A CASE FOR THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE
But a moment ago we were calling the steam locomotive upon the American
railroad a "laggard." Yet we were reserving a rebuttal to place his case
upon the minutes of this record. In all this wild to-do about the
possibilities of electricity in heavy rail transport he is forgotten. Such
ever must be the fate of a laggard. Yet truth to tell, the steam
locomotive does have a case. He can make a real rebuttal. He may be a
laggard to-day; but to-morrow--Did you ever chance to know of a boy or a
girl in school who was a laggard, and a brilliant success in after life? I
myself have known of several.
Moreover it is hardly conceivable even now that all of the mileage of all
our railroads ever will be run by electricity. Even the remarkable vision
of McAdoo, which viewed the thing with marked friendliness, only
predicated its use upon about one fifth of the railroad mileage in the
United States. The great inland sections of the country, the plains and
the prairies and the broad valleys of the Mississippi and the Missouri and
the most of their tributaries, are comparatively limited in available
water-power facilities. And this despite such great works as the Keokuk
dam and others of the same sort, while the huge distances there militate
against the economies of central steam-power stations for the generation
of electric current.
So let us temper the wildest fancies with the thought that we probably
shall have the steam locomotive with us for some time yet, say for one or
two hundred years more. We shall have to put up with him. And having to
put up with him, what shall we do with him? How shall we make him most
effective for the future necessities of our American railroad structure?
There are more than 67,000 of him upon our railroads to-day. He is a
factor in their progress that cannot be ignored. They can ill afford to
have him remain a laggard, no matter how brisk may be the inroads of his
competitor, the electric locomotive.
* * * * *
The steam railroad of the United States seemingly came to the pinnacle of
its efficiency about twelve years ago. The steam locomotive about twelve
years ago also reached its apparent ultimate size for any sort of
practical operation--120 feet in length and a little over 800,000 pounds
in weight. The width and height for many years past have been held by
tunnel and other clearances pretty rigidly at ten and fifteen feet
respectively. Finally at about 120 feet the practical limit of length also
was reached; even then there had been created an engine that not only
could not be handled upon the longest of turntables at the terminals, but
even upon curves of fairly easy radius. Also the limit of the human
fireman, the shoveling of from fifteen to eighteen tons of coal in from
four to six continuous hours, had been reached.
These 120-foot locomotives were available only for long and almost
straight stretches of track and for use without being turned, while a
weight of 400 tons not only represented a real strain upon the bridges but
a constant and a fearful pounding upon the very best of track. So here
then in 1910 was the seeming height of the development of the American
locomotive; a pinnacle scaled in a long endeavor to cut down operating
costs to the utmost.
A seeming height it was. Was it in fact the real height of efficiency?
I doubt it.
The 400-ton locomotive was in the main the same locomotive that George
Stephenson had first built and operated away back in 1827; it was but an
enlargement of the _Stourbridge Lion_ that first had dug his heels into
the iron at Honesdale, Pennsylvania, in 1829, and so proclaimed a new era
in American civilization. A few things had been added, but they were very
few. An engineer out in Sandusky, Ohio, put a bell upon the boiler, George
Westinghouse came along about half a century ago with the air-brake, some
one else devised the injector, there were some other very minor
improvements--and that was all. Aside from these and a few very slight
rearrangements of its working parts the American locomotive of 1910 was
very much the same, even in appearance, as its ancestor, let us say, of
about 1840. Eighty years is a long time. It ought to afford a large
opportunity for development. Apparently it has not.
About thirty years ago some clever German engineers first devised a plan
for bringing steam from the boiler into the cylinders at such an intense
heat that its full energy would not be immediately dissipated upon
entering them and the steam partly turned into water. Technically this
last is known as "saturated steam." The superheated steam idea was a good
scheme and an apparent economy. Yet it was ten or a dozen years before it
penetrated to this side of the Atlantic--to be exact, it was just twenty
years ago. I sometimes wonder that it got across even so quickly as that.
