Which engine style looks the cutest?

I tend to find most standard-gauge articulated steam locomotives unattractive to the eye. Narrow-gauge steam locomotives, including articulated ones, do tend to be prettier to the eye. The notable exception would have to be this one-off 1910 2-6-6-2 standard-gauge mallet that was built by Baldwin for the Portland & Southwestern Railroad. This engine was shamefully scrapped many decades ago and no engine like this seems to be in existence anymore. What I like about the visual style is the chromed/whitewall wheels, the prominent cylindrical smokestack and tall domes and the roof line of the cab which extends above the top of the boiler. This engine's exterior is relatively clean and uncluttered. Many later standard-gauge American locomotives were ungainly. They had a high boiler line. Cab roofs about the height of the boiler, stubby domes and stacks and often a lot of exterior clutter. The streamlined steamers looked weird too. For a non-articulated steam loco, I prefer the looks of the pre-1930 UP/SP Baldwin consolidations in standard-gauge. They tended to have typical narrow-gauge cuteness with a lower boiler top line, taller cab and higher domes and stacks. The 1924 Baldwin 2-8-2 mikado Old 45 of the Skunk Train in northern California is a cute model engine too but I find the driving wheels rather dinky in diameter.


This is the cutest style for an articulated standard gauge engine I have ever seen to date. If were to have a scale-model engine, this is definitely the style I would want. If I were a multi-billionaire with a private RR offering excursion train service, that one-of-a-kind 1910 Baldwin mallet style is what I would want in a custom-built replica steam engine for my line fueled by LP or NG. I am not a fan of tank engines but prefer the looks of steam locos with separate tenders. There is a special mystique for articulated steam locomotives and they can handle the sharper turns in wooded mountain railroading. Basically, I find American locomotives and rolling stock, historic and current, much more visually attractive than that of other parts of the world.

There are three different articulated engine styles at this following link pictured, you decide which looks the cutest:
http://i1252.photobucket.com/albums/hh5 ... nribg5.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So, you seem to like complex roof-lines. Is your favorite diesel the Alco C-636?

The high domes, cab-higher-than-boiler-top look was feasible in the early 20th C because boilers were smaller than on later (big) power: clearance limits put an upper boundary to total height, and as the boilers got bigger there was less space between the boiler and … bridges and tunnel roofs … to put stacks and domes and cabs. Same principle-- though with a lower absolute limit-- effected British railways: short stacks and low domes are the norm on later British steam.

I guess my personal preference -- not claiming I'm right and you're wrong, just that we differ -- is for the late, fat-boilered types: New YorkCentral's "Niagara" 4-8-4 (New York Central had lower clearances than many Western U.S. railroads, so had to keep their 4-8-4's roof line lower than, say, Santa Fe or Union Pacific did), and British Rail's "standard" classes (such as the "Britannia" Pacific or the 9F 2-10-0).

Allen Hazen wrote:So, you seem to like complex roof-lines. Is your favorite diesel the Alco C-636?

The high domes, cab-higher-than-boiler-top look was feasible in the early 20th C because boilers were smaller than on later (big) power: clearance limits put an upper boundary to total height, and as the boilers got bigger there was less space between the boiler and … bridges and tunnel roofs … to put stacks and domes and cabs. Same principle-- though with a lower absolute limit-- effected British railways: short stacks and low domes are the norm on later British steam.

I guess my personal preference -- not claiming I'm right and you're wrong, just that we differ -- is for the late, fat-boilered types: New YorkCentral's "Niagara" 4-8-4 (New York Central had lower clearances than many Western U.S. railroads, so had to keep their 4-8-4's roof line lower than, say, Santa Fe or Union Pacific did), and British Rail's "standard" classes (such as the "Britannia" Pacific or the 9F 2-10-0).

Of course, I understand why various locomotive designs are chosen: to "fit" the railway, speed, power, etc.
They were not chosen for prettiness. Form follows function even though sometimes ungainly looks result.
I am not a fan of the Hudson or Pacific class American steam engines either for looks. Nor do I like any steam engine
with a large flaring, funnel-shaped smokestack. The pre-1930's steam locos with taller, vertical cylindrical stacks, stacks that are not
too fat either, taller domes and high cab roof-line seem most elegant to my eyes. Different locomotives
over the ages are like different cars over the ages: we often love or hate their styles.

