06-30-2012, 06:41 PM
I've looked through the books which I had in mind, and the B&A Hudsons all appear to be equipped with Coffin feedwater heaters, hidden in the smokebox. I have a couple of pictures from the first order (five locos in total) and a couple from the third order (ten locos, all built by Lima and supposedly the only Hudsons which they ever built) and all have Coffins. I'm assuming that they were happy with the performance and also ordered them on the second order (five locos) of which I have no photos. They were originally numbered 600-619, then re-numbered 5455-5474. The NYC-style sandboxes on the first five were replaced with large, square B&A-style ones, and the two subsequent orders were delivered with the square version. All 20 locos had 75" drivers, while the Central's other 255 Hudsons rode on 79" ones.
There are some photos of B&A locos at the bottom of the page HERE.
My guess is that your model is of a NYC J-1, and somebody added the second Elesco fwh in order to make it more closely resemble either an NP loco of a different wheel arrangement or they simply preferred the look of a more prominent fwh. There's also the chance that they didn't recognise the imbedded heater bundle as such, and added the second one in order to justify the Elesco pump mounted on the loco's side.
On the prototype, a failed fwh would be repaired as soon as possible, or replaced with one in-kind. It would be very unlikely to add a temporary replacement as you describe, as the loco could be operated by using the injector on the engineer's side of the boiler - not as efficient, but certainly adequate.
Wayne
There are some photos of B&A locos at the bottom of the page HERE.
My guess is that your model is of a NYC J-1, and somebody added the second Elesco fwh in order to make it more closely resemble either an NP loco of a different wheel arrangement or they simply preferred the look of a more prominent fwh. There's also the chance that they didn't recognise the imbedded heater bundle as such, and added the second one in order to justify the Elesco pump mounted on the loco's side.
On the prototype, a failed fwh would be repaired as soon as possible, or replaced with one in-kind. It would be very unlikely to add a temporary replacement as you describe, as the loco could be operated by using the injector on the engineer's side of the boiler - not as efficient, but certainly adequate.
Wayne