During the era of steam on America's
railroads, thousands of different types or classes of locomotives were built. While examples
of many different locomotive classes made it into preservation, the vast majority did not.
One of the more interesting examples that was sadly not saved was known as the T1 built
for the Pennsylvania Railroad in the mid-1940s. These were rather unique locomotives, featuring
a duplex drive system with two separate sets of cylinders, each powering four drive wheels.
The T1s were built for fast passenger service and it was even said that some of the locomotives
were clocked in excess of 140 miles an hour. In 1956, after an exceedingly short career, the
final T1 met its fate with the scrapper's torch. The story might seem to end there. However, in
2013, a group was formed with the goal of bringing the T1 back to life. Known as the T1 Trust,
the group was inspired by some British railway enthusiasts who had built their own full-sized
mainline steam locomotive that was patterned after an extinct class of UK locomotives. Over
the last several years, the T1 Trust has been working hard to plan and fabricate a brand new
T1 locomotive from the ground up, one piece at a time, as well as fundraise for this monumental
project. Gary Bensman, Wolf Fengler, Jason Johnson and Brad Noble of the T1 Trust join us to talk
about the project, the history of the original T1 locomotives, and the challenges faced in building
a large steam locomotive in the 21st century. This is the story of bringing a legend back
to life. This is the story of the 5550. Building a steam locomotive is no easy task.
It takes a considerable amount of planning to turn cold pieces of metal into a speed demon
to the rails. General Manager Jason Johnson, Mechanical Engineering team member Wolf Fengler,
and Gary Bensman of the T1 Trust Mechanical and Boiler committees give us an overview of
the project, mechanical stats on the T1, and a look at some of the challenges of building
a brand new steam locomotive from scratch. The PRR T1 Trust is a like-minded group
of individuals that are fans of the Pennsylvania Railroad and specifically the
T1 itself and we've got together to try to bring one back from the scrap. The PRR T1
the Pennsy class T1 was a locomotive designed by the Pennsylvania Railroad engineering
department to answer the need for high speed passenger service. So it was about a i think a
thousand horsepower engine at 100 miles an hour and the first prototypes were built
by Baldwin. A duplex locomotive was two driven engines under one rigid frame
and a boiler, no articulation to it. So the T-1 is a 4-4-4-4, four lead wheels, four drive
wheels on the first engine, four drive wheels on the second engine, four trailing wheels. Well in
rough numbers, the T1 will be about 122 feet long, about 16 feet tall, it'll weigh on the order
of 428 tons, and run on 80 inch drivers. It'll develop about 65,000 pounds of attractive effort
from 300 psi steam expanding in four cylinders and each cylinder has a 19 and three-quarter inch
bore and a 26 inch long stroke. Well the engine is built on a 68 foot long rigid frame. Now that
rigid frame meant there were fewer flexible steam connections to maintain and actually more exact
control over the running gear alignment which is of course favorable for high-speed operation. Well
between the two prototypes and the two groups of production units, there was a total of 52 of the
T1 class that were built between 1942 and 1946. Our locomotive of course carries the number 5550
which is the next number in the sequence from the production units. The methods of construction
that vary, are going to be different in the reconstruction from the original. The original
was a one-piece cast frame. You know, technology has advanced past that, particularly in welding.
So that the new construction will be weldments, build up weldments incorporating castings so that
all ends up a one-piece frame again, mostly welded construction that then can be stress relieved in
a furnace and then finish machined to the same tolerances as the original. The main flaw that
really remains to be addressed is the valve gear. The majority of the T1 locomotives were equipped
with Franklin Type A poppet valves. This system was activated by a complicated series of levers
and located in difficult to service boxes that are tucked into the frame. And the valves themselves
actually had problems with cracking as well. We'll be equipping 5550 with Franklin Type B valve
gear, which was actually available back in the day but some internal politics prevented its use.