Our American railroad executives are not as a rule particularly alert to
what is being done in transport in other lands. Europe has 14,000
applications of another locomotive improvement which is just coming to be
used in our dear old U. S. A. So it goes. If a successful monorail
installation were to be made in Patagonia, for instance, your average
Yankee railroader would read of it in the columns of his beloved "Railway
Age" and then smile patronizingly as he said:
"Very interesting, that. But of course it wouldn't do for us."
Our railroads, which long ago failed to work out any scientific scheme for
the compensation of their employees, also failed to make an intelligent or
organized study of the mechanical or scientific progress in their field.
The United States army has long possessed its "staff"--the extremely
competent group of men who, detached from the grind and drill of daily
operation or detail, make constant and exhaustive study of every sort of
military possibility from the complex mechanism of the newest guns from
Krupp or Schneider or Armstrong overseas to the right kind of shoe for the
marching soldier. The railroads of this country should have such a
"staff." Very few of them have ever even attempted such a forward-looking
device. They have been utterly hidebound by their traditions, and in
consequence they have suffered.
Contrast this attitude with that of the automobile manufacturers of the
country. In a situation that is nothing if not competitive, they have
cooperated, almost from the beginning, and almost universally for the
betterment of the machine itself. This plant or that, devising and
perfecting a new kink for the improvement of the internal combustion or
gasolene-engine, has thrown it into the common pot for the benefit of its
competitors. I have known an automobile manufacturer to spend months on
the perfection of a cylinder-block and then to drive it in mad haste over
the Indianapolis Speedway, hour after hour, at more than a hundred miles
an hour.
"Why was that necessary?" was the inquiry made of him. "You do not expect
your cars to be put through any such grueling test as that?"
He laughed, as he replied:
"No, but some user of this car some day is going to get all but stuck in
second speed on some stiff, muddy hill and if the valves act gummy he is
going to have it in for this car."
Eventually this manufacturer had the valve working to his taste. When he
had perfected it, in keeping with his agreement, he threw the new
cylinder-block open for the use of his fellows. There was no secret about
it, no patent; they were quite welcome to use it. And some of them did use
it.
More than this, the automotive industry, as it now likes to call itself,
is not content to let the individual manufacturer do all the work upon the
development of the machine. It has centralized bureaus, technical experts,
and engineers who are working all the time for the interests of the
industry in general. The development of the marvelous Liberty motor of war
days would not have been possible without such a centralized organization.
Such a plan never has been attempted in the history of steam locomotive
development. There the individual manufacturers have gone it alone. And
they are quite frank when they tell you that there is not the slightest
financial inducement for them to carry forward a scientific work of
development. Their output is sold generally in quantity lots--like
potatoes, by the peck. And in the present-day poverty of many of their
customers--comparative poverty at least--they assert that the margin of
profit is held to a figure that permits of little or no "staff" work upon
their part.
Now remember, if you will, that for eighty years the steam locomotive of
the United States grew in size alone. Aside from the air-brake (which, in
reality, was not a distinctly _locomotive_ improvement) hardly a single
fundamental improvement had been made since the days of Stephenson to make
a pound of iron and a pound of coal and a pound of water do more work. Yet
with our super-sized locomotive reached, the operating geniuses of our
American railroads demanded more power, and still more power. The longer
train-load, and the heavier, apparently was their only way out of the
demands that came down upon them from "higher up" for still more operating
economics.
Then slowly and after a very great delay the railroad executives began
casting about through their mechanical departments to inquire what, if
any, progress was being made in intensive locomotive improvements, either
overseas or else right here in America. The mechanical departments
reported quickly. There really were several possibilities. Listed, these
ran about as follows:
The superheater: That German device that we have just seen for bringing
the steam into the cylinders at such an intense heat as not to permit it
quickly to waste itself in water vaporization; a purpose accomplished
chiefly by the use of special flues in the boiler through the entire
length of which steam is twice passed. That done, it comes into the
cylinders superheated, and not saturated as in the old-time engine.
The brick arch in the fire-box: A sort of second cousin to the
superheater. Its name to a large degree indicates its nature. An arch
thrown across the forward end of the fire-box has a very marked tendency
to insure complete combustion of the fuel before the heat reaches the
flue-tubes of the boiler and hence achieves a great economy in coal or oil
consumption. Its use came with the development of the maximum width of the
fire-box in the newest types of American locomotives, which in turn was
accomplished when the locomotive had been lengthened and a pair of
trailing-wheels placed just back of its drivers.
