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VMRJ American steam: Gone but not forgotten
A selection of American steam in Trainz. I am one of the lucky ones. When I was a young boy in the nineteen forties my dad was a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army. His assignments moved him around the eastern seaboard of the United States and finally to San Antonio, Texas. During WWII he was assigned to London, England, until the war ended. In those days, which are etched into my memory, my mother, sister and I traveled throughout the USA by train as we followed our dad to his new bases. In those days steam was king and I had the unforgettable experience of traveling behind some of the most beautiful steam engines ever made. Among the locomotives I had the pleasure of experiencing firsthand were the Pennsylvania K4s 4-6-2 and the New York Central J3 Hudson 4-6-4. There were other steam locomotives that I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing. I remember once, when we stayed overnight in a hotel in Chicago waiting for a connection, I listened to the steam switchers in the Chicago yard sorting out cars. It was a great sound to go to sleep to. When I was on board, the rhythm and smell of those trains rattling through the night combined with the Doppler effect of the crossing gate bells as we passed made for a wondrous time for a small 4-year-old boy. The age of steam started in the early 1800s, had its peak from the 1920s to 1940s and then declined when the diesel locomotive came on the scene. The last bell for American steam locomotives rang in the 1960s as railroads scrapped and melted down their remaining steam engines. With the exception of a few locomotives that have been placed in museums or restored to serve duty on rail fan excursion lines, they are all gone. Now that Trainz has entered the scene we all can enjoy on our computer screens the sights and sounds, if not the smells, of those bygone days when steam was king. The latest issue of Trainz, TRS2004, has incorporated additional support features to allow virtual models of steam engines to run realistically on your home computer screen. Right now there are not too many United States steam engines available, but as more creative people continue to come up with new beauties, I am hopeful that the roster of steam equipment for Trainz will grow. In this article we�ll examine the basic wheel arrangements of U.S. locomotives and the purposes for which they were created. Classification by wheel arrangement Locomotives can have three primary sets of wheels. Leading trucks, driving wheels and trailing trucks. The total amount of wheels in each group is counted, so if you have a locomotive with two driving wheels on each side, the count would be 4. A locomotive with a single leading truck, 2 driving wheels, and no trailing truck would be called a 2-4-0. The symbol would be:
Switcher locomotives had no leading and trailing trucks, thus enabling them to navigate the tight turns found in the train yards. Their driving wheels were smaller than the road engines to give them the proper gearing to move heavily loaded freight cars back and forth. Road engines had leading trucks to help guide the locomotive around curves at higher speeds. As the power requirements of locomotives increased their fire boxes increased in size. To support the added weight of these larger fireboxes trailing trucks were added to the locomotive. Passenger locomotives normally had larger driving wheels than freight locomotives for high-speed operation while the smaller driving wheels of the freight engines gave them better ability to haul heavy loads. The list below shows the basic wheel arrangements of a cross-section of American locomotives, the number classification, the popular name of the locomotive and their primary use. In the listing below L indicates Light Duty, H indicates Heavy Duty, S indicates Switcher, F indicates Freight, P indicates Passenger and DP indicates Dual Purpose.
While this list of locomotive types is helpful for categorizing the types of locomotives that ran on the rails during the steam years, it just cannot reproduce the feeling of size and power these locomotives had. For example, one of my favorite locomotives was the New York Central 4-8-4 Niagara, which was the NYC�s version of the Northern. The NYC Niagara was state-of-the-art when built in 1945 by the American Locomotive Company (Alco). The Niagara was designed to fill the need for increased speed and power on the Central�s highly competitive New York -- Chicago runs, including the flagship 20th Century Limited. Twenty-eight Niagara locomotives were built for the Central, but sadly none of them escaped the metal scrapper�s torch. 
NYC Niagara for Trainz, still in beta. In order to visualize this beauty a little better take a close look at the railroad worker next to the rear driver. That person is around 6� tall. The drivers on the Niagara were 80� in diameter, equivalent to a 6�8� tall man. The distance that the four driver wheels cover is over 28 feet long. Go into your living room and measure out a space 28 feet long by 6 feet 8 inches high and you have just squeezed in the driver wheels! Forget about the wheels on the other side! Now, let�s talk about the weight of this giant. The engine weighed 471,000 pounds and the 16-wheeled tender, when fully loaded, added another 420,000 pounds to the total weight. My Subaru Outback weighs around 3,200 pounds. You would have to stack 278 Subaru Outbacks on top of each other and run the stack at 100 mph to equal the mass and performance of the NYC Niagara! For those of you who would like to hear a rare sound file of a NYC Niagara accelerating, there is Giancarlo DeMarco�s Italian NYC web site. You can listen to a sound that will never be heard again in real life. The link to the sound file is: http://www.giancarlodemarco.com/nyc/prophet5.ram The above screen shot of a NYC Niagara is of a beta model created for Trainz that has not been issued to the public yet. It is by Marlboro. Hopefully he will be releasing it after PS2 comes out. It is a beautiful piece of work. To complete this article I am going to list American steam locomotives that can be downloaded either from the Trainz Download Station, or list sites that have a number of American steam locomotives.
Unfortunately, the list of American standard gauge steam locomotives available for download is not very extensive yet. We can hope that after the release of SP2 from Auran more steam releases will be forthcoming. I look for the day when the list will include Pacifics, Hudsons, Mikados, Berkshires, Niagaras and other American steam locomotives. On the other hand, the narrow gauge area has some good news. Prowler901 has an extensive stable of 3-foot gauge Denver & Rio Grande Western steam locomotives and rolling stock. See http://steammachine.com/prowler/trainz/trainz.html Sirgibby�s TrainZONE also has an excellent site for narrow gauge steam locomotives and rolling stock in various sizes including the beautiful 2-foot gauge locos of the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes RR. See http://www.trainzone.co.nz/default.htm Don�t forget to listen to that sound file of the NYC Niagara getting up to speed; it will tear your heart out!
John Article and screen shots �2004 John D'Angelo. All rights reserved. |