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R1 Electric (Competitor to the GG1)


Rayman4449
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The PRR 4899 R1 electric was built in 1934 by Baldwin with Westinghouse electric gear.  The R1 design was a competitor with the GE-built GG1(which won out).  The R1 actually remained in service until 1958 and no others were ever built and had slightly more pulling power than the GG1.

 

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Yes the R1 was the motive power department at Altoona's baby, it was more powerful than the GG1 by a comfortable margin, I do not know if the French Paris Orleans railway had anything to do with it, but this french road designed and opperated a whole fleet of 4-8-4 electric locomotives in main line high speed service in particular the Swiss  designed 2-D-2 500 class  which were very succesfull up to 140km/hour. This at the time (1933) was a speed record for electric traction, indeed locomotive department world wide were experiencing great difficulties with the tracking capabilities of electric locomotives in comparisson to steam, in particular early BoBo electrics were observed wrecking havock with the track alignements. Rod locos were no better above 60mph speeds. A French engeneer of track called Mauzin developped a way to measure track alignement  distortions with Quartz piezo electic cells that could measure very subtle track deformations. Nearly all Paris Orleans locomotives were there after limited to 60mph except for the Swiss designed Büchli transmition equiped 2-D-2 alowed at 90mph cruising speed. So it is just possible that the Altoona design team could have been influenced by these succesful series of locos just new at the time. It seems that nose supended motors were a killer for trackwork. I heard in the '70 some enlightened US railfans telling me that there was a study under way in the US at the time comparing track agressivity of steam locos with the then omnipresent nose suspended diesels notably on Penn Central. It seems the steam monsters of the '40s were doing much better than the diesels on that point. 

The GG 1 on the other hand was developped by  the New Haven, which had the experience of operating heavy electrics since 1907 (it had by then used at least three generations of road electrics...) and had experimented lower power and weight double motors on a 4-C-C-4 wheel arangement with cup drive and totally suspended motors, these were apparently much less agressive on the track during tests done on the Pennsy, whose objectives were similar than Mauzins test (but apparently without the Quartz cells, at the time quite a technical revolution) and although the R1 was the Pennsy engeneering department 's baby  it's the GG1 which succeded and was produced in numbers.

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