The Type B is actually a rotary valve gear and it has a camshaft not unlike those that are
in car engines. It's much simpler and can be positioned in easier to maintain locations. And
we'll of course be looking at the design and the metallurgy and even the cam profiles to address
that cracking problem for the valve itself. Now some of you are probably saying well what
about that slipping problem that everybody talks about? Well, really the engineering
portion of that issue is largely addressed with changes made to the spring rigging between
the two prototypes and the production versions. Now the human portion of that issue,
we will address as we train our crews. You see, the crews back in the day were used to
running two cylinder K4 locomotives which had basically 200 psi boiler pressure. When you have
to switch to running something with four cylinders and 300 psi at your disposal, you have to operate
the machine differently. The challenges are always the same when doing a full-size replica and that
is raising the money. So, the technology is all there, we have all the the know how to do that,
the problem is always fundraising and we continue to do that and take dollars and spend them on the
the construction of the locomotive. There will be no major outward differences that most people will
see. The construction methods will be slightly different and then there will be technology
that modern railroads require to operate on. The Pennsylvania Railroad T1 Trust is building the
locomotive as a non-profit group. The PRR T1 Trust group is a group came together seven or eight
years ago and the locomotive built in pieces, parts all over the country, everywhere from out
in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and the main part, the boiler, is currently being built in St. Louis,
Missouri by our contractor out there. A question we get often asked is where we'll do final
assembly. That location has not been chosen yet. We've been given two or three options and we will
keep looking at those options as time gets closer, as the parts get bigger. And then when we're ready
to mate the frame and the boiler together, that's when we'll come to a final location to assemble
the locomotive. Currently, it is being built as a coal burner but we recognize the high likelihood
that it will come out as an oil burner or some other alternative fuel when the time comes. Well,
it starts with having people willing to commit themselves to the endeavor. And that's not only
on the project management and technical sides but also on the funding side. Now on the technical
side, it starts with lots and lots of research. You have to gather together as many blueprints
as you can find and we're lucky we had a lot of them available for this locomotive, and technical
documents as well. Any missing pieces have to be filled in using engineering intuition, basically
a deep understanding of fundamental engineering principles, steam locomotive design and of course
steam locomotive history. You then have to review the design against current codes and standards
and make adjustments as necessary. In the case of the T1, most of those have come from adapting the
boiler to be of welded construction under current FRA and ASME standards. You also have to assess
the available fabrication techniques for various parts and determine what makes the most economic
sense. Then, you establish your preferred build sequence and start fabricating as funds become
available to do so. We get this question a lot, what parts of original T1 survive? There are
very few parts. There's a couple known whistles, there's some builder's plates, front number
plates off locomotives, there are tender trucks saved that are in Altoona, Pennsylvania that
got put underneath of a specially built flat car. But other than that, there is no other major
parts that survive the scrapping of a Pennsy T1. Several years ago, we acquired a tender that came
off of a Pennsylvania 2-10-4 J1 class locomotive. It is very similar to the original T1 tender.
Unfortunately none of those exist. So, we were able to get the actual same
class of tender, slight variations to it. We will have to add streamlining and a couple
modifications the existing tender that we've purchased to make it feasible. It saved us two
to three million dollars by taking this option. We were glad to take that and we look forward
to finishing that tender up. The current status of locomotive is we're about 35 percent
complete by weight. So, it's difficult to gauge the construction of a locomotive. We've
found that that is the easiest way to do it. We are estimating to complete the locomotive
sometime late 2020s - 2030. If a big donor comes up and donates several million dollars, we
can speed that up by multiple number of years. Despite not even being in service for a full
decade, the T1 has quite an interesting history. Brad Noble is the founder and chairman of
the T1 Trust. He shares with us about the history of these locomotives and their
careers that were tragically cut short. By the 1940s, the Pennsylvania Railroad had
a rather robust electrified network east of Harrisburg. However, west of Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, the catenary ended. Management at the Pennsylvania Railroad desired
a steam counterpart to its wildly successful GG1 electric locomotive to use for blue ribbon
passenger service between Harrisburg and points west including Chicago and St. Louis. The
design requirements for the new T1 locomotive were extremely demanding. A radical new design was
required to handle an 880 ton train, that's 11 heavyweight passenger cars, at a sustained speed
of 100 miles an hour. In actual road testing in 1944, one of the early T1 locomotives far exceeded
these design specifications, hauling a 1,280 ton train, that's 16 passenger cars, at 100 miles per
hour. Now, imagine uncoupling half that consist and running with only eight passenger cars. Under
these circumstances, reports of T1 locomotives reaching speeds of 140 miles an hour on the
straight, pan flat fort Wayne racetrack between the engine facility at Crestline, Ohio and Chicago
become extremely plausible. The service life of the T1 class began in 1942 with the production
of two demonstrator units, 6110 and 6111, known as Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers because
of their futuristic appearance. These were built by Baldwin in Philadelphia. In March of 1945, the
War Production Board recommended the Pennsylvania Railroad build 50 T1 locomotives. The planners in
Washington D.C. anticipated the fall of Germany and the need to move troops quickly from the east
coast to the west coast for Pacific deployment. To speed production, two groups of T1s would be
produced simultaneously; 25 at the Pennsylvania Railroad's Altoona shops and 25 in Philadelphia
at the Baldwin locomotive works. Two months later, in May of 1945, World War II in Europe ended.
