Tender "dog houses"

Many RRs had 'dog houses' on the back or near the back of the tenders.
What was their purpose? and how used?

They housed the head brakeman and were used in a simular manner as the cupola on a cabin car (that's PRR for caboose) where the brakeman could look back over the train.

Musta been sooty, and cold as hell in winter, hotter than in summer!! I assume the brakeman would climb down from the back of the tender for on-ground duties? Given the location, other than by whistle signals, how did head bman and engineer or conductor communicate? Was there sight line from the doghouse to the loco cab? What determined which loco/tender types had or did not have the doghouse? Were they used up til the end of steam ops?

They used to do that in Germany and Austria, too. In order to save a like-wise caboose they welded cabins into tenders of 50 class Decapods on DB (then colloquially termed '50-Kab') and 42 & 52 class Decapods on ÖBB - those nasty aesthetically irresponsible guys! It was only later that it occured to them that if they would not just do away with caboose but with 'brake man' too, all this became superfluous. The 'double-cab' 50s looked tolerably weird in a back view, but the poor 52s were ruined in looks by the square cabin inserted ruthlessly into what was maybe the best looking slender tender type. In the 52s the tender complimented the engine in that it took up the theme of cylindrical shapes of the engine and extended it over the entire length of the locomotive. Few of the diverse appliances that various European railways added to the lean 52s were to advantage of their looks (nor did they advance the engines technically by any appreciable degree), many railways were unable to just keep their engines looking the way they were built but tampered around until degrading engines into marred or defaced cinderellas in a way that was just appalling. More than one time things like this made me wonder if thery had an aesthetic perception at all in some of these railway engineering bureaus and maintenance shops.
Juniatha

Hi Photogenic,

Quite correct. There are Engineers, and there are Designers. Sometimes they are one and the same person, and the results are very pleasing to the eye. Raymond Loewy is one excellent example, with the PRR and with many "art deco" appliances of that time period. The man had one fantastic, and esthetically pleasing, eye.

By the way, some of the German Electric Engines appear to have greatly benefited from such a person(s).

Auf Wiedersehen.

pennsy wrote:By the way, some of the German Electric Engines appear to have greatly benefited from such a person(s).

Hi, Pennsy

Guess you are referring to the 103 class Co-Co electrics that had 'egg-shaped' front ends. That was a job done by the DB development center that planned these engines prior to 1965. They looked agreeable as long as they kept that cream-bordeaux-black color scheme that by chance was near the German colors (it came by the color scheme then used for the TEE trains). With the coming of light strawberry red applied to engines by DBAG they were successfully 'clumsified'. To add up, they were given that white front 'bib' which alledgedly was to make an oncoming train better visible. The shape of that 'bib' had next to nothing to do with the engine's front shape - so any person possibly standing in the way was never distracted by any aspects of beauty but didn't loose time to leap clear. Next, they found that some de-styling could be done to the line of louvres but then they lost interest in thinking of further uglifications and considered the engines could be scrapped in that configuaration. A few have been preserved and in the typical non-conforming rebellious conservativism that is so universally abounding among rail-fans some were re-painted to the original style.
The 120 class asyncronous Bo-Bo electrics have the elegance of an armadillo and the latest super-powerful 101 class and derivations have a style like something designed by LeCorbusier (railways were never very fast in picking up trends, so it's no surprise tDBAG are some 40 years late about that). The super-fast I-C-E or T-G-V have a profile like some of our streamlined stock exchange managers and saying has it that these trains must be that fast for a simple reason: you couldn't sit comfortable in them for much longer ...
Yes, but about your point 'engineers / designers': how can you ruin a piece of machinery that came in tolerably good styling just by adding up bits and pieces in an un-organized, quasi-random, scattered way that does little or nothing to improve the thing in any way, and by bending and re-bending of pipes and sheet metal ending up with a look like a self-propelled piece of junk ? There must be a lack of human common sense, likely replaced by lots of 'I don't care no shit'.
Juniatha

Ok, for some peculiar reason or not I cannot get this second posting deleted or not, or so it seems - or not. Sorry, aunt Juniatha seems to need an 'up-date' as concerns this...
So I will use this space to answer some points put up by postings below:

Amardillo: I didn't mean that in a negative sense - the 120 class just looks very closed and massive, yet by it's length it does not lack proportion; and it has a characteristic form of the roof coming down towards the ends, thus making the middle section look even more massive - hence amardillo-like, to me ..
US 4-8-4s: I best like the Niagara, then next the UP FEF (800 class) or the NW J class. The Southern Pacific engines sure were bright and colorful and fitting to the scenery in their paint scheme. A clean silver colored smokebox front might look interesting - but how long did it look clean?
Generally I am always for keeping any shrouding to a minimum and for color scheme keeping the upper part of a steam locomotive in one uniform, rather dark color differing from the colors used on the line of coaches in order to distinguish engine from passenger stock. Chassis and wheels can be treated in a brighter scheme, still always extending over the entire locomotive (engine and tender), bringing up the delicacy of wheels, rods and chassis. I am not particularly fond of the scheme that was so abounding in Europe with green upper part and black chassis and wheels. On black wheels, clean metallic tyres can look good if not the effect gets lost on tender bogies because of small wheels behind massive bogie structure.
Juniatha

