MTH HO Triplex Drive Wheels

[Woody Elmore]

Why wasn't a franklin booster added? I don't know but I bet it was cheaper to put the 2-8-0 mechanism under a tender and do the work in house rather than buy new stuff; especially when diesels were making their smelly appearance. Just a guess.

If I recall correctly the Southern had two 2-8-8-2 locomotives.

[japasha]

Rich,

I'm assuming that the Southern Railway engineering staff had a bunch of obsolete parts that were paid for and thought they could make it work. There's a reason that they bought standard locomotives in the first place, not many of the southern lines had much of a motive power engineering staff that were like the Pennsy, N&W, C&O or the western roads.

They probably didn't have anyone who could figure boiler steam production. It wasn't until Woodard of Lima and his staff really did the math that the so-called super-power steamers appeared in the mid 1920s. Alco and Baldwin followed in this case.

The Southern experiment was done in the mid 1910s as a less expensive way to get a mallet. Someone just forgot that the boiler was adequate only for the original locomotive.

Jim

[r.cprmier]

Jim;
Make sense to me.  I know that the Pennsy standardized as much of the parts on a locomotive for just that reason.  If you can minimize the amount of variation, then for one thing, your inventory costs will be lower; and if a locomotive was wrecked, tubes ran out and wasn't worth re-tubing, etc, then the parts became inventory again, and were used elsewhere-or sold to other roads.
Obviously the same could be done for at least first and second generation diesels.

[r.cprmier]

Woody;
All things considered, I doubt if it were cheaper to take a 2-8-0, and put a tender body atop the frame, when you consider man-hours, the parts, re-design, etc, and juxtapose that with ordering and installing-in house-a Franklin booster truck.  SO to me, it is still a mystery.

[Woody Elmore]

We are talking 1910 when man hours were very cheap and abundant. Of course there may have been other reasons. Perhaps it was somebody's bright idea in their engineering department! It makes modeling interesting. The late Bill Schopp, who used to do brass bashing articles for RMC did one of those Southern engines.

As for labor at the start of the twentieth century; The City of New York decided to undertake a renovation of a school building built at the turn of the last century. The contractors were greatly surprised when they realized they had to deal with brick walls 18 inches thick. No steel studs and drywall in that building! Bricks were cheap and labor was plentiful.

[r.cprmier]

Woody;
The only labour that was plentiful back then was either "just off the boat" labour, or bozos no one wanted anyway, because they were a bunch of undependable half-baked screw-ups.  Skilled and certifiable trades were just like today:  Some good, some really excellent and knowledgeable and with a pride ethic; and some just drifting along.  I will guarantee you dollars to donuts that the good skilled tradesmen were never wanting for work; this certainly includes steamfitters, plumbers, (there is a difference) millwrights, welders, boilermakers, etc; and if you think that the "suits" of that era held any more sway than their fanci-fied counterparts of today, guess again-the tradesman was often the final word-and for damned good reason!  Need I explain?

As far as the aspect of  labour rates for skilled people went, it was as growlworthy then as is now.  In short, skilled craftsman labour was not cheap!  This only adds to my question about why [they] would go through the trial and tribulation of doing the 2-8-0 thing when a Franklin truck was not only efficiently more feasible, but a hell of a lot easier on the ways and means committee.

Incidentally, I remember one of Bill Schopp's article about that hinged boiler-I believe it was a Union Pacific prototype-do you remembee that one?  it was sure odd-looking!

[japasha]

Rich,

The prototype hinged boiler was first used on some unusual mallets made by Baldwin for the Santa Fe. There were a couple of versions but the best known were som 2-10-10-2 helpers built specifically for the Cajon Pass run. There were some 4-4-6-2 passenger versions as well. It is all well-documented in many Santa Fe steam books.

TRhe hinges were flat plates that were bolted together to make the joint. Maybe 8-10 were used depending on locomotive. All were retired by the mid-1920s and converted into something else.

The late Bill Schopp noted that these were perfect prototypes for small radius curves, mostly tongue in cheek as he knew the real ones required as much radius as a normal USRA 2-8-8-2.

[RAM]

The 2-10-10-2s were made into the 1600 class 2-10-2s.  I think the 4-4-6-2s were made into 4-6-2s.

