Big Alice

[canonloader]

She could run at 100 miles per hour, could cruise and commonly did, at 80-90mph, burned coal, had a total loss steam engines and a range of about 150 miles, then needed more water. At 100mph, the squealing and banging of the hinged plates and other parts was described as "fearsome". More shots from this shoot here (http://www.picturelacrosse.com/train/train.html). :mrgreen:

http://www.picturelacrosse.com/hdr/tranportation/front-view-set4-img_3595_6_7-100608.jpg

[ArcticShooter]

That is an impressive train. You can almost feel the power.

[canonloader]

Hey Helge, I was grinning like a possum all day. Couldn't believe they let me inside the fence and allowed me to climb into the cab. Those wheels are 78" tall, six foot six, bigger than a tall man. The big wheels means it was pulling passenger trains, and this one ran from Chicago to Denver in 16 hours. At the time it was made, it was the biggest train in the world. :)

[Avi]

very nice and awesome looking engine...nicely done mitch
any pics of the interiors..??

Avi

[canonloader]

Thanks Avi. Yes, awesome is right. I was allowed up in it, but he didn't want me climbing out on the walkways around it. But I did get into the cab, and even the firebox. Here are a lot more pictures (http://www.picturelacrosse.com/train/train.html) on five pages of my website. :)

I still have more to process, but this shows most of it. The guy there to do some work on it was very helpful, giving me all kinds of information on it. This particular engine was the biggest of it's kind when it was built. Much bigger ones came after, but it held the record for awhile. It could go over 100 miles an hour and on it's main run, from Chicago to Denver, it normally ran at 80-90 miles an hour on the nightly Denver run and made the trip in 16 hours, counting water stops. :)

[Avi]

wow...checked the images in your gallery...

this thing is really huge and very complicated...

What are the last 2 images on page 3....couldn't make what part of the engine they are..

Avi

[canonloader]

That is the firebox. It's what's inside the doors you see in pic #1 on page 3. I was able to get my head, arms and shoulders inside there to use flash to get those shots. They did not shovel coal by the time this engine was made, it used a powered auger to bring coal from the tender to the firebox, and you can see the auger housing in shots # 2 + 3 on page 3. It was articulated, so it could bend when the train went around bends. Imagine the complexity of this whole engine. Imagine designing this on paper before there were computers, and it becomes even more awesome. :)

[zacker]

cool shot... love these oldsters!!

[canonloader]

Thanks Craig. While I do remember a few of these running through town, they are mostly from before my time. They must have made a big racket running across the landscape. :)

[kirkt]

They do not make them like that anymore. Nice capture.

Kirk

[canonloader]

Thanks Kirk. They better not forget how to make them like this though. When the oil runs out, they may have to go back to something like this, or maybe nuclear, or powered by electricity from power plants along the way.

It's odd, I was thinking the same thing when I was shooting these, and you can see more here (http://www.picturelacrosse.com/train/train.html). If you look at that cab, you can see, there were no creature comforts or safety provisions of any kind. OSHA would shut this thing down in a heartbeat if they tried to run these things today on a commercail basis. They were for real man killers.

[Mike McCusker]

Terrific, as usual, Mitch you really nailed this one. what time of day? The lighting is spot on.

[canonloader]

Thanks Mike. And as usual, the light was terrible. I think I got there at 8:30 am or so and it was still overcast and gray. Very tough lighting for shooting black iron, as I discovered the day before while shooting in the rain. That's the reason I opted to shoot 3 exposure spreads and run them through Photomatix. There is simply no other way to get light into some of those shadow places, without expensive lighting setups, which I don't have and couldn't have set up anyway. :)

I do think they came out pretty good though. I was forced to do more than the usual post processing though and it took me all day and evening to manage 29 shots and get them onto my website. There was a lot of purple fringing made worse by HDR, that had to be removed.

[Mike McCusker]

In that case, double congrats are in order. Photographic and processing skill.

