The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR)’s T1 class is famous for many reasons: being enormous, being a duplex, possibly having beaten Mallard’s speed record while no one was looking… and being in production in the 21st century. That last fact is down to the redoubtable work by the PRR T1 Steam Locomotive Trust, who continued their efforts to reproduce an example of these remarkable and lamentably unpreserved locomotives in the year 2025.
They say that 2025 was “the year of the frame” because the frame was finally put together. We might say that for the PRR Trust, this was the year of welding. Back when the Baldwin and Altoona works were turning out the originals, the frames for steam locomotives were cast, not welded. There might not be anywhere on Earth to get a 64′ long (19.5 m), 71,000 lbs steel casting made these days. Building it up with welded steel might not be perfectly accurate, but it’s the sort of hack that’s needed to keep the project moving.
The cylinders, too, would have been bored-out castings back the day. Getting the four (it’s a duplex, remember) assemblies cast as one piece didn’t prove practical, so T1 #5550 will have welded cylinders as well. Given modern welding, we expect no problem with holding steam pressure. The parts are mostly machined and will be welded-together next year.
The giant wheels of the locomotive have been cast, but need to be machined. It’s not impossible to believe that locomotive #5550 will be on its frame, on its wheels, in 2026. The boiler is already done and the injectors to get water into it have been reinvented, which can perhaps be considered another hack.
Right now, if donations continue to trickle in at the current rate– and prices don’t rise any faster than they have been– the Trust hopes to have the locomotive steaming in 2030. She’s now 59.8% complete. That’s up from 40% when we last checked in, back in 2022, which is great progress considering this is a volunteer-driven, crowd-funded effort.
If you don’t have the skills or geographical location to volunteer with this build, but we’ve piqued your love of steam, perhaps you could 3D print an engine to scratch the itch.
On the plus side, if you’re going to try and build a steam locomotive from scratch in the 2020’s they picked a pretty good spot. nearby Cleveland and Pittsburgh have some of the best heavy steel fabrication facilities around, and neighboring Pennsylvania has both the Steamtown national Historic site, and Strassburg Heritige railroad, which both still maintain heavy shops that can do crazy steam locomotive things like machine the giant wheelsets these engines use.
Having frequently visited Strasburg, PA’s Railroad Museum and spoken to a number of people over the years, I know that their shop is too small for massive undertaking like this one. They can do good repairs, maintenance, etc, but decidedly nothing from scratch as far as making new engines goes.
I’ve asked them many times, why aren’t you guys build, say, friends for Thomas the Tank Engine (real question asked by my kids when they were little), the answer was “we are a volunteer organization financed by trust moneys, which severely limits what we can do and why.” Thomas regularly visits the Railroad Museum, btw, but, sadly, no friends are planned any time soon, except occasional Fat Controller : – [
Having said that, I truly do not know who makes new parts they regularly need for the restoration. I would speculate that before the tariffs they were ordering heavy things from India, which is known to do large-sized iron casting (using melt US-made parts, btw, which is a separate story of its own) pretty much for the whole world. I don’t wager to know for sure, but I speculate that it has been their only source of affordable parts, probably now priced out into the stratosphere.
I’d also point out that, sadly for American pride, the United Kingdom is waaay ahead of us in the modern steam locomotive race.
We’re still trying to get this T1 out the door while they’ve had their most impressive entry, the Peppercorn Class A1 60163 Tornado, completed and on the rails at 100mph since 2008.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_Peppercorn_Class_A1_60163_Tornado
There are at least a dozen serious projects under construction in the British isles. Notable among them..
… B17 Class 61673 Spirit of Sandringham …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_B17_Class_61673_Spirit_of_Sandringham
… Patriot Class 5551 The Unknown Warrior …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMS_Patriot_Class_5551_The_Unknown_Warrior
… BR Standard Class 6 72010 Hengist …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BR_Standard_Class_6_72010_Hengist
… and P2 Class 2007 Prince of Wales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LNER_P2_Class_2007_Prince_of_Wales
As a proud American I feel that it’s time for my nation to get serious and close this strategic steam locomotive gap.
Because… er… these are cool. And hacky. And… well… that’s a good enough reason for me.