[Virginian]

The Virginian Triplex was a 2-8-8-8-4, and they turned it into a 2-8-8-0 and a 2-8-2.  All these big loco freaks ought to look at a Virginian 800.  2-10-10-2 that was very successful.  Well... except for number 800 herself.

[r.cprmier]

Japasha;
Thanx for the info.  I had the road wrong (Mia culpa...) and the 2-10-10-2 sounds like the model Bill Schopp did.  He had sent in pictures of the prototype, and it was as odd-ball as the model.  Both did look pretty strange!

Schopp was an extremely talented person and his words as well as his work were an inspiration to me.  Every time I start working on the details of an engine, I think of him and the stuff he did.  From him, I learned that research is always paramount; whether you are modelling prototype, or just superdetailing a steamer and want to use a logical approach to what you are doing.

[chuff_n_puff]

Pertaining to the original subject, about the dummy drive wheels, the following is the answer I just received from MTH:
Hi.  I am so glad to hear everything is working well with the engine
and your DCC system now.  We certainly did not intentionally mislead
customers regarding the drive wheels on the tender of the HO Triplex.
These wheels are referred to as drive wheels to differentiate from
the pilot track and trailing truck; it seems in retrospect it would
have been more clear if we had indicated which drive wheels were
powered and which un-powered.  Again, we did not intend to hide the
fact that these wheels were not powered or to mislead customers
regarding the number of powered wheels; I personally answered a
number of emails from customers on this issue letting them know that
these wheels were not powered.  I can see your point, and the fact
that we did receive a number of emails asking this, does lend itself
to the notion that we need to clarify this for future engines; I will
pass your email and comments on to our marketing department for
reference.  The HO line is a new venture for MTH and we do want to
make sure that we learn from any mistakes we make along the way.
Thank you,

Kirstin

[r.cprmier]

Sounds to me like we are dealing with a company that is new at something and is making mistakes; but will listen and as they say, hopefully learn from those mistakes.  Companies that are looking to achieve success with a product will almost always look to their customer for guidance.  It is, therefore, soet of a responsibility of the customer to provide that guidance; because without it, [they] will nevere know exactly what is on your mind. 
As I inferred before, maybe people should take a good look down the horse's throat before you buy it.  Avoid doing that only if it is a gift...
I haven't seen a triplex in action yet, but there will come a day.

The Old Reprobate

[chuff_n_puff]

r.cprmier
I agree with you 100%. Like I said I have one of the MTH Triplex and that is how i figured out it only had 8 live drive axels. I hooked it drawbar to draw bar with my Marklin Big Boy and the Big Boy took off with it like it wasn't there. It was simply due to the Big Boy's weight. I was expecting 12 live drive axels on the Triplex and got my specs broke! If you are wondering what I am doing running a Big Boy and Triplex on the same railroad, I don't. I have 3 seperate set ups and all with their prototypical sceneries. But anyway, the Triplex is a smooth runner and has more bells and whistles than I will ever use, but it just didn't meet my expectation on pulling power. It will pull 20 coal hoppers without spinning its wheels, will spin some, but go with 21, but can't get 22 started for lose of traction.

[mdtell]

I put the traction tire drivers on my Triplex and it pulls a 54 car train on my layout easily.   

[chuff_n_puff]

mdtell
Do you have any problem with continuity on your Triplex with those traction tires? Every unit I have ever tried them on I had a problem with continuity with the rails. But again, the Triplex has 7 other axels to pick up the power. I might try that. I might have to go with a different lubricant for my rails. I have found out that a light film of 3-in-1 oil keeps continuity up and some binding in curves down with my long articulate units. I have 33" radiuses but still have some binding in curves at creeping speeds, when I have dry rails. I  found out, by trial and error method, that clean dry rails causes derailment problems. I use all metal wheels on all my cars and a Centerline wide body track cleaner. The longer I ran the track cleaner, the louder the wheel noise got until derailment started in curves. I put some drops of 3-in-1 oil on the roller cloth, the noise and derailments immediately started decreasing and by the 3rd lap, was completely quite with no derailments. I also was informed by a tech that 3-in-1 oil would cut down on wheel pitting. But that 3-in-1 oil would do a number on those traction tires! So I would have to go with something like that Labelle 107 oil, which has no petroleum base, but that darn stuff is so expensive! I wonder how a something like a cooking oil would work? Anybody got any suggestions?