The AA20: The USSR's "Big Boy"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
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Hey, could you do an episode on the SPRINT missile, which went so fast it became incandescent?
Its 14 drive wheels not axles and the thumbnail isn't the AA20 either.
☝️the megaprojects in the comments is scamming people.
its less their "big boy" and more their "9000 class"
I wonder if they thought about adding width (inside and outside) to the tread of at LEAST drive wheels #1 and #7 ??
after learning what “military-grade” really means in another of simon’s vids, hearing him call surfshark’s vpn security “military-grade” is simply hilarious 😆😆😆
Ask him about the time they got locked out of their TH-cam channels.
To be fair, military network security is really good.
@@goldenhate6649 Depends on which military network we are talking about..... there are many types of networks, even digital communication networks ...
Least it's not Squarespace
We get "mallet" train too, but its been prototype, 4 experimental models, his name P-38-0001 (П-38-0001) and 0002, 0003, 0004
Has Simon done a video on the Union Pacific DDA40X? That would be a good one too.
I’ve been waiting on that one. Or Atsf 3000
Good stuff! You have a very soothing voice also.
Simon, you sparked some thought here with the first 5 year plan. Would the collectivization of the Soviet Union be a Megaproject? It would certainty be morbid though.
There was a person who could have solved the transportation problem, unfortunately, was eliminated during a political purge
I'd wager that a 4-14-4 would have made for a great steam locomotive for the Trans-Australian railway back when that was Steam operated...478km (297mi) of perfectly straight track between Ooldea and just before Nurina, with most of the other 1,200km of track being fairly straight too. Most of the trains through there have always been long-ass freight trains taking cargo to/from Perth to the rest of the country as well.
No, at a bare minimum it would still destroy every set of point it went across due to the rigid wheelbase, let alone water capacity. Even the Americans didnt bother with many 4-12-2's as they were approaching the limits of being a useable locomotive format.
People forget there used to be all these small towns across the Nullarboar that the trains would switch off the mainline, let alone the crossing loops. And as soon as diesels became avaliable they brought them to use across there.
@@speedemon81 and the American big boys are really, really hard on tracks. When UP decided to start touring it, they had to reinforce the tracks in a number of areas
@@goldenhate6649 didn’t stop Australia from making tonnes of Beyer Garretts lol. Maybe not as big as a Boy Boy but they are absolutely massive and the majority are still in use I believe
4294
Larger locomotives need more water to help them, due to that area being more remote more water stops would be needed.
The legend is several USSR engineers came to the US and saw the Union Pacific 9000 class (4-12-2) in operation. A relatively successful locomotive, the soviet engineers thought they could make it bigger and better. Obviously, it fell flat on it's face.
Thing about legends is, they are usually BS.
@@timothyhouse1622 Legend has it, Timothy House is Batman. Dunno about you, but I’ve never seen Timothy House and Batman in the same room… Just sayin’
@@timothyhouse1622 thing about legends is that they are what people want to belive
Why bother building one huge locomotive when two standard size locos get the job done? Oh silly me every despot wants the biggest of everything.
At the time of steam before diseals, it was all about paying multiple crews on 1 train. The train of thought was 1 big engine to pull 1 train rather than multiple engines on 1 or separate trains. It was all about reducing cost.
I love when Simon and Co. cover trains, boats, and planes lol
@7:23 "7200 horsepower?" I just used the formulas and tables to calculate boiler horsepower provided by the Baldwin Locomotive Works along with the fairly limited information available to me on the boiler's direct and indirect heating surfaces and came up with a figure far less than 7000 HP. More like 2054 boiler horsepower. And we know boiler horsepower is always higher than drawbar horsepower.
I believe this locomotive, while not American would be better known and researched if it truly was a 7000 horsepower machine. A figure like that would have been comparable to the Norfolk and Western Class A, C&O's Allegheny and the Union Pacific's Big Boy.
