The locomotive boasted the biggest boiler, with a diameter of 8 ft 5 in – ever built for a European steam engine, and there was talk of 5,000 ihp; in practice, AA-20-A1 exerted 3,700 ihp pulling a 2,800 ton train up a 1-in-100 gradient, but because it was said to be a diffident steamer, as well as too long, it proved unpopular and was sent into exile. Stored for a quarter of a century at the Shcherbinka test track on the outskirts of Moscow, perhaps with a view to preservation, this shadowy image of Soviet power was cut up in 1960.
The 4-14-4 had made its debut in the year that the Krivonosite movement exerted its grip on the Soviet railways and Kaganovich replaced Andreev. Giganticism was now very much on the railway agenda. In July of that year, driver P. F. Krivonos began driving his E class 0-10-0 much harder than normally permitted, raising the average speed of freight trains from 24 to 32 kph. This was a direct corollary of the work of Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, a miner who, also in 1935, allegedly dug 102 tons of coal in 5 hours and 45 minutes – using a power tool, presumably – and thus fulfilled his norm fourteen times over. This gave rise to the wider Stakhanovite movement across the Soviet Union, whereby workers, factories, their managers, party officials, and politicians sought to increase production and productivity many times over. It soon came to the point where anyone who dared question the wisdom of this insane movement, which wrecked the lives of workers – and, in the case of the Krivonosites, caused excessive wear to locomotives – was labelled a ‘wrecker’, which could only mean the gulag, torture, or execution.
Although Soviet locomotive engineers of the time turned to the United States for inspiration, Britain played a tantalizing role, too. A 266 ton Beyer Garratt 4-8-2 + 2-8-4 with a tractive effort of 78,700 lb had been ordered from Beyer Peacock of Manchester in 1930. It was shipped from England to Leningrad in component form in December 1932. This was the biggest Garratt of all and the largest steam locomotive built in Europe. No. Ya-01 proved to be a success, working well in the Sverdlovsk region of central Russia with 2,500 ton trains in temperatures as low as –41 °C. But, according to Keith Chester in Elements of Locomotive Development in Russia and the USSR (2000), the Garratt ‘ran into a wall of prejudice’. It appears that the ‘Soviet Union simply could not afford to import sufficient quantities of Garratts from the UK, nor did it have the facilities to erect them under licence, let alone maintain them’. The lone Garratt soldiered on until April 1937, on the East Siberian railway, and is said to have been broken up that year.
One of the big questions facing Soviet steam engineers – and one that the Garratt answered positively – was that of axle loading. Traditionally, tracks were lightly laid across the huge Russian land mass and so locomotives, unless they were built with many axles to spread the load, had to be light. But with a slow upgrading of many lines in the early 1930s from an axle loading of 16 or 18 tons to one of 20 tons, it became possible to design and operate bigger and more conventional locomotives. The first of these – the Soviet Union’s equivalent of US super-power steam – were the FD class 2-10-2s, of which 3,213, including a modified FD18 version, were built between November 1931 and the summer of 1942, under the design direction of L. S. Lebedyansky and K. N. Suschkin of the Central Locomotive Project Group. Based on first-hand experience of American design practice – with the Alco 2-10-4s and Baldwin 2-10-2s – the 135 ton FDs formed the basis of what became a line of standard two-cylinder locomotives which continued in various guises and wheel arrangements until the end of steam construction. The FDs had large combustion-chamber boilers pressed to 213 psi, a 75.8 sq ft grate area and 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) driving wheels. They were initially limited to 65 kph (40 mph), but this figure was later raised to 85 kph (53 mph). Their tractive effort was 15–20 per cent higher than the E class 0-10-0s, and at speeds above 30 kph (18.5 mph), their maximum power was double that of the earlier type. They were named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, an aristocrat by birth who became the first head of the Cheka, the greatly feared Soviet secret police.
A passenger version – the IS (Josef Stalin) class 2-8-4 – followed in October 1932, it was designed by the same team, and 650 were built before Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in June 1941. With a power output of up to about 3,200 ihp, or 2,500 ihp in normal operation, the 2-8-4s could pull 750 ton trains on the level at 100 kph (62 mph), their initial maximum permitted speed; this was later raised to 115 kph (71.5 mph). One – IS20-16 – was streamlined in 1937 and recorded at 155 kph (96 mph) on test. Both the FD and IS were successful, much-liked classes (despite the names they celebrated) and provided decades of reliable service.