There is another new-build steam locomotive being constructed in the UK, to be named Prince of Wales and expected to be completed in 2027:
https://www.a1steam.com/prince-of-wales/home
There’s probably still companies that could cast something that big, but sadly it’s very likely to be in China. The rest of the world has sadly just… given up the ability. The last company in Europe that I know for sure could have handled castings that size was Pilsen Steel (formerly part of Skoda works). Unfortunately it went bankrupt in 2019. They also cast the “ball joint” for the Dutch Maesland storm surge barrier, at 680 tons each some of the biggest single part castings they ever did. I suspect there might still be some steel works in the US and Germany that could theoretically handle it, but they’re probably just not interested in a project like this as it would likely just not fit their normal production flow.
Your right China could probably cast something that large.
Sheffield Forgemasters, China First Heavy Industries (CFHI), China Erzhong, Japan Steel Works (JSW).
China built new steam locomotives into the first couple of years of the 2000’s
In fact, there are about a half dozen Chinese class SY’s and QJ’s operating on heritage steam lines here in the United States that were purchased new from China in the 80’s & 90’s. These railroads wanted to continue to run popular steam excursions as their older engines were starting to age out on boiler hours (a very expensive overhaul), and China was a convenient place you could still get a steam engine with that new-locomotive smell.
Just take off the red stars and slap on a little American-style paint to change the markings and who’s gonna tell the difference.
In China itself, steam operated at significant scale into the mid 2010’s. In their market the operational model was different, and these locomotives being labor-intensive to build and operate wasn’t an issue (in fact, for a government that had to create jobs, being labor intensive might have been a feature).
Also, most Chinese steam locomotives were coal fired, and the easy availability of cheap coal versus costlier of diesel or electrified lines helped to keep them around, especially since the steam infrastructure was already in place and changing everything over would mean not just new engines, but all the support stuff that would have to be built by an economy that was already spending heavily on every other infrastructure need all at once.
I suspect casting something that size would actually be fairly possible in many places in the world, its big but not really that crazy big – it just doesn’t stack up economically when the parts can be fabricated and machined from mass produced so very cheap stock instead.
Also the machining of that giant one piece casting is going to be vastly more costly and complex than doing much of it on the assemblies before you weld them into that faux casting no doubt – much easier to move a few hundred KG of solid metal around than several tonnes. And if you make an error in a fabricated part you probably only cost yourself a few hundred and a week or two not several thousand just in the shipping fee and months before your replacement giant casting from the foundry!
When a similar project was undertaken in the UK (the “A1 Tornado”) there were several changes to the original design that took advantage of modern fabrication techniques. Most notable was the frame which was cut from steel using a water jet rather than built up of parts riveted together and a welded boiler. The result was a very serviceable locomotive and I expect this one to have similar changes and run as well. Its true that expertise in some fields disappears, for example a German firm had to be contracted to make the boiler because this capability had died out in the UK.
There are numerous boiler-makers in the UK. A new conventional riveted boiler was completed in late 2025 for a new-build locomotive 82045 which is nearing completion at Bridgnorth in Shropshire.
Most of the boiler-makers concentrate on heavy repairs to traditional boilers which are almost endlessly repairable but have capability to build new. Few new boilers are made owing to the cost not lack of engineering ability. The welded all-steel boiler for ‘Tornado’ manufactured in Germany has been very problematic in service.
is anyone is wondering, that’s a little over four cubic meters of steel
I am glad they are keeping the building of steam locos alive and they are being preserved….not be dystopian but one EMP burst and the museums will need to get them back on the rails quickly.
This is wrong at so many levels that it’s hard to formulate a succinct reply, so let’s just take a look at the very few which one might consider relevant:
1) Those steam locomotives being preserved in museums are, most definitely and most positively, NOT USEABLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. It is easier to build a brand-new locomotive than to try and resurrect a ‘museum-piece’ steam locomotive to original working condition.
2) Do you have any idea regarding exactly how long it takes to build a “steam loco” from scratch? The Peppercorn-class Tornado was launched in 1990 and was certificated for running (i,e., the operation amidst the general population) in 2009.
3) The ‘fuel’ required for a nominally-sized steam locomotive:
≈ 8000-10 000 gallons (US) of water; approx. 8 (US) tons of coal. If the locomotive is designed for oil, the tender would have to have a capacity of ≈ 5 000 gallons. Where, and how, exactly, would any of these fuels be obtained in a “dystopian environment” (whatever that is)?
4) Your much-used (by doomsayers), and very-much-overworked appeal to an “EMP burst”, which creates this dystopia, would not also destroy the infrastructure needed for the running of steam locomotives?