But this locomotive, strictly from outward appearance did not fully embrace boiler technology at the time with a shallow firebox over the rear set of drivers (to accommodate additional driving axles for tractive force desired).
Just something to consider, nowhere near the same class as the American locomotives I mentioned above AND nowhere near 7000 boiler horsepower. 🤷🏾♂️
You think that's bad; then look at what theoretical top speed he gave - 156mph. If we use the simplified driver diameter x 1.25 equation; then we get something around 78mph.
@@HaddaClu Agreed. The small drivers (62 inches) used in order to clear the boiler and firebox and to maintain a "workable" fixed wheelbase, I would say realistically, 40-50 mph. And even at that speed, the dynamic augment from the long main rod (aka unbalanced reciprocating parts) would do some serious track damage.
But then again, I did just watch a video where the narrator continued to refer to a locomotive as a "train engine" so I guess I can't expect too much. 🤷🏾♂️🤷🏾♂️
You aught to do a video on the Southern Pacific's Cab-Forwards one day Simon, or the Erie Triplex's.
Yes I hope he makes videos in those locos
Ought*
Or, the New Zealand NZR G class locomotives (garratt types (two sets of driving gear with a shared boiler/firebox)).
As far as I know it's the only time that a set of steam locomotives were split in two, becoming double the number of smaller engines.
They did this because new carriages meant lighter train weights, so the purpose the double engines served no longer existed, and the type had issues - such as the cabin overheating in small tunnels.
After the splitting, they were apparently still bad but for different reasons; they would leak a lot of steam, and did not weigh enough to grip the track very well.
Love your videos (over a hundred), but 7,200hp for an engine developing 242 psi boiler pressure with two cylinders of 29.13 in × 31.89 in does not pass the physics test. You may have read that wrong.
he did, the hp figure and top speed made me raise an eyebrow and realize those are the stats of the PRR s1 duplex.
Not even close.. the DMIR Yellowstone ..could pull that pos back to the iron range..
it wasn’t to big ..just took low percentage curves.
Actually, the C&O/VGN's 2-8-4's were about the same size and all US 2-10-4's except for CV's were larger - some much larger
Too bad they scrapped it. It could have been a great museum exhibit! It was a curiosity. It might have been an engineering failure but the sheer size and power was impressive!
It still would have been a gigantic paperweight
Unfortunately the first railroad museum exhibition in USSR was found in 1991, the last year of ussr :( Only several historic locomotives was preserved before immovable on posts.
@@paleopotato736
Better than nothing. it would have been a curiosity.
@@Seregium
Too bad.
VR’s H220 is similar
*The U.S. had and has the world's heaviest loading guage.* So the USSR trying to keep up with the U.S. in locomotive size, weight and power would always prove to be pointless as their tracks, bridges, turntables, curves, etc.. couldn't handle such massive railroad equipment like U.S. tracks could.
The U.S. adapted and upgraded it's tracks and infrastructure continually along with bigger and bigger steam locomotives.
And while the U.S. had massive ridged locomotives. It could handle them. But even the U.S. Railroads realized that going articulated was the only way to go once you got to a certain size.
The U.S. hence went on to have the world's largest and heaviest steam locomotives like the Challenger class and 4000 class, as well as the Yellowstone's and Allegheny locomotives. 🙂
It’s like if Big Bertha (stupidly powerful banking locomotive) and Big Boy (legendary powerful locomotive) had adopted a Decapod (a 10 wheeled tank engine built for absolute traction meant to compete against electric trains) that was fed on pure whey.
I know nothing about trains, but my immediate thought within 2 seconds of seeing that engine was “how is that going to negotiate turns?”… that’s pretty sad.
some of the driving wheels have no flanges and the first and last axle has lateral motion devices
There's is a somewhat a actual Soviet big boy the engine is classified as the p38 2-8-8-4
A 2-8-8-4 would be called a Yellowstone type. Several railroads in America had them too.