The feed-water heater: An allied device for quickening the production of
boiler steam and so effecting a further economy in coal consumption.
Perhaps the least tried and so the least established of all these devices.
The booster: In reality a miniature locomotive, attached to those two
trailer-wheels just back of the drivers and giving to the biggest
locomotive at its starting-point or other points of real stress the
accelerating power equal to that which 50,000 more pounds of additional
locomotive would be able to give. Yet the booster is as ingeniously geared
from its cylinders to its driving power as the engine of a high-grade
automobile and weighs but 3500 pounds all told--a mere nothing in
comparison with the energy that it gives off. Its application and
disconnection are almost automatic. The engineer, when he is in need of
its assistance either at starting or upon a steep grade, puts its
additional power into play by a quick twist of a tiny lever at his side.
"Humph," interrupted my friend the old railroader out in the West, "I
suppose you think that we are going to get engineers of the caliber to
handle all these fancy claptraps that you would put upon the engines?"
No, Old Railroader. Not for a minute. We have those engineers already in
America; nine out of ten of the men who are handling our locomotives in
the United States are quite capable of handling all these devices, and a
considerable number in addition. Even overseas where, broadly speaking,
the type of individual railroad employee is not supposed to be as high as
in this country, the enginemen are to-day used to all these modern
devices, the hall-marks of the really modern steam locomotive. A
keen-minded American who has known and loved locomotives all his life went
over to France not many months ago and rode in the cab of one of those
high-speed engines that haul the heavy expresses of the Northern railway
from Paris to Calais, 180 miles in three hours and thirty-five minutes--a
remarkable daily performance,--and he had his eyes opened. In the first
place the cab was immaculate. I might almost add "of course." I rode
myself in the cabs of British locomotives after the Armistice. Had there
been a war just ended over there across the narrow English Channel? The
rolling-stock of the British railways certainly belied that fact. Their
locomotives were clean, bright, freshly painted; they were not rusty,
dirty, or leaky. They had upkeep, continuous upkeep even through the
fifty-one heart-breaking, man-shortage months of the World War. That
showed for itself.
The cab of the engine in which my friend rode from the Gare du Nord to the
Calais pier was more than immaculate; it was intricate. There were levers
here and levers there, gages high and gages low. It looked more like the
control-board of a fair-sized steamship than that of a locomotive. There
was a variable exhaust nozzle, a control here, a control there; the
locomotive was itself a four-cylinder compound engine with all the
improvements that we have just seen (and then some more)--and with 180
miles to be made in 215 minutes, which is faster than almost any American
train goes to-day--faster by twenty-five minutes than the fastest train
between New York and Baltimore (185 miles); faster by thirty-one minutes
than the fastest express between New York and Providence (also 185 miles).
Somewhere between Paris and Amiens the fireman was taken slightly ill.
With hardly a word between the two railroaders in the cab they changed
places. The fireman stood his intelligent trick at the throttle; for more
than an hour the engineer fed the fire-box partly coal and partly
briquettes. There was 15 per cent. of briquettes in the tender and a bonus
to the engine-crew for any fuel saving that they made upon the run.
Moreover the names of the engineer and the fireman, printed upon neat,
small, brass plates, were inserted in an especially showy place on each
side of the engine-cab--a good deal as Mr. Underwood of the Erie once
began naming his best engines after the men who habitually ran them,
painting their names in large, conspicuous letters upon the engine-cabs,
where in other days locomotives bore the names of presidents, governors,
railroad directors, and others who sought a brief temporal glory. The
French plan is best in that it permits flexibility in the assignment of
the locomotives; the American plan best in that it confers an even greater
and more permanent distinction upon the engine-driver. I wish you could
see old Harvey Springstead as I saw him about ten years ago on the first
day he drove the _Harvey Springstead_ into the battered old Erie terminal
in Jersey City. Warren G. Harding accepting a lovely sprig of flowers from
the prettiest ten-year-old girl in Marion, Ohio, could not have been a
prouder man.
When that fleet engine of the Chemin de Fer du Nord (French for the
Northern railway) came to its first and final stop out of Paris upon the
Calais pier, sixteen men attacked her with brushes and cloths and hammers
and wrenches and what else I know not. Yes, sixteen. My friend counted
them. And he later found that before the war-times there had been
thirty-two. The fleet locomotive had a real inspection, while the little
engineer and his fireman repaired to the near-by Cafe de la Gare and
enjoyed their _dejeuner_ and their small bottle of wine.
Sixteen men went to that engine! Four would have been a goodly force for
the average American roundhouse or terminal shed; and the engine probably
would have waited two or three hours for its inspection. One of the crimes
against the American locomotive is the lack of care and attention that is
given it. Think, if you will, of an engine on one of our first-class
railroads being discovered so badly out of order in regard to the setting
of its valves that a very few hours of repair work upon them brought an
immediate saving of 25 per cent. in its fuel consumption! Is not that
being penny-wise and pound-foolish?
* * * * *
I have digressed. And without apology. We were recounting the actual
devices for the improvement of the steam locomotive: the superheater, the
brick arch, the feed-water heater, the booster. None of these--in their
essentials, at least--are patented devices. Any good locomotive builder
can use them freely. He only waits the word of the purchaser of the
locomotive. Neither is there any patented monopoly in the mechanical
stoker. Two or three very good types already are on the market and if you
wonder at their efficacy may I again suggest that some good warm summer's
day you go down into your own cellar and shovel seventeen tons of coal
across it--from one side to the other--in four or five hours. Sleep
overnight--if you wish to complete the illusion, preferably on a rough,
hard bed--and the next day shovel all the coal back again, in four or
five hours. Then ask yourself, if you were a locomotive fireman would you
feel that there was any real need for a mechanical stoker.
There is no monopoly, either, in the plans for substituting more and more
light reciprocating locomotive parts of alloy-steel in place of the
old-fashioned heavy cumbersome ones that hold their places, almost through
tradition alone. Our American locomotive to-day is far too heavy. The
automotive industry--the group of men who in real cooperation have
perfected almost every detail of the American motor-car--again has pointed
the way. If a balanced crank-shaft is valuable to a rubber-tired
locomotive upon a concrete highway, should a device of similar ingenuity
and value be accounted an impossibility upon the flange-wheeled one of the
steel highway? The possibilities of intensive development of the steam
locomotive upon these lines alone seemingly are almost infinite. If Henry
Ford, with not only the skill and experience of his own marvelously
ingenious mechanical mind, but the expert staff that he has always at his
elbow, can succeed in bettering the American steam locomotive radically, I
think that the American public will be tempted to call him blessed indeed.
If Mr. Ford can only succeed in putting better bearings under our
railroad-cars his name should be accounted as blessed in our railroad
tradition. The axle-bearing of the average railroad-car in this
country--particularly the freight rolling-stock--has neither been improved
nor changed in more than half a century. It is virtually the same now as
it was in 1860--a swabbing of cotton-waste and grease set in a box upon
the axle-end, a device forever becoming dry and hot and blazing forth into
flame. Contrast such an archaic thing with the axle-bearing of the modern
motor-car or motor-truck. Ball-bearings, or, in the case of heavier
vehicles, roller-bearings. A Detroit specialty concern installed these on
a big Michigan Central box-car not many months ago, and two men pushed the
car down a siding with no vast effort.
If these things can be done and have been done, why are they not being
done to-day?
The answer is simple: tradition--hide-bound tradition--and cost. If I were
to let my friend, the old railroad operator out there in the West,
interrupt he would tell me that this last alone renders them quite out of
the question. To which I should reply:
"If you were buying an automobile, would you rather have an automobile or
a wheelbarrow?"
* * * * *
A few minutes ago we were discussing the electric locomotive in these
pages. Without going into detail into its mechanical niceties we said that
the average cost of one of these big units to-day is $150,000 to say
nothing of proportionate cost of power-house and wires, without which, of
course, it is quite useless. The average cost of the largest-sized steam
locomotives to-day is anywhere from $40,000 to $75,000, which represents a
real drop since the peak prices of the days of the war.
