Re: NNG: Geared Locomotive Speeds

While your question could possibly be answered from a theoretical sense, given critical information as driver diameter and gear ratio, this is pretty hard to nail down.

Which type could you likely get consistent greater speeds with? The Heisler, and they pushed this point in their ads.

If you take a careful look at the profiles and lengths of some of the roads that used the larger drivered Heislers, you can see that that were better suited than their competitors at the longer runs.

Pickering Lbr. Corp kept 4 older non-Superheated 3T Heislers around until 1957, one year after the first 2 diesels arrived. Their 40" drivers (1, 5 and 10, the 2 had 38") were favored on the lower division from the mill out to Mile 28 @ Schoettgen Pass. These 4 all had 2 to 1 gear ratios.

The Climax was generally geared lower as was the Willamette with both of it's ratios. Standard gearing on 80-3 and 90-3 Shays was 2.05 to 1, but they had smaller drivers (36") than the larger Heislers.

A stab at your question...Climax, maybe around 8-10 or so. The bigger Shays, maybe a mile or so more. I think that you could run some of the Heislers consistently up around 15 or more. This is all open to argument based on who had them, how often they went into the shop. and perhaps most importantly, who was running.

I've had a bit of time on most of these, ran Pickering's 10 for pay one summer so I feel what I expressed here is at least a fair opinion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2016 03:18AM by Tom Moungovan.