As with all engines, it starts with the boiler. Ward and his team have already determined that the 1361 is eminently restorable, provided the funds get raised. Every class of heavy passenger engine developed later in the U.S. engineers in 1918 for United States Railroad Administration in several classes - designs which became popular on a number of railroads even after the war - were influenced by the K4’s proportions. “The standardized locomotives developed by U.S.
Keefe “The legacy of the K4s was pervasive,” Withuhn explained. Smithsonian curator and steam-locomotive authority Bill Withuhn puts 1361 through its paces on July 26, 1987. In his book, Withuhn wrote that the K4 was an essential step in the march toward the ultimate machines of the 1930s and ’40s. Ward would get complete agreement from the late Bill Withuhn, longtime Smithsonian curator and author of American Steam Locomotives: Design and Development, 1880-1960. Between the K4s and L1s classes, the PRR at one time had nearly 1,000 locomotives in service with essentially the same boiler and many shared parts.” “The concept of commonality in components between the K4s and L1s (2-8-2) locomotives is something more similar to modern railroading than the preceding era.
PRR CLOCKER K4 SERIES
“The K4 was the first scientifically designed locomotive, wherein the railroad undertook a progressive series of tests at Altoona on predecessor models, tweaking various components to improve the design,” explains Ward. Like the DC-3 in another arena, the K4 was an engineering marvel. Old school as it might be (PRR built the engine at Altoona in 1918), the K4 has significance way beyond its simple, pre-Super Power wheel arrangement. Ward is getting to be an old hand at this sort of thing, with several locomotive projects under his team’s belt.
One of the people charged with making the miracle happen will be Davidson Ward, president of FMW Solutions LLC, the engineering firm that will oversee the restoration. Looking back over those 34 years, it’s hard to argue that what’s going on now in Altoona is any less than a miracle. Dan CupperThe on-again, off-again life of 1361 since its original 1987 restoration has been a frequent subject of conversation in steam preservation circles, a checkered story summarized in Dan Cupper’s comprehensive June 25 news report for the Trains News Wire. She paused at Tyrone, Pa., on her April 12, 1987, break-in run. As one of only two survivors (K4 3750 resides at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg), the 1361 was destined to symbolize the PRR legend.Īfter three decades on display at the Horseshoe Curve, K4 1361 was reactivated in April 1987, only to be sidelined the following year by mechanical and other problems. The K4 became a lasting symbol of the railroad, from its earliest assignments on PRR’s heavyweight limiteds of the 1920s to its commuter runs on the New York & Long Branch in the late 1950s. It was also a testimonial for a great class of 425 locomotives, most of them built in the Altoona shops. Here, Teller played it straight, portraying a machine - and a railroad - working its guts out under the toughest conditions. It was, of course, Teller’s masterpiece, On Time, showing K4 5411 hustling a passenger train through a fearsome snowstorm. Most of the art was blatantly commercial - idealized scenes with multiple trains, unapologetically selling PRR mythology.īut one stood out. But I fell under its spell in 1965 when an aunt and uncle in Philadelphia bought me a set of art prints the PRR was selling, reproductions of calendar paintings by the great Grif Teller. I didn’t come along soon enough, and wasn’t in the right place, to see a K4 in regular service. A couple of weeks ago, the museum’s chairman, former NS and Amtrak CEO Wick Morman, unveiled a $2.6 million campaign to get the 1361 back on the “great broad way.” Now we’re talking!
What’s really got me excited now is the news out of the Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona, Pa., where, seemingly out of the blue, Pennsylvania Railroad K4s 1361 is poised to escape purgatory. And kudos to the Western Maryland Scenic for hitting the finish line a few months ago with C&O 2-6-6-2 1309. Louis 4-8-4 576? Or Chesapeake & Ohio 2-8-4 2716? We might even see two Reading 4-8-4s before long. Where to begin? Are you excited about the prospect of seeing Santa Fe 4-8-4 2926 rolling again? How about Nashville, Chattanooga & St. There are so many mainline steam restorations going on now, the mind reels. 1361, subject of a reinvigorated restoration effort - forges through a snowstorm in Grif Teller's iconic painting On Time. Pennsylvania Railroad K4s 4-6-2 5411 - a sister to No.
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