[canonloader]

I am finding that I like the processing part a lot. It may even be the reason I go out shooting at all anymore. :)

[kirkt]

Thanks Kirk. They better not forget how to make them like this though. When the oil runs out, they may have to go back to something like this, or maybe nuclear, or powered by electricity from power plants along the way.

It's odd, I was thinking the same thing when I was shooting these, and you can see more here (http://www.picturelacrosse.com/train/train.html). If you look at that cab, you can see, there were no creature comforts or safety provisions of any kind. OSHA would shut this thing down in a heartbeat if they tried to run these things today on a commercail basis. They were for real man killers.

Taking rail travel back to the steam days would be interesting to say the least. That era of railroading in the US has achieved an almost mythological status in my mind. One of the first subjects I shot with my trusty new Digital Rebel was some small abandoned locomotives sitting next to a parking lot of a Target, if you can believe it. Weird and out of place, but sitting there with a story for sure. it was pouring rain but I went home and grabbed the camera to shoot them anyway - i think it was the first time I shot RAW, and, looking back at the images, it is clear I had not a clue what I was doing.

http://kirkt.smugmug.com/photos/50413862_fjqQU-M.jpg

I am guessing a very small percentage of rail workers retired with all of their body parts intact. It just seems that very few vehicles nowadays have an external embodiment of a soul like the old ones do.

kirk

[canonloader]

What a beauty. I have seen quite a few engines and rolling stock over the years in all parts of the US. My family, on both sides were all railroad men, and made sure I never got anything to do with it. Grandpaw on my moms side worked for the Rock Island line and never talked much about it. One of his brothers fell from a train and got both legs cut off and lived, although he was gone before my time. Grandpaw on dads side was a Railroad engineer, not the train driver, he traveled to foreign countries and mapped and laid out the cut for railroads in those countries, then came back to the works in the US and stayed with the trains through production, then back on the ships that carried them to those countries. That I did hear stories about from my dad and uncles and grandmaw. Where I grew up was a rail hub outside of Chicago, so it's very strange that I never got into it. ;)

[ArcticShooter]

I guess that old machinists have their pulse going high, when they see your images. That is really some piece of work. Smart design on the butterfly doors. And the HDR really brings out the details. Imagine how much coal they must have been using on that 16 hour trip!
Thank you for sharing

[canonloader]

Helge, I don't even want to think about it. The tender behind the engine held 15,000 gallons of water and only lasted 150 miles. It also held 24 tons of coal, which does not seem like much, but would heat the average house for a couple of years. The engine is a total loss system and the exhaust stroke from those front cylinders sent the remaining steam up into the "smoke chamber" which was that silver section in the very front of the engine to cool the smoke and put out any cinders so they didn't start fires along the route.

They just had to be filthy beasts to operate and no doubt would never be allowed to run again, other than as curiosities and I bet they need some kind of carbon permit for even that. :)

I have at least two more pages of images to put up after processing, but I have some paid work to knock out first. I should have the rest of them up some time this evening. :)

[Bill Pham]

very cool Mitch. bet it was a real surprise that they let you in.

Bill

[canonloader]

Thanks Bill. yes, a very pleasant surprise. The guy was also very helpful, almost like he liked having people stop and ask to see it. He went out of his way to show me things. :)

[ArcticShooter]

Thanks Bill. yes, a very pleasant surprise. The guy was also very helpful, almost like he liked having people stop and ask to see it. He went out of his way to show me things. :)

It is always nice when you meet people like this guy. Those who have genuine interest are great to talk to. They have so many stories that otherwise would be forgotten.

[canonloader]

They all belong to something called the 4000 foundation. 4000 was the number of this engine. Apparently, there are a bunch of them, and they really get into it. Before I left, two other people showed up to do some kind of work around the building or the train.

When I posted the first shots of this engine in another thread, I said they fired this up every so often and blew the whistle and let people tour it. I had seen smoke from the stack once before as I was driving by. That turned out to not be the case. The boiler tubes won't hold pressure, but they do put some kind of smoke maker into the stack to make it look like it is fired up, which is what I saw, and they use compressed air to blow the whistle. :lol: