2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001 2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001 Springfield, Missouri, dated 1910. Seven 2-8-8-2 Mallet articulated were purchased from American Locomotive Works in 1910 and were the largest in the world when first purchased. However, according to various publications they proved unsatisfactory for the intended purposes and were relegated to mine runs in the Alabama coalfields west of Birmingham. These were the only articulated engines purchased by the Frisco.
2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001 Here is a very rare view of Frisco 2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001 in route to being set up for service. She is still brand new and sporting whitewall tires from the builder. SLSF 2001 was built in October of 1910, so that would date the photograph. Location is unknown.
Hello Frisco folks, Here is a postcard of Frisco Mallet engine 2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001. Enjoy, Rich Ship it on the Frisco!
The Frisco Archive picture of class engine, 2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001, at a time and place, unknown, has intrigued me since it was placed on the Archive. At first glance it appears that the Mallet is being hauled to Springfield for initial set-up. A closer examination of the photograph disputes this assumption. Although still wearing her factory paint job with white-wall tires, the locomotive appears to be somewhat less than factory fresh. The coal bunker has trim boards to increase tender capacity. These are not present on the builder’s photograph. The main rods have been removed, and the 2001 would seem to be on its way to the West Shops for work. Is this possibly a “smoking gun” that might add credence to her perceived reputation? Has the 2001 failed on the road, and is she now on her way to Springfield? The picture was taken somewhere on the Frisco; the mail crane attests to that fact. Three of the Mallets arrived in St Louis with much fanfare during October 1910, and on November 2, 1910 they were placed on display at St Louis Union Station. They were destined work the heavy grades between St Louis, MO and Springfield, MO. In less than several months after their delivery, the Frisco threw-in the towel and moved the Mallets to other parts of the railroad. We have been lead to believe that they were poor steamers. Let’s face it; I am a lover of the 2001-class Frisco Mallets. Until proven otherwise, I will continue to be an apologist for these locomotives. The notion that they were poor performers is unproven. In fact, it seems that they had too much tractive effort for Dixon Hill and Hancock Hill. They were pulled from the Rolla Subdivision and the Lebanon Subdivision and sent to Kansas City, MO, Ft. Scott, KS, Monett, MO and Sapulpa, OK to handle oil trains in and out of Oklahoma and to handle coal from Southeast Kansas. They remained in service at these locations until replaced by the 1306-class 2-8-0s, the spot-class 2-10-2s, the USRA 2-8-2s, et al, which arrived during the 19-teens. At this time, they were sent to work on the Southern Division between Memphis, TN and Birmingham, AL. Back to the picture. I have searched the web on numerous occasions in attempts to locate “Farris Elevator”. Recently while researching family stuff, I stumbled across the name Mr. F. H. Farris of Lockwood, MO. My mom’s family hails from there. With that information in hand, I was able to refine my search filter. I could determine that there was only one Farris Elevator located within Frisco territory, and that was at Lockwood, MO. The next step was to resolve the specific location of the F. H. Farris Elevator. The elevator ante-dates 1901, and during July 1918, Mr. Farris sold his business. The new owners changed the name to Farmers’ Grain and Live Stock Company. The elevator was damaged by fire during 1924, and it was rebuilt that year. In the local vernacular, this elevator was known as the East Elevator, and the Kyle and Keran Elevator was known as the West Elevator. The East Elevator structure remained at least into the 1970s. That is my memory anyway. I was able to locate a 1924, Sanborn map of Lockwood in a Dade County Plat book, which was published by the Greene County Historical Society. There was the Farmers’ Grain and Live Stock Company’s elevator just where I thought it might be. See the attached plat. The track layout on the Sanborn map fits nicely with the photograph, so I am 95% certain that the picture was taken at Lockwood, MO. The trees are bare, and I believe that we see the 2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001 in tow to her new home in Ft Scott, KS or Kansas City, MO. If true, then the date of this image is likely sometime during January-March 1911. The photograph captures a rare image, that of a Frisco Mallet on the Ash Grove Subdivision. The two men in the foreground seem to be too well dressed to be Lockwood locals. The fellow by the low pressure steam chest may be the locomotive messenger/tender, who may be in the midst of a ground inspection. After the train’s climb from the Sac River drainage, it has stopped at Lockwood for fuel and water. Lockwood today from the same perspective.
Great detective work, Karl! As for pulling drawbars. Hm, sure seems to me to be more of a train handling problem and the hogheads of the time were not able to adapt well to the traits of the 2000s. This is where a good Road Foreman of Engines would have run on the line repeatedly pulling trains with a 2000 class engine until he successfully developed train handling techniques to handle these engines with trains. Then, he should have set about teaching the techniques to the Engineers under his charge. In my humble opinion, based on my experience in railroading, this is a Road Foreman of Engines shortcoming and not the 2000s. I will bet with good use of air and throttle techniques to keep things stretched, those suckers could have strolled up and down the hogback profile between St. Louis, MO and Springfield, MO as pretty as you please. Ability to tackle Dixon Hill? No problem for those big hogs given their era! Seems to me this was likely a case of too large of technology leap, from smaller engines to a really BIG and powerful engines, for the power that be to adapt to and then instruct the Engineer's accordingly. The above if for what it is worth. Andre
Great detective work, as always Karl! And I think Andre is on to something. I think the conclusions we can draw from Andre's thoughts do not bode well for the engines, however. Now, I have no beef against the engines, but I do tend to trust the guys back then who, I think, knew what they were about. So let me play Devil's Advocate for a minute. Consider the record of their use on their first assignments. They are documented as having spent lots of time at the bottom of swales building up steam for climbing the next rise. That means a great deal of variation in the speed and frequent starts from a stop. Given the long trains and the short, if minor, grades, that suggests trains draped over the tops and bottoms of the rises, slack in and slack out at various points. Frequent starts and stops stretched out like that is a recipe for pulled drawbars. Andre's note that handling techniques were not up to snuff can be seen as support for the claim the engines lacked stamina. It may be that better handling techniques could have solved the problem. Andre has forgotten more about train handling than I will ever know, but the need to create new techniques for these engines suggests to me that steaming capacity was a problem. The conclusion of the original guys in the operating department. Okay, guys, now poke holes in my conclusions. Let us see what additional knowledge we can tease out of these great clues!