As far as diesel engines go, I am a huge fan of GM/EMD, not ALCO. I love low-nose hood-units with spartan cabs
for looks and the distinctive gear-driven scavenge/Roots blowers for sound common on many classic Geeps.
My two personal favorites are: GP38-2 and SD40-T-2 though the SD's had turbochargers instead of gear-drive blowers.

How about a BL2? It has the non-turbo 567 you like. The long hood end looks like a GG1. The short hood end looks like a Basset Hound. That's about as cute as you are going to get, unless you count "critters".

I really don't think "cuteness" is a design factor.

Les

Desert Dweller--

There's no ARGUING about taste… but maybe there can be interesting CONVERSATION about it!

As for cuteness… This may be partly idiosyncratic with me, but I think not entirely so: I tend to think of "cute" as having a very specific meaning. "Cute" things somehow, by their proportions, put us in mind of babies and baby animals. I went on at length about this in a string (now about eight down from the top) on the Railroad.net GE forum titled "Essence of cute". (I think of my spiel there as being almost a semi-serious contribution to the philosophical field of AESTHETICS: if philosophers can speculate abut the nature of beauty, why not also the nature of cuteness? In the 1950s, the English philosopher J.L. Austin got a bunch of his colleagues discussing the nature of the "dainty" and the "dumpy", forcing them to look at specifics rather than just go off on metaphysical tangents the way they might have if talking about the "beautiful")

So. Is the 2-6-6-2 that Jon likes a "cute" engine? Not sure. Maybe. Looking at it after his post… Well, maybe the tall domes and prominent stack are like the big paws of a puppy: features the boiler "hasn't grown into yet"?

You're right that locomotive designers (unless, maybe, you count the Reverend Awdrey (?) as a designer of Thomas the Tank Engine!) don't often TRY for cuteness (though other aesthetic properties have certainly been sought: streamlining, until the Japanese Shin Kansen and other truly high speed trains, was mainly aesthetic rather than functional), but sometimes cuteness … happened. As a by-product.

The only EMD model I think I have SEEN described as cute is the SW-1: compared to other engines of its era, its cab and trucks were disproportionately large (puppy paws). As for the BL-2… From the long hood end it IS reminiscent of a GG-1 ( or R-1 or P5aM ). I would think of this as having a certain kind of beauty to it rather than cuteness. From the front… maybe there IS something puppy-dog-ish about it ...

Jon--
I wasn't trying to suggest that you OUGHT to be an Alco fan. I mentioned the C-636 only because it, like the steam locomotives you favour, has a very complex roof-line. (I tend to think of late Alcos as… not BEAUTIFUL, but maybe PICTURESQUE: like a New England farmhouse that, over a period of generations, has been extended by a series of sheds and lean-tos, no two of them the same height.)

Second generation EMD hood units (GP-35 up to the early 70-series) seem almost the opposite of the early 20th C 2-6-6-2 design you like: very rectilinear, like the "modernist" architecture of the 1950s and 1960s. Do you think it would be fair to say that you are … looking for different things in diesels and steam locomotives?

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I hope you are delighted that there IS a Baldwin 2-6-6-2 currently under restoration: Chesapeake and Ohio 1309. I think it is the last steam locomotive built by Baldwin for a domestic customer (in 1948 or 1949), but built to a much earlier design.

I tend to hold logging locomotives in another category from mainline steam, as their operating conditions and intended purpose are so different. For mainline locomotives I prefer the large-boilered look that screams 'power', for logging locomotives the smaller boiler that emphasizes lightness on the feet. Just different.

Allen Hazen wrote:Jon--
I wasn't trying to suggest that you OUGHT to be an Alco fan. I mentioned the C-636 only because it, like the steam locomotives you favour, has a very complex roof-line. (I tend to think of late Alcos as… not BEAUTIFUL, but maybe PICTURESQUE (snipped-NW).

Surely you are looking for RUGGEDLY HANDSOME with muscles bulging out of the sleek carbody?
I have to say that the GE U18B baby boats could also be considered cute versions of large U-boats, but MEC-407 may disagree.

Nah, I agree.

The GP15-1 "Baby Tunnel Motor" is another cutie.

MEC407 and I are in complete agreement about the U18B.

As for the GP15-1… I know its proportions make it a good "infant" (or "larval"(*)) analogue of bigger EMDs, but somehow the angularity of the EMD cab and short hood designs keep me from FEELING that it's cute. Or maybe I'm just such an extreme GE fan that I can't bring myself to appreciate a Geep!