As it turns out, the War Production Board had no idea about the Manhattan Project and six months
after the T1 order was approved, on September 2nd, 1945, the atomic bomb ended World War II and
two months after that, in November, 1945, the first production fleet T1 number 5500 rolled
out of the shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Essentially, the T1 locomotives were out of a job
before they were built. In September of 1945, just as soon as they could after World War II ended,
the Pennsylvania Railroad took delivery of two E7 diesel locomotives. In an ironic twist of fate,
these two diesels arrived at their duty assignment in Harrisburg on the same day as the first
two T1 production units arrived from Altoona. The economic writing was on the wall. Diesels
cost 32 cents per mile to operate versus 58 cents per mile for the T1. In 1948, the Pennsylvania
Railroad made the decision to dieselize all of its crack passenger trains and at that time, most of
the T1s were downgraded to haul heavy mail trains. In a mere 12 years, the T1 managed to leave an
indelible mark on the world of railroading. But in 1953, the Pennsylvania railroad put to the
torch 52 of the most beautiful steam locomotives ever made. Locomotives designed by Raymond Loewy,
creator of the Coca-Cola bottle. Locomotives that have been clocked at 140 miles an hour at the
head of their world famous Broadway Limited. The Pennsylvania railroad sold each of their T1
class locomotives for $31,049 to the scrap yards. Not one was saved as an example of one of
the last steam locomotives made in America. So why rebuild a T1? The members of the T1
Trust discuss the importance of this project, how the foundation was formed, and the
plans for the future of locomotive 5550 including an anticipated attempt to break the
world speed record for a steam locomotive. The group is headquartered out of Pottstown,
Pennsylvania but it is actually, the group is really all over the country, spread out all
the way to California and our members are worldwide. So there's no one particular place,
we are spread out wherever we need to be. The T1 trust is an all-volunteer organization with
hundreds of members located mainly in the United States however, we have members located
all over the globe. There's a core group of 30 or so responsible for the day-to-day
activities of the organization. Why build a T1? Because the Pennsylvania Railroad
didn't save one. They saved a lot of engines in their historic collection, but they did not save
their most modern, advanced, high-tech engines. So we're going to have to correct the historical
record and fill it in with a new T1. Factors that make it a worthy candidate for reconstruction
would be the unique construction of it, the duplex drive, two four wheeled engines, and
really the history of the engine that put in such a service record of high-speed passenger
service, easily a hundred miles an hour for most of the history of it. Well it all
comes back to model railroading, right? And in October of 2013, I learned about a live
steam model of a locomotive called Tornado, which had a very interesting backstory. A group of
rail fans in Great Britain were lamenting the fact that every example of the A1 Peppercorn locomotive
had been scrapped. They decided that if they all donated, they might in time be able to build
their own A1 from scratch. And after 16 years, they did it! Within days of my learning about the
Tornado project, I just knew that somebody had to build a T1. So i started the T1 Trust. I cobbled
together a website and got a PayPal donate button. I reached out to Ross Rowland, the man
behind the American Freedom Train, and Ross gave me some pointers and put me in touch
with his long-term associate Wes Camp. Early on, Wes and I traveled to Washington D.C. and met
with the Federal Railroad Administration where we developed relationships and gained some valuable
insight. Through the T1 Trust website, I began to meet other people willing to help and the whole T1
Trust has developed almost organically from there. There are a lot of opportunities to operate this
T1 when completed. We have been approached by several regionals and short line railroads
to operate the locomotive when complete. We have not gone to any of the class ones
at this time. As management changes within the class ones every couple years, it's not
really beneficial for us to make any plans without the locomotive being complete. So, once
the locomotive is close to being complete, we'll approach them and make those opportunities known.
We get the question all the time about modern devices that will be used on class one railroads
when we're out there. We will do whatever they want us to do on that. So cab signals, PTC for the
locomotive will all be incorporated in as we go. We get this question a lot about the speed record.
Obviously, it's a part of our mission on that. The biggest plan, the biggest single place
to do that, is at Pueblo, Colorado at the FRA test facility they have there. That place is
designed for high-speed running, no crossings, and high-speed testing of trains here United States.
There's no other facility in the United States that's conducive to allowing high-speed running
with a brand new steam locomotive. So, that is the most likely location that it will be done.
We are hoping in 2022 to have several open houses that will allow visitors to come out and check
out our locomotive boiler, all the components, pieces, parts that we've manufactured, wheels,
up to this point and have several talks by members of the T1 Trust. The T1 Trust is a 501(c)3
non-profit organization. The best way to donate is to visit the Trust's website and click on the
Fundraising Center. There, you'll find options ranging from plans to build your very own Lego
T1 to an opportunity to sponsor an entire driver wheel and have your name cast in. For individuals
interested in seeing or riding behind the T1, the best opportunity might be to join the T1 Trust's
Founders Club. Members of the Founders Club receive reasonable access to the locomotive at all
times. Founders Club members also receive reserved seating on the first excursion train pulled by
5550. There are other perks as well including a limited edition print of the 5550 launch painting,
signed and numbered by the artist, Jonathan Clay. It may seem like semantics, however, at the end
of the day, the T1 trust isn't building a replica. The T1 Trust has painstakingly spent thousands
of hours in engineering, design, and research. We've combed the Pennsylvania state archives
for every blueprint and engineering drawing the Pennsy created for the 52 T1 locomotives it
produced. The last T1 built by the Pennsylvania Railroad was numbered 5549. The T1 Trust is
building the next locomotive of the class, 5550. Well, that's the story of the 5550. Thanks
for joining me for this special look at the construction of the first mainline steam
locomotive in the United States in well over half a century. If you'd like to learn more about this
project, volunteer, or donate to the T1 Trust, please visit t1trust.org. I'll see you next
Friday at 9 AM Pacific Time for an all new railroading adventure right here on the
YouTube channel. That's all for now. Until next time I'm Mike Armstrong. I'll see
you down the line! Thanks for watching.