@@bensmall6548 well yes it is known as the Yellowstone wheel configuration but I just typed it as 2-8-8-4
One note from first minutes of view: AA locomotive wasn't known in USSR as "Stalins engine" it never was nicknamed this way. AA letter's in it's model means name Andrey Andreev (one of some heads of ministry of something) and this locomotive was nicknamed "Выпрямитель кривых" (Curves straightener) because of it's ability to break rails in tight turns and derail itself whenever possible.
Soon as you said 4-14-4 ridged frame I thought well that’s derailing all the time that’s why Union Pacific Big Boy’s are a Mallet design so they can take curves at speed!
Same problem happened with some of the PRR's Duplex locomotives. The 6-4-4-6 Class S1 was particularly notorious for that, couldn't handle anything but the shallowest of curves and as such was restricted to a very specific stretch in Ohio.
Technically they’re aren’t a Mallet, they’re classified as a simple articulated. Mallets have two sets of differently sized cylinders that use the same steam twice, high pressure in the front pair, and the exhausted low pressure in the rear pair for example. A Union Pacific 4000 class, along with both the 3800 and 3900 classes have two pairs of identical cylinders that only use that steam once before it’s exhausted into the open air
@@justat1149 oh! I always thought them mallets
7:28 For steam locomotives horsepower does not equal speed. To get the theoretical top speed you would multiply the diameter of the drive wheels by 1.25 - so in this case 63 x 1.25 = 78.75 . Not a horrible number but this isnt accounting for weigh of the locomotive itself, or the piston stroke, or if its superheated / saturated steam, hand fired or has a mechanical stoker.
That top speed thing seemed a bit absurd to me as well - the locomotive wasn't built for speed, it was a freight locomotive. I would guess it to have a top speed of around 60 mph/100 km/hr, maybe 80 mph/130km/hr at most, as there just isn't need for higher speeds in that context. And most freight wagons/cars are limited to speeds in that range as well, so a locomotive that can go faster is pointless. There are a lot of tradeoffs for speed, typically a tradeoff between top speed (and efficiency at speed) and pulling power at low speed, and for this they would have wanted pulling power at low speed. For reference, the Big Boy had a top speed of 80 mph.
@@quillmaurer6563 oh absolutely. Its just that the video specifically said 156mph which assuming is for the locomotive by it's lonesome is still absolutely ridiculous.
@@HaddaClu Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. Regardless of it's power, it wouldn't be able to go as fast as he mentioned, probably couldn't move steam quickly enough through the large cylinders, and everything would fly apart at that speed. Just like my car (classic VW Beetle with added turbo) can't go faster than about 85 miles per hour, it has more horsepower to give but the highest gear has the engine at redline at that speed. I find it surprising he said that, as everything else in the video feels very well informed. Unless, perhaps, the engineers really did design it to be capable of going that fast, perhaps for publicity ("We build big strong locomotive. It also fast.") even if it wouldn't be expected to do so in service. But that doesn't feel plausible, I could see 100mph in that case but not 156, way faster than Mallard's official steam speed record - some are thought to have gone faster, but still nothing remotely near 156.
@@HaddaClu it is ridiculous because that speed was never applied to the AA20, the wiki said its top speed is 43 mph, a far more believable number considering the loco was meant to pull freight. the 156 mph figure came from the s1 duplex, ditto the 7200 hp figure.
True that's why A4 pasific has very big wheels
You should do a video on the Soviet Я class, the Ya-01 Garratt. The largest Garratt that Beyer-Peacock ever built. It's 4-8-2+2-8-4 monster.
Nice profile pic.
Completely agree. Was actually built with sloping pipes to properly drain in case it froze.
How 'bout instead they focus on the common mass produced types of Soviet steam locos that not only were key to winning WW2 but also enabled the Soviets to do all their other stuff including the nastier things like Gulags as the Soviet Union was from beginning to end a Railway dependent empire
Do a video on the SD40-2! it set the industry standard for decades.