The DR 06 class? Oooh-well ... my goodness! Ok, if you speak German you can sarcastically say that just the classification indicated there was something deeply wrong with that type: you know the standard type express classes were given single figure class numbers; in order to keep to the numbering scheme, these were given a leading zero, thus: zero-one, zero-three (or: O-three) ... up to zero-six; now six is sechs in German - spoken: sex. So, you see: this class was zero-sex, or in other words: had no sex appeal. And in fact that's what it was technically!
Actually the engine's wheel arrangement was too large for the standard 23 metres turntable and since 2 m wheels were considered a must as that was standard diameter for express types on DR, that length problem sharpened and was even further sharpened by the standard arrangement of double clasp brakes which demanded 250 mm (10 ins) distance between wheels. So the firebox end of the engine became very cramped and the firebox was too small for the long boiler tubes & flues section - and then there still was a long smokebox. The tender was of the same massive 10 wheel type designed for the 05 class 4-6-4; it was designed to hold a comparatively large amount of supplies on a short wheel base and thus got a leading bogie and three rigid axles so that there could be a somewhat larger rear overhang of the tank than in a double bogie type. While with the 05s this tender was still about fitting and it was well fitting with the later built 01.10 (012) class Pacifics it was just too short for an 06.
Plans were to upgrade mainlines to 25 t axle loads and main sheds were to receive 25 m turntables, but few were built. The up-grading from former 20 m to DR standard 23 m and then to 25 m in a second enlargement looks like small steps but this was ruled by the fact that most sheds were roundhouses and these again would have had to be rebuilt if there would have been much larger tables and in fact they should have been built new to a larger radius section, i.e. pushed outwards from the table but in many cases there was no /not much space left there (see aerial view of Hamburg-Altona shed in my posting under 'How to fire up steam': you will see that the entire shed is situated inside a triangle of railway lines and there would have been lots of difficulties if that shed should have been substantially enlarged to house much larger engines).
So, the two prototype 06 engines served for mainly one thing - although surely not built for that: they prove that the scheme of standardisation put up by DR in 1925 and developed to perfection over the following years was simply not extendable to engines of the size level of 16 wheels arrangements (i.e. to 4-8-4, 2-10-4 or the like).
On external aspects: personally I do not like streamlined steam locomotives and I feel they were just not suited for it, if you come to think of how much space but incompletely filled with comparatively delicate machinery had to be bridged to stiffen those steamlining sheet metal surfaces. Quite in contrast to diesel and electric engines where the body itself is being streamlined if so intended. The steam locomotive proper was given kind of a shrouding, or as I used to say: it was in disguise. A diagram had been put up in, I think 1950, for deshrouding the two 06s lying derelict at Frankfurt but since the engines were not included in the reboilering program put up for their freight counterpart class 45, it never became too clear what to do with these engines. So, finally - as in many such cases - time ran out and they were just scrapped.
They were about the size of the French 242.A.1, the Chapelon-rebilt from the unhappy ETAT railway 241.101poppet valve engine. 242.A.1 became Europe's most powerful steam locomotive - only for SNCF to decide to re-design the old PLM 241.C.1 Prototype to build the séries unifiée 241.P instead. The 'old-boys-system' at work again ...
Oh, and to come back to your original question: how was it decided which engines got those tender cabs:
that is a good question -
as I said: on DB and Austrian railways it was put into tenders of freight engines to do away with the caboose, but not on 44s because that would have meant too much loss of supplies. Austrian railways treated all (or nearly all - railways never like to do a job completely) of their 42 class (the huskier 'brother' of the 52) and many of their 52s. But if there had been an original scheme of fitting engines in a certain region or of certain depots this became blurred as the engines were sent wandering from depot to depot and from region to region. I consider the whole tender cab idea one of those things typical of RRs' ways of tampering around with engines, by 'verschlimm-bessern' (German for approx.: 'improve-worsening') them and just plain spoiling looks, technical composition and integrity.
(and now I will leave it at that and not tamper around any more with any additions and my layouting)
Juniatha

Was Ist Loes ???

As a matter of fact, if you have ever been near or close to an Armadillo, you would notice that it is actually quite an attractive animal, and easy to get along with.

And yes, I have seen many German Steamers that have had some esthetics added to them, including attractive paint jobs and schemes. Still have to get used to seeing buffers, but after that negative perspiration.

I would be curious as to your opinion of the Southern Pacific Daylight, the GS-4, # 4449, in its Daylight paint scheme. It has been touted as "the most beautiful steam locomotive in the world. "

How about your thoughts on the Heavy streamlined 4-8-4 tender steam locomotive class 06 001 or BR06 of the German Deutsche Reichsbahn Gesellschaft DRG ?? Quite a beast!

But back to my original question....What determined which types of locos got the 'dog house' tenders and which didn't? or why they did or didn't?