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(*) Hmmm… When it comes to baby INSECTS… Larvae of what are called "holometabolous" insects -- caterpillars and maggots and grubs -- are SO different from the adult ("imago") form that there is nothing analogous to the relation between the infant and adult forms of mammals: a caterpillar doesn't look like a cute butterfly because it doesn't look like a butterfly at all! But not all insects have this extreme a version of metamorphosis. The younger stages of grasshoppers (technically called "nymphs" rather than "larvae") are recognizably grasshopper-shaped, but with different proportions. I think they might be cute.

(Northwest: Grin!)

Let's see if we can crank the cuteness up to 11. What if Seaboard Coast Line, having loved their U18Bs so much, decided they wanted something similar, but even shorter and lighter? A road-capable switcher to replace GP7s and SW9s? GE responds with the "U14B" — powered by a V6* FDL. That probably would've reduced the length by a foot or two, and a shorter radiator might've reduced the length even further. They would've been able to get away with an even smaller fuel tank, too.


*I know, I know... I'm just daydreaming.

Not an unpleasant daydream!
From the plausibility standpoint, however…
(1) I know that a certain other locomotive builder DID produce locomotive-size diesels (2-cycle monstrosities) in a V6 configuration, but the FDL was never built this way: nearest analogue was the in-line 6 used on the 70 toner and some early export units, but this would have been longer than the V-8.
(2) GE did advertise a lower-rated variant of the U18B (to use lower-rated electrical gear from first generation trade-ins), the U15B. So if SCL had asked GE for something in the 1400 hp range, it might have looked just like a U18B.

Still…
Suppose SCL had really, really, pestered GE for a lower horsepower, lighter weight, unit. If I were the GE sales person receiving the pestering I would have started by dipping into the export catalogue and trying to interest SCL in a (Caterpillar engined) U10B. No, the SCL people say: that's too narrow (hassle at service areas and shops) and too low: we want something build to the American loading gauge, and we'll be doing some drag transfer work with it and so we want 752 traction motors. For a moment (as the GE person) I fantasize about murder, and then I wonder if GE could buy second-hand Alco T-6 from the Norfolk and Western and refurbish them. But SCL is a good customer, so we have to humour them. At which point I start thinking about maybe repackaging the U10B's working parts in a shortened U18B carbody...

I think we both have to remember to take our pills! (Grin!)

I like Thomas

I'm not sure one could get much smaller than the small fuel tanks on some of SCL's U18Bs, although one of the rectangular tanks applied to Mexican U-Boats could get close.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 66&nseq=21
I'll bet that GE would go to the planned end cab switcher (U15BT) carbody for anything much smaller than an U18B, to better compete with the MP15DC which was designed for road service. FWIW, a U18BT was offered as well.

I've seen a drawing of the proposed U18BT (I think one was published in "Extra 2200 South" when the model was announced. Most of the locomotive was similar to the standard U18B, and I think the length was the same. The cab was moved forward (eliminating the short hood) and there was a low-roof section of the long hood between the cab and the machinery, allowing a bit more visibility, as on EMD switchers with their reduced height hood section immediately in front of the cab.

I believe the U15B was leo offered with a "crew quarters" cab, similar to what was later built on the BQ23-7.

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Just in case there is any doubt in people's minds, the shortened-for-increased-cuteness U18B variants MEC407 and I have suggested are just our fantasies, not anything there is any evidence that GE ever considered. In fact there is good reason to think that no such unit would have been seriously considered for North American service. The light-weight version of the U18B (small fuel tank, FB-2 trucks, which are apparently lighter in weight than the "Commonwealth" drop equalizer trucks) weighed 112 tons. This is less than many 1000 hp switchers! So it is unlikely that any North American railroad would have wanted a smaller and lighter roadswitcher than a standard U18B in its light-weight version.

Railways outside North America often have track structures that force them to use lighter weight locomotives than North America, but they often also have loading gauges (clearance envelopes) that would prevent the use of units of the height and width of a U18B.

Oh well.

Since we are talking about "mini U-boats" dont forget about EMD's "mini SD"!
The Milwaukee Road SDL39, 10 units built custom for the Milwaukee Road for light branch line service..
a replacement for their Alco RSC-2's.
One has been scrapped, the remaining nine still exist today in the country of Chile.



Scot