But this is not the point. The point is that the average railroad
executive buys the electric locomotive upon the "say-so" of the
manufacturer. If it cost $250,000 and he was convinced in his own mind
that it was a necessity to him he would not stagger at the price or
attempt petty economies by trying to buy it stripped of every efficiency
device.
The average railroad executive does not buy steam locomotives that way.
Oh, no. He says:
"Give us ten million dollars' worth of new engines. I want them good
engines, the best engines that you have ever built." And then adds: "How
many do we get to the peck, anyway?"
Quantity, not quality. It is one of our besetting American sins. How much?
Not how good. How much? How big a number to be added to the next annual
report in order to impress the stockholders? Nothing about refinements.
Nothing about quality.
The builder takes down his blue-prints--the same old engine that he has
been building for ten, twenty, thirty years past. No staff has worked to
perfect that old-fashioned machine. He figures rapidly. His opponents are
figuring against him. And finally he shoots in his bid. The railroad can
buy a lot of locomotives for ten million dollars; a goodly quantity for
one tenth of that figure if it is not too fussy about the details.
After which will you wonder when I say that no steam locomotive in the
United States to-day represents anything like the ultimate possibilities
of the machine itself? That is not true of the electric locomotive, where
the last unit turned out from the shops is almost sure to be the best ever
built. Let me illustrate.
It is now a good ten years since a most efficient passenger-locomotive was
finished in this country--to turn out one cylinder-horse-power per hour
from 16.5 pounds of water and 2.12 pounds of coal and weighing but 121
pounds per cylinder-horse-power. A few years later an equally efficient
freight-puller was made, creating one cylinder-horse-power per hour from
15.4 pounds of water and 2.00 pounds of coal and yet weighing but 88.9
pounds per cylinder-horse-power. This was several years ago, please
remember. Since then many, many locomotives have been built that were not
nearly so good. Some of these have been retired to light service already.
Why?
Why are not these engines of 1910 not only being equaled but bettered by
the engines of 1922? Why does it ever become necessary to scrap
locomotives, within half a century of their construction at any rate?
There is not one of their bearing parts that is not capable of infinite
replacements, after which, it is a question of mere lubrication.
I saw not many months ago under the train-shed of the passenger-station at
Tours, France, a copper-boilered locomotive of the Paris-Orleans railway
which bore the date of her construction, 1857, proudly upon her neat
sides. She still was an efficient little locomotive, handling a small job
fit for her small size and handling it very well indeed. The oldest
locomotive that I personally have known to be in constant service in the
United States was an engine belonging to a paper company near Potsdam, New
York, which had been built by the Taunton Locomotive Works for the Union
Pacific railroad in 1860, and sold to the Central Vermont in the following
year. Rebuilt several times, it still was in service in 1919. This engine
is very much of an exception. A twenty-year-old engine in this country
to-day is a veteran. The famous "999" of the New York Central, which in
1893 was exhibited at the Chicago Fair as the fastest locomotive in the
world, in 1903 was handling a "plug" milk-train up in northern New York.
It now has been retired as a sort of museum-piece.
Why are our steam locomotives scrapped in this way? Why are they not built
universally for their highest possibilities of development? Why are they
not given the mechanical refinements that experience has shown well worth
while?
Once again: tradition and cost.
The first of these some day is to be eliminated. And as for the second;
listen to my friend, the dear old practical railroader out there in the
West. I much doubt if he will ever be able to finish reading the preceding
paragraphs. But should he succeed in completing them, I anticipate
receiving a telegram--a letter never would be prompt or emphatic
enough--which will read something after this fashion:
"Now, what are you doing again? Don't you know that to put in all these
darn phool [softened to calm the feelings of the telegraph operators]
contraptions in our railroading would cost a national debt or two--of the
old days? How can the railroads, strapped, without money to-day, go into
these things?"