Three streamlined, light-blue 4-6-4s were built in 1937–8 for the Krasnaya Strela (Red Arrow) express between Moscow and Leningrad. Designed under the direction of L. S. Lebedyansky and K. N. Suschkin at Kolomna works, these 4-6-4s, the first two with 2 m (6 ft 6 in) and the third with 2.2 m (7 ft 2½ in) driving wheels, were to have been heralds of a larger class of at least ten more locomotives which were to have accelerated the principal trains on the line most used by visiting foreigners as well as by Soviet officials. The aim of reducing the running time over the 404 miles between the two cities from ten to eight hours was not to be achieved before the Great Patriotic War of 1941–5. The engines themselves were certainly capable of high speeds; on test on 29 June 1938, one of the class reached 106 mph on level track, a record that still stands for Russian steam. The 4-6-4s were seen at work in the 1970s, but were rarely allowed to show their undoubted pace.
In the post-war era, Lebedyansky was the predominant steam locomotive designer, although all proposals were considered by a central research committee, as in previous decades. The L class 2-10-0 which emerged from Kolomna works on 5 October 1945 was so successful that in 1947 its name was changed from P (for pobeda, or victory) to L, for Lebedyansky, in honour of its designer, an accolade unique in Soviet railway history. Some 4,200 were built between 1945 and 1955. With their relatively light axle load and top speed of 80 kph (50 mph), these popular locomotives, with their maximum output of 2,200 ihp between 40 and 60 kph, could work virtually throughout the entire Soviet railway network.
Then in late 1949, the prototype of a true express passenger locomotive emerged from Kolomna, designed under the direction of Lebedyansky. This was the first of the two-cylinder P36 class 4-8-4s, a series of charismatic and extremely good-looking engines which promised mile-a-minute schedules over main lines where average speeds of 60 kph (37 mph) were the norm for even the most prestigious passenger trains. With its skyline casing housing the external main steam-pipe, massive smoke deflectors sweeping back seamlessly into the high running board, smoke-box decorated with a big red star, twelve-wheeled bogie tender, and its livery of light green offset with white lining and vermilion Boxpok wheels with white rims, the P36 was a strikingly handsome machine.
Production began in earnest in 1954 and there were to have been up to a thousand of these 3,000 ihp, 135 ton locomotives. The decision to abandon steam development and construction in 1956, however, meant that just 251 were built. Simple and robust, and heavily influenced by US design, the P36 was powered by a tapered boiler pressed to 213 psi and a mechanically or oil-fired 72.6 sq ft grate. Highly superheated steam passed to two 575 × 800 mm (22⅝ × 31½ in) cylinders. The driving wheels were 1.85 m (6 ft 0¾ in), tractive effort 39,686 lb, and speed limit 125 kph (77.5 mph). With a well-designed steam circuit, the optimum thermal efficiency of the P36 was up to 24 per cent higher than that of an IS class 2-8-4.
The P36s were a memorable sight at the head of expresses from Moscow to Leningrad or charging across the seemingly endless steppes with the Rossiya. Some were finished in a painterly light blue. They were often the first Russian steam engines encountered by the few foreign visitors who made it to the Soviet Union from the West; they proved excellent ambassadors for a country where travelling was often difficult and which was frequently incomprehensible to outsiders. Although popular with crews, running staff, and passengers, the P36s were effectively withdrawn by the end of 1976.
Fortunately, many survived into preservation and today it is still possible to enjoy truly luxurious tourist trips across great tracts of the former Soviet Union with a blue or green P36 at the head of the train. The P36s were the last passenger steam locomotives built for Russian railways.