5) “…’they’ are keeping the building of steam locos alive…” on a ‘one-off’ basis; as a hobby, and not as projects. If the ‘end-times’ come, you (should) have much more to worry about than mass transport between major cities–which would no longer exist anyway.
A casual, painless reading on the subject of steam locomotives is not only informative, but highly entertaining…
Locomotives can also run on wood which is a renewable resource that can be obtained from forests, parks, gardens and even homes left behind by people who perished during apocalypse. Unless you live in a cuckold country like the UK, carrying a hatchet in your backpack is not only smart but might prevent you from going under during duress.
Are there hand crank attachments for switches on the network which is run form one point in the USA?
Almost certainly not, though I propose we bring back the jousting system where every train is equipped with a lance to hit switches
The Soviet Union had this exact same thought.
Not EMP, but they realized that if a shooting war broke out with the NATO, the west would seek to disrupt Russia’s rail system, a tactic that had proved very effective against Germany just a few decades before. And Russia was very dependent on its railroads.
Soviet planners realized that their weakest spot would be motive power. Supplies of diesel and the extensive infrastructure of the electrified lines were soft targets that could bring down the system.
But the old steam locomotives… didn’t have the same vulnerabilities. The bomb that could set a complex fuel yard alight wouldn’t make much difference to a pile of coal you could store for decades with no maintenance, and in a real pinch, you could always find something like an old firetruck that could refill you water tender from a handy creek.
So as steam locomotives were finally retired from mainline work in the 80’s, instead of being cut up for scrap thousands were placed in mothball storage and maintained well enough that they could actually be used again if needed. Think the Soviet railyard equivalent of the big air force bases in Arizona where rows and rows of planes are kept wrapped in plastic “just in case”.
And it didn’t hurt that this created tens of thousands of jobs for older railroad workers – in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, a politically important group that the bureaucrats like to keep happy.
But alas, time conquers all things, and any practical value the reserve fleet had faded as the infrastructure it would have relied on slowly died out alongside the men who knew how to use it. Soviet central planning died with the Soviet Union, the coal stocks were repurposed, the fuel bunkers and water towers and roundhouses left to fall apart, and the idea of standby steam faded away.
There are, however, some really interesting ‘urban explorer’ YouTube videos of some of these old stashes that have not yet been cleaned up, because that too would cost money. Images inside of old, closed railway stations where dozens of dusty steam locomotives still sit, parked nose to tail, like other relics of the cold war, still waiting for the callup that never came.
“…you could always find something like an old firetruck that could refill you water tender from a handy creek…”
I was wondering when, or if, this common trope would arise.
This is one of the most prevalent misconceptions regarding steam locomotives, i.e., that they are particularly easy to use since, in addition to a combustible fuel supply, one need only use water—from any source.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Very common water impurities will contribute to serious boiler problems—scale formation, corrosion, and caustic tube damage; the worse the level of impurities, the shorter the life of the boiler.
Trainmen knew this as early as the wood-burning locomotive age, and adopted the prescient adage—
“If you won’t drink the water, don’t put it in the boiler.”
If you are at war you don’t care if the boiler goes from lasting practically forever with a little care to lasting no more than 5 months – odds are the train is going to get blown up before the boiler fails even though its been abused.
Emergencies have a way of making the immediate requirements take so much more priority over the costs involved in clean up and recovery that you won’t really notice till years later.
The Rough & Tumble Engineers Historical Association of Kinzers, Pennsylvania, USA has a scratch built narrow gauge shay style steam locomotive they operate on their grounds.
Wrecked2repaired is a YouTube channel where they are restoring two small identical steam locomotives. It’s very interesting how they were put together. These were locomotives used on construction sites.
how long did it take back in the heyday? 10 years sound pretty long…
1) “how long did it take back in the heyday?…”
“It”?
Not long enough. Too long. Way too short. Take your pick.
2)”…10 years sound pretty long…”
Compared to continental drift?
It is. It’s not. It’s just right. Take your pick.
Next time, explain yourself.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”—Charles Dodgson
fair enough, with just a little bit of being picky on Your end.
How long did it take to build a steam locomotive from scratch in steam engines’ heyday i.e. end of 19th centruy? Provided stable processes, know-how and tooling being widely available, that is. 10 years to complete a vehicle seems pretty long not only compared to modern high-tech assembly lines that use weeks (factoring in engine block casting and others) to build a car but also to companies’ economical horizon. 10 years investment seems reasonable for advanced building project but not for vehicle.
What is your take now?