I shall not respond by telegraph. I have no Western Union frank. But I
shall sit down and write my good old tempestuous friend that in my own
humble and uneconomic opinion the best way to economize is to introduce
methods that lead toward economy. When the Lackawanna system spent about
$14,000,000 a few years ago in rebuilding and perfecting about forty miles
of its main line between Scranton and Binghamton, it was said by some
clever people that only a road as extremely wealthy as it was could go
into such frills. Well, last year the operating economies effected to that
company by this improvement, and by this improvement alone, came to about
12 per cent. of the expenditure, while the money itself, was obtained at 4
per cent. I should like to ask Mr. Underwood, of the always
almost-bankrupt Erie, if that carefully managed property would not have
been in receivership and helpless a full decade ago, if it had not been
for his great grade revisions on his main line east of Youngstown, Ohio?
And Mr. Daniel Willard, of the Baltimore and Ohio if it is not true that
the superheaters on but 1000 of that railroad's 1600 locomotives are not
already saving it more than 750,000 tons of coal a year?
To save money upon our American railroads it frequently becomes necessary
to spend it, and to spend it generously, but always wisely of course.
We measure expenditures properly by the results. An improvement to a
locomotive costing as much as $10,000 to buy and even as much as that to
maintain each year is a good investment, is it not, if it saves $50,000 a
year? The superheater, the arch, the booster, and the feed-water heater
together vastly increase the power of the steam locomotive. To gain their
equivalent in the locomotive itself, the average Mikado-type
freight-puller of eight big drivers and with extra length
boiler-tubes--nineteen or twenty feet--would have to have not less than
fourteen driving-wheels and boiler-tubes of the almost incredible and
impracticable length of thirty-six feet. Is that graphic enough for the
layman to understand? Can you understand this about the booster alone?
Take a reasonable stretch of level railroad division, say 125 to 175
miles. It is good low-grade line and an engine of even moderate capacity
ought to handle a 3000-ton freight-train over it easily, if it were not
for that nasty little hill half-way down the line. A chain is no better
than its weakest link. A railroad division is no easier than its stiffest
hill. This particular one means that the maximum train-load on that
division may never exceed 2700 tons.
Now we put the booster on--that little miniature locomotive for the
trailing-wheels that we saw a few minutes ago, built like an automobile
engine and having the same gritty driving power. When the engineer comes
to that nasty hill, in goes the booster and up goes the 3000-ton train
over the hill, just as easily apparently as if it were coasting on a
down-grade.
The most famous passenger-train to-day in America, if not indeed in the
whole world, is the Twentieth Century Limited, running between New York
and Chicago, 969 miles in a flat twenty hours. It began twenty years ago
as a single train of moderate length--about seven or eight Pullman cars
and a diner. To-day it almost always consists of at least two sections,
each of ten to twelve heavy steel diners and Pullman sleepers. In figures,
the weight increase is close to 216 per cent. The train easily might make
the run through to Chicago in eighteen hours as it did at the outset if
safety and other conditions permitted. The energy of the locomotive is not
the limiting factor.
Now how has this been done? How has the typical locomotive of the
Twentieth Century been so improved as to keep the train that it hauls up
in the top notch of American passenger carriers? The answer is easy: by
the constant application of every proved device for the improvement of
that machine. The New York Central, which operates this train, does not
often stand convicted of a lack of mechanical progress. Come to figures,
once again: A certain well-known railroad, which is thoroughly sold on the
idea of the improved locomotive, in the last twenty-five years has
steadily increased its average tonnage per train by from 400 to 1700 tons
over the old-time figures. Its maximum is now close to 3200 revenue tons.
In this same quarter of a century this railroad shows 233 per cent.
increase in the weight of the train and 66 per cent. increase in the
average speed. To-day it thinks nothing of hauling a 5000-ton train at a
steady rate, uphill and down dale, of twenty-five miles an hour.
Our steam locomotive is a laggard? Only when you do not give it a fair
opportunity to show its real worth.
* * * * *
If all our other railroads were as progressive in this as the two that I
have just instanced, there would be no reason for this detailed attention
to the problem. Unfortunately they are not.
A moment ago I said that two things had held back the development of our
steam locomotive--tradition and cost. Have I not now settled the question
of cost, as far at least as it may be settled in these pages, by showing
the great economies to be effected in the use of an efficient
engine--economies, roughly speaking, averaging 25 per cent. in the
operation of the locomotive? Now come to the problem of tradition.
