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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=).
HOW TO BECOME AN ENGINEER.
Containing Full Instructions How to Proceed in
Order to Become a Locomotive Engineer;
Also Directions for Building a Model
Locomotive; together with a Full
Description of Everything an
Engineer Should Know.
Profusely Illustrated.
BY AN OLD ENGINEER ON THE NEW YORK CENTRAL
RAILROAD.
New York:
Frank Tousey, Publisher
29 West 26th Street.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1898, by
Frank Tousey,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. HISTORICAL.
CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.
CHAPTER III. HOW TO BECOME AN ENGINEER.
CHAPTER IV. DUTIES OF AN ENGINEER.
CHAPTER V. HOW TO RUN A TRAIN.
CHAPTER VI. HOW TO BUILD A MODEL LOCOMOTIVE.
CHAPTER VII. CONCLUSION.
How to Become an Engineer.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL.
To begin a subject properly you must begin at the beginning.
Boys who don't like history need not read this chapter, for in it we
tell how the steam engine began, and if it never had begun, you know,
there would never have been any engineers, nor any necessity for
writing this book.
For two or three generations we have had the story of James Watt told
us; how when a boy and watching his mother's tea-kettle one day he saw
the steam lift the lid, and that suggested the idea that if a little
steam could lift the lid of a kettle, a great deal would lift still
heavier weights and revolutionize the world.
Now they tell us that Watt was not the first one to have this idea by
several, that it was first suggested by the Marquis of Worcester, in
his book called the "Century of Inventions," as "a way to drive up
water by fire," A. D. 1663.
This was about a hundred years before Watt came on deck, but the
marquis never put his idea into practice, and Watt did, so to the
latter the credit belongs.
Here are a few dates:
Watt's invention of the separate condenser, 1765; Watt's first patent,
1769; Watt's first working engine introduced into a manufactory, 1775;
first steam engine erected in Ireland, 1791; first steamboat run on the
Hudson, 1797; first steamboat abroad, 1801.
First regular steamboat ever run was from Albany to New York. The name
of the boat was the North River, her builder was Robert Fulton, and she
made the passage in 33 hours.
The first railroad was built in England, in 1811.
The first ocean steamer was the Savannah, an American craft of 350
tons, which sailed from New York for Liverpool, July 15, 1819, making
the voyage in 26 days.
Such were the early beginnings of steam.
There are three principal kinds of engineers, locomotive, steamboat and
stationary.
In this little book we propose to deal mainly with the duties of a
locomotive engineer.
If one is a good locomotive engineer he can easily learn to manage
the engine of a steamboat; and if he is skilled in either of these
particulars he will have no difficulty with the biggest stationary
engine ever built.
[Illustration: THE FIRST LOCOMOTIVE.]
The work of the different engineers differs only in detail, not in kind.
Let us now glance at the history of the steam horse, which has done
more than any other one thing to revolutionize the world.
Be very sure that the locomotive, with its pistons, its spinning
drive wheels, its polished steel and shining brass, did not come into
existence all at once.
By no means. Like everything else in the way of mechanical invention
that attains greatness, the locomotive had an insignificant beginning
to reach which we shall be obliged to get back somewhere about the
middle of the last century, for then it was that the desire for faster
traveling than horses can furnish seems to have had its birth.
The first attempt at a railway seems to have been at Colebrook Dale,
England, a spot celebrated for having the first iron bridge in the
world--where a small iron road was constructed in connection with some
mines; a horse furnished the motive power here.
The first railroad then was without a locomotive, and, strangely enough
the first locomotive was without a railroad on which to run.
The first locomotive made its appearance in France. It was simply a
huge tea kettle on wheels, and was built by Joseph Cugnot at Paris in
the year 1769.
It is the custom of English writers to ignore Cugnot's invention, and
claim for themselves the origin of the locomotive; but that is only a
pleasant way the English usually have.
Cugnot's locomotive actually existed though, and was undoubtedly the
first. It was operated by means of two bronze cylinders, into which the
steam passed through a tube from the boiler--escaping through another
tube.
The boiler was fastened on the front of the car, which moved on three
wheels--the steam acted only on the foremost wheel.
The speed of Cugnot's locomotive was about three miles an hour. On the
first trial it ran into a building and was broken to pieces.
In 1784 the famous Watt patented a steam locomotive engine in England,
which, however, never was put to use.
In 1802, Trevethick and Vivian patented a locomotive, which, in 1804,
traveled at the rate of five miles an hour, drawing behind it a load of
ten tons of coal.
Several other "traveling engines," as they were then styled, were
invented by other mechanical engineers with only moderate success, it
being reserved for Stephenson, in 1811, to build the first locomotive
that should prove of practical use.
About this time a man named Thomas Gray, of Nottingham, England,
brought upon himself the contempt and ridicule of the whole English
nation by pushing forward the idea of the locomotive in connection with
coal mines.
[Illustration: OLD NO. 1.]
"It is all very well to spend money on these railway schemes," said
a member of parliament about that time referring to Gray's projects,
"it will do some good to the poor, but I will eat all the coals your
railways will ever carry."
127,000,000 tons were carried recently in one year, on English
railroads alone. What a tough time this parliamentary slow coach would
have had to swallow all that!
The first practical locomotive in the world--Stephenson's invention,
was Old No. 1, which pulled the first regular train on the Stockton and
Darlington R. R. on Tuesday, September 27, 1825.
Old No. 1 cost $2,500 to build. It was a very clumsy affair; nothing
better, in fact, than a big boiler on four wheels, which were moved by
great levers worked by pistons from the top of the machine.
[Illustration: THE ROCKET.]
Old No. 1 has been preserved, and was, in the year 1859, placed upon a
pedestal in that English town of Darlington as a public memorial of the
beginning of the railway.
No sooner had the Stockton and Darlington R. R. proved itself a success
than all England was in arms against it. Here are some of the absurd
objections urged against railroads, taken from the newspapers of the
day.
Steam horses were "contrary to nature;" they were "damaging to good
morals and religion;" the smoke of the locomotive would "obscure the
sun, and thereby ruin the crops." Farmyards and farmhouses would be
burned by their sparks; the clanking, puffing locomotive would have
such an effect on the mind as to drive people crazy (this was backed up
by certificates from a dozen doctors); locomotives would cause springs
to dry up and fields to become sterile; they would create great chasms
by constantly running over the same ground.
What twaddle!
Yet all their objections were made in good faith, and we have by no
means selected the most absurd.
Old No. 1. proving too clumsy, a lighter locomotive was soon after
built by Stephenson, called the "Rocket," which we illustrate. It won a
prize of $1,500 in 1829, and is still preserved in the great locomotive
works at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
The first railroad in America was built from the granite quarries of
Quincy, Mass., to the Neponset river, a few miles distant.
Peter Cooper built one of the first American locomotives. It ran on the
Baltimore and Ohio R. R., and was called the Tom Thumb.
The boiler of the Tom Thumb was built of gun barrels and shaped like a
huge bottle standing upright upon a simple platform car.
Such was the beginning of the locomotive.
In Great Britain alone over 600,000,000 people are annually drawn by
locomotives.
Add to these figures, which represent only a small island, the persons
drawn by locomotives in America, Europe, and other parts of the world,
and the number becomes stupendous almost beyond belief.