Re: Proposed RGS 2-8-8-2

With 17x22 cylinders, 40" drivers, and 200lb boiler pressure, each half creates 27k in tractive effort, essentially making it a "double K27" with 54K in tractive effort.

Total Weight on Drivers for various classes:

C-21 = 85650lb
C-25 = 107400lb
K-27 (superheated) =108300

Proposal = 210000 (about twice what a K27 weighs).

K-28 = 113500lb.

What we don't know is the heaviest axle loading. This is a critical piece of the puzzle. A C-25 is a bit lighter on drivers than a K-27 but it actually has a higher weight on the main (#3) driver - 28700 for C-25 vs, 27,250 for K-27. A C-25 even out-weighs a K-28 in main driver weight.

Although I have never seen a special instruction forbidding double heading of K-27's on the RGS, photographs indicate they did not do so, but did double head K-27's with smaller locomotives.

I has been written the RGS did consider buying the Unitah's engines when they went under in 1939. A Unitah 2-6-6-2 with a K-27 tender (purchased when the soak mudhens were scrapped in 1939) is an interesting idea.





This is probably the reason the RGS traded off the C-21's and C-25 for C-19's before they even set foot on the property back in 1916 or so.