The extreme easterly forty-five miles of the main New York-Boston line of
the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad was, up to thirty-four
years ago, a separate railroad, the Boston and Providence, extending
between those two cities. From the old Park Station in Boston down to the
station in Providence and back again--ninety miles--was a day's work for
one of its locomotives. On some of its suburban runs the engines did even
less. They were pampered bits of mechanism.
* * * * *
Last year I rode from New York to Cherbourg in the giant steamer _Olympic_
and spent many hours in what is the finest engine-room upon all the seven
seas. The tireless engines, the racing shafts, never ceased their
impetuous speed for six days and for six nights. If necessary, and if the
fuel had been available, they might just as easily run on for twenty-six
days and twenty-six nights or even longer. It all comes to proper
lubrication and attention, and nothing else.
A twenty-four hour continuous test of an automobile is as nothing; a five
hundred or a thousand-mile test of its engine without resting, these days,
a mere child's sport. You do not think after you have driven your own car
ninety miles that you must rest it before you set it in service once more.
If you could not drive it upon necessity twice or three times that
distance without resting it you probably would feel like selling it.
Yet there are many ninety-mile engine-runs left in the United States to
this day; some of them, like those between New York and Philadelphia, are
matters of operating convenience that cannot easily be changed. Tradition
holds others. One hundred and fifty miles still remains a typical division
in the minds of many conservative railroaders. And a real boast upon the
part of the progressive manufacturers of the electric locomotive is that
their machines can easily cover two such typical divisions without either
rest or inspection. But it should be borne in mind that when the
inspection finally is made it must be like that at Calais, of the most
thorough sort.
Very recently the New York Central instituted the experiment of combining
as a single engine-run the former two runs between Albany and Buffalo, 300
miles. The Santa Fe has cut its separate runs from Chicago to the Pacific
coast from twelve to six. There seems to be no very good reason why the
New York Central should not run the locomotive from Harmon, at the outer
limit of the New York electric zone, right through to Chicago, 946
miles--or two engine-runs on the Santa Fe between Chicago and Los Angeles,
2246 miles. Down in the Southwest the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railway
already has a 700-mile run, and is preparing to install a 1000-mile one.
It is simply a question of proper rewatering and refueling facilities.
Obviously the crews could not make runs such as this. I have known an
engineer to take a special through from New York to Buffalo on the
Lackawanna or the Erie--a little more than 400 miles in either case--and
not relinquish the throttle for the entire distance. But that was a stunt.
I am talking of regular performance day in and day out.
It is easy enough to change the crews however at distances of
approximately 150 to 175 miles. But there is no reason why the engine
should be changed. If an 11,000-horse-power ship racing two 250-foot
shafts can keep it up continuously for six days and 3000 miles there is no
reason on earth why a well-equipped locomotive should falter at the same
performance.
The steam locomotive a laggard?
There is no inherent reason whatever why he should be a laggard unless men
themselves so desire. The paths for his possible development have not been
followed to their ends. Men this very day are engaged in plans for the
placing of a third cylinder in his mechanism; the possibilities of the
brick arch, the superheater, and the hot-water feed now have brought his
steam production up ahead of the mechanism that consumes it. The
opportunity is rife for the further perfection of this mechanism.
In England, right up to the present time, and for many of his earlier
years in this country, the steam locomotive in builders' phrasing was
"inside-connected," the cylinders and driving-rods being placed within the
frame and under the boiler. Gradually this type of engine was abandoned
upon this continent. Despite the trimness of its appearance--your
foreigner always lays great stress upon the appearance of his
locomotive--the important driving mechanism was so hidden as to render it
comparatively inaccessible for repairs. And so we came here to placing
the entire driving mechanism upon the outside of the locomotive, where it
could be easily reached and taken down.
There is a movement to-day toward the creation of a locomotive which shall
be both inside and outside-connected. There is hardly room for two
cylinders within the frame. There certainly is room for one. And with the
retention of the two outer cylinders there presently will be created a
locomotive which, with all its improved steam-creating powers to boot,
will quickly take highest place both in speed and energy. More operating
economies will be effected, new records established.
The steam locomotive a laggard?
Is not the question now fairly answered?