It’s time to learn about the Challenger locomotives of the 1930’s.
Let’s do the this thing… Chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga (That’s us traveling back in time) CHOO CHOO!
So, we’re in the 1930’s, freight traffic is increasing and Union Pacific is having troubles making it over the Wahsatch Mountains. These mofos are using TWO steam engines to make it across the rugged terrain. Now that is just god damn unacceptable, what a waste of productivity. A bunch of big babies were like “What do we do? OMG, let’s cry about how difficult life is during the great depression.” Then Arthur H. Fetter came along. This guy was a general mechanical engineer who just did not care about the conventions of the rail-system of the time. He’d been designing locomotives for Union Pacific since 1918, and felt it was time to step up his game.
He’d already designed the ‘Mountain’ and ‘Overland’ locomotives, but that shit was just not enough for such a staunch baller. Conventional steam engines of the time only used a single engine and three sections of wheels. The toughest of the day could go 50 MPH and had a 4-12-2 set up. There were four leading wheels, twelve coupled drive wheels, and two trailing wheels. Fetter spat on that horseshit. He had a long standing agreement with a bunch of manufacturing engineers at the time and they set to work.
This group of engineers decided that they wouldn’t let any bitch-ass mountains stand in their way. They took the 4-12-2 set up and split the drive wheels. Instead of six sets of two wheels, they grouped them together in two sets of six drive wheels. They also decided that the cylinders driving the old wheels where chumps. These bosses replaced the two 27″ outside cylinders and the one 31″ middle cylinder with four 22″ x 32″ cylinders. That made shit way easier to maintain, yo. You might think they were done here, but no, two inches were added to the diameter of the boiler and the pressure was raised from 220 psi to 255 psi. Then Fetter was all, “Damn, this shit is so fly, I need to add on two wheels to the back to keep this champion on the rails.”
The first locomotive built in this configuration finished construction in 1936. During a meeting the General Superintendent of Motive Power and Machinery, JW Burnett, decided he was going to take this beast on a test run. He decided he was going from Ogden, UT over the Wahsatch Mountains, and then going to run as fast as he could over the Green River. He told his boss “Yo bossman, this shit would be a challenge for any steam engine.” Then his boss called up some marketing lackey and told them to always refer to it as “The Challenger.”
The Union Pacific Railroad bought a total of 105 “Challengers” and eight other railroads would use the other 147 of the total 252 that were built. These engines were so fucking wicked that there is still one being used today Union Pacific Challenger # 3985.
Photo: Flickr
