew Towell notched back the controller. The DD1, its third-rail shoes pawing for direct current, silently stole away. The double unit and two cars gathered speed and fairly raced along the high fill of the Bergen Cutoff over the Jersey Meadows, heeled to the curve winding into the Hackensack Portal of the Hudson River Tubes, and dropped down the 1.3 per cent grade within the long tunnel. At 3:21 the Special came alongside a high-level platform in Pennsylvania Station, the 8.6 miles in from Manhattan Transfer having been run in 9 minutes.
The 10 completed newsreels were handed to special messengers who raced, under police escort, to Broadway theaters. Within 15 minutes of the train’s arrival, the boyish face and slender form of Lindy was on the screens. The pictures raced by train were shown more than an hour before those flown in by the competition.
Lindy had come home — to New York as well as to Washington.”
In other words
the railroad won! It beat the airplanes!
Gibbs’ E6 Atlantic was a
monster.
For most railroads (even Pennsy, the E3) the 4-4-2 Atlantic was their first step away from the 4-4-0 American.
By putting the firebox atop a separate trailing truck behind the driver-set, the firebox wasn’t limited in width as it had been between the drivers of a 4-4-0.
It could be bigger, as could the boiler.
But most railroads’ Atlantics were still teapots.
Just not the E6.
Gibbs' E6 Atlantic was manifestation of Pennsy’s abhorrence of the added driver-set of a Pacific (4-6-2).
Even early Pacifics were teapots, even Pennsy, its K2 Pacific.
But Pennsy thought it could get Pacific performance out of an Atlantic.
The E6 was definitely not a teapot.
It used the largish boiler of Pennsy’s recent Consolidations (2-8-0).
Compared to most railroads’ Atlantics, it was much bigger, and could perform equal to an early Pacific.
Performance was so outstanding the E6 was assigned to premier passenger-service on Pennsy’s New York City to Washington DC line, at that time still a steam railroad.
The New York City to Washington DC line also wasn’t very challenging. It wasn’t hilly, so didn’t require immense power.
What it needed was sustained high-speed operation. —That was the E6.
The line wasn’t electrified until later, the ‘30s, and is now part of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
The only part not steam were the tunnels under the Hudson river to New York City.
Steam locomotion wasn’t even allowed into New York, and those tunnels couldn’t operate steam-locomotives.
Steam would have asphyxiated itself, the operating crew, and probably even the passengers.
Steam locomotion was changed out for third-rail electric locomotion at Manhattan Transfer, just north of Newark.
When the railroad was fully electrified, Manhattan Transfer was shut down and abandoned.
When the New York City to Washington DC line was fully electrified the E6 became sort of moribund.
But a few were saved to operate short trains.
460 was one of the ones saved, and I may even have ridden behind it myself.
In about 1949 my father took us on a short railroad trip from Haddonfield (“had-in-FIELD;” as in “had”) NJ to Philadelphia.
Our train was pulled by an E6 Atlantic, which may have been 460.
460 was one of the Atlantics in use on Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (“RED-ing;” not “READ-ing”), otherwise known as PRSL.
The railroad-line through Haddonfield was the old Camden & Atlantic line, which was bought by Pennsy and became part of PRSL.
PRSL used both Pennsy and Reading steam-engines, including Pennsy’s E6 Atlantic. PRSL also used Pennsy’s famous K4 Pacific. —One of the last steam-locomotives I saw in regular revenue service was a K4 in 1956. It was leading a horse race-track special, and was very rusty.
Pennsy saved #460 as its example of the E6 Atlantic. (They also saved an E3.)
They could have saved another, but 460 was the Lindbergh engine.
460 had a very distinctive whistle-sound, and I remember it as a child (although I don’t remember it as 460).
I have an old recording of 460, and I remember that whistle-sound.
460 probably started with the standard Pennsy passenger-whistle, but it degraded over the years. The standard Pennsy passenger-whistle had two adjacent notes of a chord.
But 460’s whistle degraded to two tones of pretty much the same note.
I hope the restoration has the degraded sound. A standard Pennsy passenger-whistle on 460 would not be right.
About 1968 or ’69 I visited
Horseshoe Curve near Altoona. PA (“al-TUNE-uh;” as in the name “Al”), probably my second visit.
At that time Horseshoe Curve was not the National Historic Site it now is. It didn’t have the museum, nor the funicular (‘foo-NICK-ya-ler”) railroad up to its viewing-area.
You had to climb a long staircase.
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| Photo by BobbaLew. |
At that time Horseshoe Curve had a small private gift-shop run by a railfan, and they were selling plastic reproductions of red Pennsy keystone number-plates.
Various numbers were available. “I’ll take that one,” I said, pointing to the plastic reproduction of 460’s number-plate.
“Do you realize how significant that number-plate is?” the proprietor asked.
“Of course I do,” I said. “That’s 460, the Lindbergh-engine. That’s why I picked it!”
If they get 460 running, and they probably will, that’s worth a trip for this old railfan to Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania just to see and hear it.
Too bad it will probably be operated on the nearby
Strasburg Railroad tourist line.
That’s perhaps 20-25 mph tops, hardly what an E6 would be capable of.
• “Superheat” is to circulate already generated steam back through the exhaust-flues of the locomotive firebox to raise the temperature of the steam. “Superheat” made the locomotive more efficient and powerful. The concept of “superheat” came into use about the turn of the century. The first experimental E6 wasn’t superheated, but later E6s were. Earlier locomotives were “wet;” not superheated. Superheat involves a lot of piping, plus a head to collect the steam for superheating. “Superheat” made the steam “dry.”
• “Holmesburg Junction” is just north of Philadelphia.
• “Haddonfield” was an old Revolutionary War town in south Jersey, just south of the suburb (of Philadelphia) we lived in.
• “Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines” (PRSL) is an amalgamation of Pennsylvania and Reading railroad-lines in south Jersey to counter the fact the two railroads had too much parallel track. It was promulgated in 1933. It serviced mainly the Jersey seashore from Philadelphia.
• A “funicular railroad” is a short inclined railroad up a very steep grade. It’s sort of an elevator, in that the cars are winched up the incline. The cars at Horseshoe Curve (there are two) are painted Pennsy passenger-colors, Tuscan-red (“TUSS-kin;” not “Tucson, Ariz.”) —You use the funicular to avoid the long 10-story staircase. The grade up is probably around 100% or more (that’s 100 feet up for every 100 feet forward). There are other funiculars, even steeper, in other places, like Johnstown PA.Labels: trains