The last new class of mass-produced freight locomotives was the LV class 2-10-2s, of which 522 were built at the Voroshilovgrad (Lugansk) works between 1954 and 1956. These led on from a prototype of 1952. The LVs were essentially a lengthened L class 2-10-0, with a larger fire-box and grate area; they featured a number of technical improvements over the L class, including a higher degree of superheating, a feedwater heater, bar frames, roller bearings, and a mechanical stoker. They were also equipped with an ingenious mechanism that could adjust weight distribution between coupled wheels; this allowed a variation in axle load of between 18 and 19 tons, and a boost to starting power as the locomotive accelerated from rest with heavy freight trains. Maximum power was 2,420 ihp between 50 and 60 kph (31–37 mph). With its partial skyline casing, but for the red star on the smoke-box door, an LV could easily have been mistaken for an American freight engine. At the height of the Cold War, Soviet and American steam locomotives were closer than cousins.
Before Kagonovich’s fall and exile, there was one last shout for new Soviet steam with a project for a much higher-powered freight locomotive with a 20 ton axle load. This was Lebedyansky’s hugely impressive four-cylinder P38, a 2-8-8-4 Mallet, of which just two appear to have been built in 1954–5. The first – P38-0001 – boasted a dramatic, almost art deco, shroud around its smoke-box which gave the massive engine a slightly otherworldly appearance. This was not fitted to the remaining member (or members) of the class; as a result, they looked much like American Mallets. With four 575 × 800 mm (22.6 × 31½ in) cylinders, a grate area of 115 sq ft, 213 psi boiler pressure, and 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) driving wheels, the Soviet Mallets promised much in the way of tractive effort and power at speeds of up to a permitted 85 kph (53 mph). On test on the Krasnoyarsk railway in 1955, one of these machines hauled a 3,500 ton train up a 1-in-110 gradient at a steady 23 kph (14.3 mph), developing 3,600 dbhp, or about 4,600 ihp, in the process. But the die had been cast and, although as powerful as the latest diesels and electrics except at very low speeds, the P38s had little or no chance to prove themselves; they were taken out of service in July 1959. Packed off to the Belgorodsky district, they were dismantled and their boilers used in sugar-beet factories.
‘I am for the steam locomotive and against those who imagine that we will not have any steam locomotives in the future; this machine is sturdy, stubborn, and won’t give up.’ So Lazar Kaganovich had said in his speech of 1954 when he had proposed thousands of new steam locomotives. Three years later, this former henchman of Josef Stalin was dispatched into exile to run a small potassium factory in the Urals. Expelled from the Communist Party for good in 1961, Kaganovich returned to Moscow and lived on until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. ‘In years to come,’ wrote H. M. Le Fleming and J. H. Price in Russian Steam Locomotives (1960), ‘his name will probably be honoured by steam traction enthusiasts, for his obduracy gave the world some most interesting steam locomotives.’ Actually, not even the most fervent steam enthusiast should ever honour the memory of Lazar Kaganovich. This ardent Stalinist was one of those directly responsible for the politically motivated death by starvation of millions of Ukrainians during the Holodomor (‘killing by hunger’) of 1932–3. He was also in charge of putting down strikes by workers, gratuitously demolishing historic buildings, and signing the death warrants of hundreds of those who fell foul of Stalin’s regime.
A country, though, abounding in new supplies of hydroelectricity and with its own easy access – at the time – to oil reserves, was perhaps inevitably thinking of a switch from steam to diesel and electric technology. Even so, there is no question that the sudden decision to drop steam was a political act. When Khrushchev took power in 1956, denouncing Stalin, the boss he had served so loyally until the dictator’s death in 1953, he wanted to push the Soviet Union into the forefront of modern technology and ahead of the United States. Whether in terms of the space race, military hardware, or railway traction, the USSR was on the march anew from the mid-1950s, in double-quick time. Steam locomotives were, however, to run in daily service until the early 1990s and, pleasingly, they were kept in spick-and-span condition. Who couldn’t help ‘spying’ on them?
As for Lev Sergeyevich Lebedyansky, the Soviet Union’s finest locomotive engineer of the ‘Super Steam’ era, he too met a sorry end. And, it was politics – of a very petty nature – that appears to have brought a premature end to his stellar career. This was especially sad, as not only was Lebedyansky a particularly fine engineer, but the Soviet state had long recognized his achievements. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and held two Orders of the Red Banner for Labour, and when the L-class 2-10-0s were named in his honour, he was made a laureate of the Stalin Prize, which was high praise indeed.
