Neat PRR K29 Locomotive Testing Book

Anyone ever see one of these before? I imagine there would be some interesting information inside! Can't be many left.

http://cgi.ebay.com/PRR-book-Tests-Clas ... 2a0ed7b663

Interesting...
The description says it is an original PRR thing and "not a reprint," but the typography on the cover doesn't look 1912-ish to me. (I'm not, to my shame, a real printing historian, and I know there WERE sans-serif type faces back then-- I think the first ones were actually late 18th or early 19th Century-- but I don't think they were widely used. And the "19" (volume number in some series?) in a circle on the cover looks to me like a more modern bit of design. Maybe it was rebound at some point?
--
K29... That was the big Alco Pacific that was essentially the prototype for the K4s, wasn't it?

Allen Hazen wrote:Interesting...
The description says it is an original PRR thing and "not a reprint," but the typography on the cover doesn't look 1912-ish to me. (I'm not, to my shame, a real printing historian, and I know there WERE sans-serif type faces back then-- I think the first ones were actually late 18th or early 19th Century-- but I don't think they were widely used. And the "19" (volume number in some series?) in a circle on the cover looks to me like a more modern bit of design. Maybe it was rebound at some point?
--
K29... That was the big Alco Pacific that was essentially the prototype for the K4s, wasn't it?

Yes, according to Stouffer's Pennsy Power the K29s was the basis of the K4s, along with some design elements (KW trailing truck and valve gear design) from the E6s.

Stuart

AFAIK there were 32 of those books-- think the last was the later version of the I1s. I'm betting it's original; all the ones I've seen look like that.

One interesting thing in those books: The test crew would get the engine stabilized at the chosen speed and cutoff and then let it run for 30-60 minutes. So when they said the K4s could do 3184 IHP, I think they meant it could average that for 30 minutes or more. That's something that's usually missing from steam locomotive power claims-- how long the engine could maintain it.

This isn't one of the series, but it gives an idea of the sort of thing

http://www.cwrr.com/Lounge/Reference/ba ... ldwin.html