DDA40X Operated by Union Pacific it was the most powerful.
Always enjoy the railroad based vids!
USSR entered World War II on 17th of September 1939 , when they attacked Poland which was already attacked by Nazi Germany, following terms of Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. In 1941 they merely change alliances. Get your facts straight Simon.
to be entirely honest, the AA20 was less like the Union pacifics big boys, challengers or any sort of articulate, but much, much more similar to the actually semi comparable Union Pacific 9000 class, which was one of UP's first parts to their, at the time growing super power addiction.
Unlike the Big Boy, the AA20 was a complete failure. Why not do a video on the New South Wales Government Railways AD-60 class - Australia's Big Boy?
Long story short, russia thought it be easy, it wasn't, this train was a failure, like everything else russian and communist. Who would've guessed throwing money at something wouldn't make it work.
More like the USSR’s “Big Fail”
The real question is how many people on this project ended up in the gulag?
If they were thinking ahead they could have recycled all that iron and steel and at least got some money back! 😅😂
They ere afraid to scrap until Stalin had been safely dead for yeras
Surprised they didn’t try articulated Mallet-type locos. Like a 4-8-8-4.
Yes!
I did say before were a sucker for planes on the Euro fighter video, I would say the same for trains!
🚂🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃🚃
Can anyone tell what the boiler size of the locomotive is for I have been asking for years and would like to know all the details of the aa-20 if anyone can I’ll appreciate every bit of information I can get my hands on.
I can only imagine how many hapless planners and engineers were "purged" by Uncle Joe for the failure of this particular megaproject 😄
the last sentence could have been better summarised by saying that the soviet planners definately went "mega"
Their is another one as well. The Russian P38 was a soviet copy of the big boy.
Ah, the AA-20, or, as Train of Thought calls it, "Igor".
That is the Soviet i knew -big in everything that would let it down eventually but some still work to date Mil Mi-26 for example.
7:30 - There is no way this had a "maximum speed of 156 Miles per hour". The record for a steam engine is only 126Mi/hr, and it damaged the engine. Maybe you mean 156 Km/Hr.
Agreed. The highest ever recorded was 126 mph and that was with a fast passenger engine not a freight loco
1:30 - Chapter 1 - The 5 year plan
4:45 - Mid roll ads
6:15 - Chapter 2 - Off the rails
8:30 - Chapter 3 - Back to the drawing board
10:00 - Chapter 4 - Out of the game
Chad
Aren't a lot of railway in Africa and Europe built differently than those in America? Something like Big Boy or Challenger would ruin the tracks?
I'm certainly surprised that 2-10-0 configuration locomotives ran on British railways. I would have thought most curves too tight on our lines.
Summary: the AA20 was a massive failure.
Just like the rest of the USSR. And modern Russia.
aw damn I thought you were talking about the Russian P38 locomotive. The only mallet style locomotive ever built by russia and the actual russian equivalent to the big boy.
It wasn’t a true Mallet since the cylinders were all equally sized, meaning they were called “Simple Articulated”.
They configuration slightly different big boy has 4-8-8-4 configuration compare to 2-8-8-4 p38 configuration
It's got 7 drive axles, not 14.
How did you post a comment 6 hours older than the video?
Also 30 comments but only 2 show.
Was released privately first then to the general YT public, most probably. You can also set time release of video too, time delayed.
HTH 👍
1:07 14 driving axels? Nope...
Oh goodie! It's the Russian Rail Straightener! Never found a turnout it couldn't break, a curve it couldn't straighten and straight track it couldn't crush. It's a wonder of engineering!