A graduate of the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute, Lebedyansky was employed from 1922 until 1963 at the Kolomna locomotive works – 114 kms south-east of Moscow by rail – where he rose to become principal designer and chief of construction. He survived Kaganovich’s fall. On 29 June 1956, Lebedyansky held a celebratory event at the Kolomna works to commemorate the simultaneous production of its last steam locomotive, P36-0251, and of its first diesel loco, TE3-1001. The twin-unit 1,972 hp Co-Co diesel was, in fact, very much a Lebedyansky-led design with the prototype emerging from Khar’kov works as early as 1953. Production of this highly successful class of freight locomotives continued until 1973 by which time no fewer than 6,809 were in service.
Lebedyansky went on to lead the design of the 2,959 hp, 160 kph TEP60 Co-Co diesel-electric, the Soviet Union’s first purpose-built express passenger diesel; 1,241 were built between 1960 and 1985. At the same time, Lebedyansky developed a new generation of gasturbine electric locomotives, the first of which, G1-01 – a singularly handsome machine – was built at Kolomna in 1959. It was this promising machine that brought about Lebedyansky’s tragic fall.
G1-01 was demonstrated at an exhibition of the latest Soviet locomotives in April 1963. Khruschev was present. The Soviet leader, it seems, was informed that the G1-01 was not as efficient as the latest diesel-electrics. Lebedyansky had the temerity – or the naivety of the apolitical engineer – to suggest otherwise. Soon afterwards, he was summoned to a meeting with the director of the Kolomna works and told that all work on the gas-turbine electric would cease forthwith. Again, Lebedyansky remonstrated; in the ensuing row with his chief, the engineer suffered a heart attack. An ambulance took him to hospital. His resignation followed, and then he was hit by a stroke that paralysed the right side of his body.
Lebedyanksy lived for a further five years, a victim of the capriciousness and sheer nastiness of Soviet politics. Since then, however, a memorial plaque has been affixed to the house – 330 October Revolution Street, Kolomna – where he lived for the last twenty-eight years of his life, while an L-class 2-10-0 – No 0012 – stands on a plinth close by in a street named after him. The centenary of the engineer’s birth was marked with a plaque fixed on the management block of Kolomna works. Happily, Lebedyansky’s handsome steam locomotives speed on at the head of special trains today.
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Remarkably, Russian and Russian-derived steam did live on in a country that even today is a communist state, despite running the world’s most successful capitalist economy. This geographical and political enigma is the People’s Republic of China. Here, production of the 3,000 ihp, two-cylinder QJ (Qian Jin or ‘march forward’) class 2-10-2, derived from the Russian LV class, continued until 1988. In 1987, I witnessed the production of these engines at Datong works in Inner Mongolia; even at the time it was hard to believe that steam locomotives of this scale were still being built for a state railway. And, given that this was a communist country, and despite a gaping language barrier, it was a particu
lar delight to be treated courteously and without the slightest sign of suspicion. Perhaps this was because I was in Mongolia and among Mongols, rather than in China proper. The odd thing for me was that I had not known that steam was still under construction at Datong. I had come all this way to see the remarkable sixth-century Hanging Monastery perched miraculously on the side of Heng Shan mountain, some forty miles south-east of Datong. An architect-engineer working on some essential repairs told me about the railway works. How we got into a conversation about steam, I cannot now remember, but a love of steam is a shared passion and its language a global one.
What I did not know at the time was that the finest moment of these 2-10-2s was to be some years in the future, with the opening of the Jitong railway in 1995. Running 587 miles through Inner Mongolia between Jining and Tongliao, through Datong, this was the world’s last brand-new steam main line. Like many steam enthusiasts at the time, I thought that there must have been some mistake, in translation perhaps. But no, the railway was quite real. More pragmatic than the Soviet Russians, the communist Chinese believed that the best use should be made of appropriate fuel resources and technology. As the new railway ran through coal belts, and Datong was along the line, steam made economic sense. There was, though, no desire on the part of the vast majority of Chinese officials to prolong the life of steam. Far from it. Most were committed modernizers who would, soon enough, abandon steam on the Jitong railway. What mattered in 1995, and for the following ten years, was that steam was cheap in terms of both capital cost and the cost of fuel.
Giants of Steam Page 28
