No. 10177 PRR-built Class S-1 Duplex Steam Locomotive #6100, 6-4-4-6, heading up the "Broadway Limited" Streamlined Passenger Train

  Pennsylvania Railroad

Aside from 125 2-10-4 “Texas”-types and 52 sharknosed 4-4-4-4 T-1 Duplex locomotives (see No. 10181), Pennsylvania’s final steam locomotive development years were punctuated by an eye-catching flurry of new and unusual wheel arrangements that were never repeated elsewhere. Late-dated unorthodoxy included the following locomotives: #6100, 6-4-4-6 S-1 (No. 10177) Altoona, 1939 Duplex passenger; #6130, 4-6-4-4 Q-1 Altoona, 1942 Duplex freight; #6175- #6199, 4-4-6-4 Q-2 Altoona, 1944-45 Duplex freight; #6200, 6-8-6 S-2 Baldwin, 1944 Turbine passenger and freight (see No. 10124).
 
Long-time followers of PRR motive power design were visibly shaken by this radical about-face from deeply rooted conventionalism. Careful mechanical department forethought, however, was aimed at procuring ultra-modern, super steam power with high speed and horsepower potentials. Towards that end, locomotives #6100, #6130, and #6200 were, admittedly, experimentals, and subject to the high mortality rates usual with such trial types. They also represented unswerving faith in steam propulsion at a time when diesels were getting their foothold. Indeed, these experimentals were actually planned toward bettering diesel performance records. At this late date, there’s no point in lamenting what happened, but, it would have been extremely interesting to observe what might have transpired, had steam power been victorious (for postwar diesel power on the Pennsylvania, see No. 10564).
 
Altoona’s initial Duplex (S-1, described in this history) spent its first two summers (1939 and 1940) as an action exhibit at Trylon and Perisphere-trademarked New York World’s Fair. Fairgoers gathered about a fenced-in enclosure to watch the monstrous No. 6100 steaming away, her 84-inch drivers revolving on the rollers installed beneath the driving wheels. Although built and owned by Pennsy, the S-1's tender was graciously lettered “AMERICAN RAILROADS.” This unusual engine came into being through the combined design talents of mechanical engineers at Altoona, Eddystone, Lima, and Schenectady. This was Broad Street’s first move toward the  K-4's replacement (see No. 10654).
 
Railroad men called 6100 “the big engine,” and rightly so. Raymond Loewy’s aerodynamically styled locomotive possessed a Commonwealth cast steel engine bed that set a record for length—77 feet 9 ½ inches, while total length of engine and tender was 140 feet. Average driving axle loadings were seventy thousand pounds and total weight was 304 tons — considerably above the largest Northern (see Nos. 10116, 10130, 10212, 10243). This explains the use of six-wheeled trucks fore and aft, to carry excess weight. Her sixteen-wheeled 250-P-84 tender carried 24,230 gallons of water and 26 tons of coal, and was equipped with a Berkley stoker. The total weight of more than one million pounds (for engine and tender) was a magic figure, usually attained only by large freight articulateds.
 
Getting 6100 from Altoona to Flushing Meadows on Long Island was a problem. Hudson River carfloats and tunnels were far from capable of handling her. She traveled east, dead in a short ten-car freight, pulled by an L-1s 2-8-2 “Mikado” steamer. Most overhead bridges were cleared by easing underneath at a slow crawl. From Trenton, the S-1 moved cautiously up the Belvidere Branch, then via Lehigh & Hudson River to Maybrook, then New Haven and Long Island to her fairgrounds exhibit site.
 
The 6-4-4-6 was clearly too large for system-wide main line work , but she did provide valuable development information. Later-dated T-1 Duplexes (see No. 10181) would fit through tight places where the S-1 dared not trespass. 6100 worked between Chicago and Crestline, Ohio, because she was too large to negotiate the west end curve approach to Pittsburgh’s station. Her record was impressive; very slippery, but very powerful once she got going. The monster could easily haul 1200 tons at one hundred miles per hour, and she often whisked the “Broadway Limited” over the Fort Wayne Division at these incredible speeds. Skirting was removed subsequently to expose cylinders, machinery, and drivers for maintenance work. As a youthful ten-year-old, the popular big speedster was scrapped in 1949.
 
As a footnote, the “Broadway Limited” New York-Chicago service was established over the 908 miles in November, 1912, on a 20-hour schedule, to be competitive with New York Central’s prestige train, the “20th Century Limited,” established in 1902 (see Nos. 10073 and 10156). Although the Tuscan red “Broadway Limited” never attained the fame or popularity of the “20th Century Limited”, it did keep pace by offering everything expected of a luxury train, including a lady’s maid, manicurist, barber, and secretary for busy executives. Dining car tables were set with china and silver and stewards wore dinner jackets. The menus were varied and the chefs were skilled.
 
Industrial Designer Raymond Loewy oversaw the streamlining of the “Broadway Limited” in 1938. The new two-tone Tuscan red and maroon  lightweight streamlined cars were pulled by stylish Loewy-designed Brunswick green GG-1 electric locomotives (see No. 10128) under catenary from New York to Harrisburg, and then by faithful  K-4 “Pacific” steam locomotives (see No. 10144) or the revolutionary steam turbine locomotive S-2 west of Harrisburg to Chicago (see No. 10124). Like the new Henry Dreyfuss designed “20th Century Limited” (see No. 10156), the “Broadway Limited” was an all-Pullman  all-private-room train, part of Pennsylvania’s new “Fleet of Modernism,” operating on a fast 16-hour schedule between New York and Chicago.  A new fleet of lightweight cars was delivered postwar to the Pennylvania 1948-50, painted in a single shade of Tuscan red with gold striping and lettering designed by Loewy as seen on the model train. 
 
In the end the “Broadway Limited” outlasted its worthy rival - both trains made their last all-Pullman runs in 1967, and when Amtrak took over in1971, it was the “Broadway Limited” name and route that survived, but back to a leisurely 20-hour schedule, about the same as the 1912 train.
 
No. 10177 represents an accurate scale model by Sunset Third Rail of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s No. 6100 S-1 Duplex steam locomotive in “O” gauge, heading up the 5-car Tuscan red streamlined train “Broadway Limited”  by Weaver (No. 10125) as it would have been seen Chicago-Crestline in 1948.  
 
The Amtrak “Broadway Limited” was a coach-and-sleeper operation, downgraded from the pre-1967 all-Pullman consist. Amtrak discontinued “Broadway Limited” service in 1995.