Wonder if they could have used it to destroy railroads to prevent their use by the advancing Germans? It would probably get itself stuck on the tracks it's destroying, or derail, but that blocking a critical bit of line would be very effective. Could deliberately derail and damage the locomotive so it can't be moved in a critical spot that it would be difficult to move from or be built around, such as in a narrow cut or tunnel. An otherwise useless gigantic locomotive could be good for when you need a large object in the enemy's way.
They tried to fix it. I miss that about engineering today. If it doesn’t make it past computer testing they just scrap the whole idea. Most of the time.
when he says "100+ foot long rigid frame locomotive" I wince in pain.
Best Soviet ideas cane from Ukraine engineers, as can be seen these very days... 🇺🇦
An idea for a video following along with the train theme here, the narrow gauge rail roads that conquered the Rockies. Sections of those railroads still run to this very day as tourist railroads.
Durango-Silverton babaay!!
Hyce got you covered
I fucking love the design of soviet steam locomotives. Just something about them.
Yeah, they REALLY suck
A 4-14-4 steam loco - - - 110 feet and it's a rigid frame !!! What were they thinking, how did thing it could round a curve ?? The Union Pacific "Big Boy" was long also but it articulated for curves. OH, Simon has a great video on the Union Pacific "Big Boy"
the 110 feet length includes the tender.
Hehey! You actually covered it! Nice one Simon, thanks man
MORE TRAINS!
You should cover the more modern freight locomotives that have been in service across the world like the workhorses EMD GP-7 & 9, GP-40, GE Dash 7, 8 & 9 and the newest GE Evolution series.
Fun fact: The engine was a dual fuel vehicle designed to run on both coal and the bodies of citizens dying in the gulags...I'm going to hell...
I would build a 4-24-24-24-24-4 Steam Locomotive the largest articulated Steam Locomotives for the Southern Pacific Union Pacific Canadian Pacific Canadian Atlantic Canadian National New York Central Frisco Denver and Rio Grande Western National Railways of Mexico Northern Pacific Great Northern Milwaukee Road Western Maryland Pennsylvania RR Duluth Missabe and iron range Norfolk and western Illinois central Nickle plate road Pere Marquette and The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe Railway.
Look into the Pennsylvania Railroads Duplex Engines, the S1 longest steam locomotive ever 140 foot rigid frame, T1 reported fastest steam locomotive ever, and the Q2 highest horsepower steam locomotive ever.
military grade lmfao
In which the Russian railways were successful.
Converting captured German war locomotives to wide gauge.
I know the UK's BR standard 9F was several years late to the party but having a 2-10-0 wheel arrangement, even this was too much for the infrastructure. It couldn't negotiate tight turns so the middle driving wheel wasnt attached to the chassis, it was 'floating'. A similar solution the Russians tried to implement by shaving off the flanges of the middle driving wheels as stated in the video. If a 2-10-0 Design was having problems, then a 4-14-4 design would have no hope! In this case, bigger certainly is not better! Just ridiculous!
They called it "Stalin's Locomotive?" Attaching a despotic leader's name to something is pretty risky business, especially if it fails. The designers were probably sent to a gulag for 'reeducation' for that blunder.
Typical USSR - constantly executing people "for sabotage", and simultaneously dumping a metric tons of money into giant locomotive that can't turn.
It's kinda funny. Watching American mega projects and they face issues and they usually get them fixed and the project later turns into a success even if it has a rocky or awful start. But USSR mega projects just have an awful start, failures to fix it, and end up quitting or with a mediocre product at the end.
You are aware that the USSR, in the search of powerful locos, bought several locos from various american loco builders. That's why a lot of classes of Soviet locos look like American steam, they were knock offs.
Let's see. I've been on computers since before the internet and I'd say I have smashed the "like" button for a TH-cam channel maybe once, and I'm not sure I have ever "subscribed" to anything. I seem to be getting along fine. =) I'll pass thank you.
No, not 14 driving axles, 14 driving wheels. If you can't get that simple fact correct what hope is there for the rest of your script?
Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Greetings from Toronto bud! 👋
This reminds me of Strelnikov's train in the 1965 original version of "Doctor Zhivago" starring Omar Sharif.
But it wasn't an AA20 locomotive used in the film. I just now checked ... since those scenes were filmed in Spain, the locomotive used in the film was a Spanish RENFE Class 2-8-2 Mikado.
Though the Spanish 2-8-2 locomotive was nearly half the size of the AA20 4-14-4, it still left quite the impression on me when I first saw the film while the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place and we didn't have a lot of visibility into the USSR.
So if Strelnikov's heavily armored black-and-red train in the film was meant to take advantage of western fears and imaginations back then, it certainly achieved that purpose.
And that stayed with me as I served in the U.S. military from the late 80s up until the Iron Curtain fell in the early 90s ... and my respect for the former Soviet Union fell with it. Because that was about the time that they also opened the first McDonald's in Moscow and started selling Coke and Pepsi there
And here we are, thirty years later ... once again ... no McDonald's in Moscow.
It's odd that they chose to one-up the Union Pacific 4-12-2 instead of the genuine UP "Big Boy" 4-8-8-4 or even the Virginian "Triplex" 4-8-8-8-2 (which actually had a lot of the same problems as the AA20). The difficulties with a long, rigid frame should have been obvious, not to mention that an articulated frame is cast in shorter, more managable sections.
It's part of the reason why in the US railroads tend to team up conventional locomotives for more power. You get more use, thus more cost effective and they're more flexible around turns because they're hitched as opposed to one big engine.
That difference in guage of the rails was also one of the reasons Germany lost WWII. They couldn't ship their logistics east over Soviet lines.
Can you cover Vanera space program? Russian programs that explored Venus.
Do a video on the Russian Class M62. Probably the most numerous diesel locomotive in the world.
Well it's not the biggest locomotive in the world, take it from the American diesels like the unoin Pacific gas turbines(Not really diesels or not diesel at all but they have designs as one)
And the DDA40X Were Very big giants, theres more aside from those in America
They are still some preserved too
This is what we get when politicians don't listen to engineers.
Physics don't care about what is politically expedient.
It's "A-A Twenty", not "A-A Twenny", unless you're American.
Aside from using the wrong locomotive in the thumbnail, this video was alright. It's a rare case of Simon doing a railway video that isn't riddled with obvious hints of insufficient research.
Why didn't they just double up on locomotives? That would spread the load more evenly on the track and spare the couplers by spreading traction load along the length of the train.
Or was that one of the ideas that got you sent to the gulag?
It looks like the world's tallest loco judging by the picture.
How can any competent engineer possibly be so stupid? It was too long to go around the preexisting curves 🤪
Russia still is 50 years behind other countries, so nothing much changed with that ;)
How ironic his names Simon whistler and he's talking about a steam locomotive
It's amazing that the soviet brain trust could not come up with some decent articulateds to solve their problems.
I need Megaprojects too be a 2 hour long episode! I love it!
If you watch all the ads, it already exceeds 2 hours
I like trains.
Laughs in superior 7450 Horsepower 2-6-6-6
"Go big or go home." - The Soviet Union.... (probably)
Pretty sure if Baldwin loco works worked on this it would have had a way different body style
I wonder if this is what the fictional aurora from Metro Exodus is based on.
They could have just put it on a perfectly straight track 😂
I love trains, so I'm loving the technical detail. Although I'm depressed that I can point to some of the locations mentioned on a world map due to current events.
On the Train of Thought channel he just called it “Igor”
Yeah, definitely an engineering failure..
But it looked good.
I can't go a full day without constant Whistler TV. Yes folks that's right.
If only they had made it even bigger, it would have been even better
No. That would’ve made the problems even worse.
am i the only person who want to see a "what if" armoured train version of this????
Excellent. Learned something new today. Thanks.
Seems to be the Soviet thing. Gotta solve a problem? Go stupid big