Hi palallin: My surmising is based strictly on the above article that deals with excessive drawbar forces and makes no mention of issues with steaming. Could be that the Engineers and Firemen also did not understand the characteristics of the beasts and did not get much help from the RFE. These engines brought totally new circumstances for the Enginemen and the RFE to learn. Sometimes it takes more than a few trips to figure things out. Andre
Palallin may be, consciously or otherwise, quoting Joe Collias's comments on p. 71 of Frisco Power. That is not a primary source, of course, and unfortunately Collias does not identify the source of his information. He goes on to criticize the 2-8-8-2s for having a "ridiculously small firebox with which to heat water to steam in a boiler of considerably larger proportions", as well as for having undersized tenders which resulted in frequent fuel and water stops. Frisco Power does, however, include some dimensions of the Frisco's 2-8-8-2s and 2-10-2s on page 74. Those more skilled in the art than I may be able to take the grate area, cylinder dimensions, etc., and determine whether math and physics support the judgement that the articulateds were chronically short of steam-generating capability. I will play with the numbers a little, but with the caveat that math is not my strong suit. 2-8-8-2: grate area 75.3 square feet; boiler pressure 200 psi; cylinders 24.5" x 30" rear / 39" x 30" front; drivers 57 inches; engine weight 418,000; tractive force 100,000 pounds simple / 83,500 pounds compound. 2-10-2: grate area 76.2 square feet; boiler pressure 200 psi; cylinders 29" x 30"; drivers 60 inches; engine weight 380,000 pounds; tractive force 71,480 pounds. Some amateurish calculations on my part suggest that the 2-8-8-2s consumption of steam per mile, cylinder volume per stroke, times 4 strokes per driver revolution, times number of driver revolutions per mile was actually less than that of the 2-10-2s, if working compound. That is counting only the high-pressure cylinders for initial steam usage straight from the boiler, with the low-pressure cylinders working off the exhaust from the high-pressure ones. But if working simple, routing steam from the boiler directly into all four cylinders, that steam consumption goes up by a factor of 3.5. Not only are there now twice as many cylinders receiving steam directly from the boiler, resulting in twice the strokes per driver revolution, but the low-pressure cylinders are significantly larger. This far exceeds the consumption rate of the 2-10-2s and would have quickly exhausted the boiler's supply of steam. A modest firebox capable of keeping up steam when working compound might well have been challenged to bring pressure back up after just a short stint of working simple. As I said, these are pretty amateurish calculations and I expect the reality was more complex than that. For example, I am not accounting for the back pressure of the second set of cylinders at all. I do know from steam locomotive manuals of the time, viewable on Google books, that switching between simple operation when starting and compound operation when under way was standard practice. Otherwise, the locomotive would have had to start with only the tractive effort of the high-pressure engine, until it had made at least one revolution in order to pass steam through to the low-pressure engine. It does make me wonder whether Frisco crews of the time, unaccustomed to compound articulated locomotives, may have been unfamiliar with the techniques required to get the best efficiency out of them. Just a little over-use of simple operation would have had a big impact on steam consumption. And the Frisco had a lot of up-and-down that would have created a constant temptation to switch to simple operation for that extra oomph of tractive effort. Worse, and less avoidable, frequent stops for fuel and water would have required some period of simple operation for every start. I wonder if these 2-8-8-2s might have been more successful if they had been able to work under constant conditions instead of stop-and-go. It would be interesting to read firsthand accounts by Frisco enginemen who worked with these engines, if any were recorded and survive. I suspect the Frisco's in-house magazines, Frisco Man, Frisco Employe's Magazine, etc., had little inclination to publish any accounts that reflected poorly on the railroad, its equipment, or its crews. It may be that, even if the 2-8-8-2s were not as bad as Joe Collias suggests, they were doomed to a short life because, being slow lugers with 57-inch drivers. They, like the 2-10-2s, were unsuited to the 1920s-1930s shift to fast freight haulage due to highway competition and rising hourly labor costs.
Incredible detective work Karl. Every time I read about these, I start to think I should try to model one for the coal fields around Pittsburg, KS.
That is the passage to which I refer. As Mr. Scott points out, we do not have the original source. I do not have access to the resources Joe Collias did, some of which are listed in his "Acknowledgements." For the reasons noted earlier, I think it likely that the drawbar force problem is connected to the steaming problem. If Collias' account is reasonably accurate, the up-and-down, stop-and-start, slack-in/slack-out, and jerking would aggravate the pull against heavy tonnage. And the crews did not have a good control over the process. It may be that more experience would have solved the drawbar force exertion, and it may be that jockeying the compound/simple valve would have reduced the steaming problem. We do not have all the facts, to be sure.
Joe's information came mostly from Lee Buffington, who was a walking computer of Frisco power. At the time Lee hired out, he would have had plenty of engine crew's gossip to file away. I think they were gone from east of Springfield by the time my Dad hired out in 1916. His only comment that I remember is that engine crews did not like them because of the steam leaks.
2-8-8-2 SLSF 2001 Ran across this by accident. Says 1907 Springfield, MO. https://missouriencyclopedia.org/groups-orgs/st-louis-san-francisco-railway-company
Is this some sort of inside joke I have not heard before? Is that a real blue print, or something someone made for fun?