36. Air-hole for admitting air to fire-box.
37. Tallow-can for oiling cylinders.
38. Oil-can.
39. Shelf for warming oil-cans.
40. Furnace door.
41. Chain for opening and closing the furnace door.
42. Handles for opening dampers on the ash-pan.
43. Lubricator for air-pump.
44. Valve for admitting steam to the chimney to blow the fire
when the engine is standing still.
45. Valve for admitting steam to the train-pipes for warming the
cars.
46. Valve for reducing the pressure of the steam used for heating
cars.
47. Cock which admits steam to the pressure-gauge, 48.
48. Pressure-gauge which indicates the steam-pressure in heater
pipes.
49. Pipe for conducting steam to the train to heat the cars.
50. Cock for water-gauge, 51.
51, 51. Glass water-gauge to indicate the height of water in the
boiler.
52. Cock for blowing off impurities from the surface of the water
in the boiler.
Besides being impressive as a triumph of human ingenuity, there
is much about the construction and working of locomotives which
is picturesque. A shop where they are constructed or repaired is
always of interest. An engine-house (Fig. 35) especially at night,
is full of weird suggestions and food for the imagination.
[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Cab End of a Locomotive and its
Attachments.]
Figure 37 (p. 135) is an illustration from a photograph taken in
the erecting shops of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia;
and Figure 38 (p. 137) is a view of a similar shop of the
Pennsylvania Railroad at Altoona, which suggests at a glance many
of the processes of construction which go on in these great works.
At Altoona are immense travelling cranes resting on brick arches
and spanning the shop from side to side. These are powerful enough
to take hold of the largest locomotive and lift it bodily from the
rails and transfer it laterally or longitudinally at will. A large
consolidation engine is shown in Figure 38, swung clear of the
rails, and in the act of being moved laterally. The hooks of the
crane are attached to heavy iron beams, from which the locomotive
is suspended by strong bars. Figure 39 (p. 138) is a view in the
blacksmiths' shop of the Baldwin Works, showing a steam hammer and
the operation of forging a locomotive frame.
It is quite natural that the engineers, or "runners," as they
generally call themselves, who have the care of locomotives should
take a deep interest in and acquire a sort of attachment for them.
In the earlier days of railroading this was much more the case than
it is now. Then each locomotive had an individuality of its own.
It was rare that two engines were exactly alike. Nearly always
there was some difference in their proportions, or one engine had
some device in it which the other had not. Now, many locomotives
are made exactly alike, or as nearly so as the most improved
machinery will permit. There is nothing to distinguish the one
from the other. Therefore Bony Smith can claim no superiority for
his machine which Windy Brown has not the advantage of. In the
old days, too, each engine had its own runner and fireman, and it
seldom fell into the hands of anyone else, and those in charge
of it took as much pride in keeping it bright as the character
in "Pinafore" did "in polishing up the handle of the big front
door." On many roads--particularly the larger ones--engines are
not assigned to special men. The system of "first in first out"
has been adopted; that is, the engines are sent out in the order
in which they come in, and the men take whichever machine happens
to fall to their lot. This naturally results in a loss of personal
attachment to special engines.
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--View In Locomotive Erecting Shop.]
Every change in the construction, alteration in the proportions, or
addition to the attachments of locomotives is a subject of intense
interest to the men and a topic of endless discussion at all times
and places. The theories which are propounded, and the yarns which
are spun while sitting around hot stoves in round-houses, or
waiting for passing trains on side-tracks, would fill many books.
Jack never tires of telling what his engine did when "she was
going up Rattlesnake Grade," and Smoky Bill grows excited when he
describes how Ninety-six turned her wheels in making up forty-nine
minutes time in the down run with the "electric express."
Locomotive engineers and firemen read with avidity everything which
is explanatory of the construction or working of locomotives, but
generally have a contempt for things which have no practical
bearing. They demand "lucidity" in what they read with as much
vehemence as Matthew Arnold did, and some editors and college
professors, whose writing and thinking are foggy, would be greatly
benefited by the criticisms of the Locomotive Brotherhood.
[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Interior of Erecting Shop, Showing
Locomotive Lifted by Travelling Crane.]
Much might be written about the duties of locomotive-runners and
firemen, and the qualifications required. It is the general opinion
of locomotive superintendents that it is not essential that the men
who run locomotives should be good mechanics. The best runners or
engineers are those who have been trained while young as firemen
on locomotives. Brunel, the distinguished civil engineer, said
that he never would trust himself to run a locomotive because he
was sure to think of some problem relating to his profession which
would distract his attention from the engine. It is probably a
similar reason which sometimes unfits good mechanics for being good
locomotive-runners.
[Illustration: Fig. 39.--Forging a Locomotive Frame.]
It will perhaps interest some readers to know how much fuel a
locomotive burns. This, of course, depends upon the quality of
fuel, work done, speed, and character of the road. With freight
trains consisting of as many cars as a heavy locomotive can draw
without difficulty, the consumption of coal will not exceed from
1 to 1½ pounds of coal per car per mile if the engine is carefully
managed. It takes from 15 to 20 pounds of coal per mile to move
an engine and tender alone, the consumption being dependent upon
the size of the engine, speed, grades, and number of stops. If
this amount of coal is allowed for the engine and tender, and the
balance that is consumed is divided among the cars, it will reduce
the quantity for hauling the cars alone to even less amounts than
those given above. In ordinary average practice the consumption
is from 3 to 5 pounds per freight-car per mile, without making
any allowance for the engine and tender. With passenger trains,
the cars of which are heavier and the speed higher, the coal
consumption is from 10 to 15 pounds per car per mile. A freight
locomotive with a train of 40 cars will burn 40 to 200 pounds of
coal per mile, the amount depending on the care with which it is
managed, quality of the coal, grades, speed, weather, and other
circumstances.
AMERICAN CARS.
Peter Parley's illustration (p. 101) of the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad represents one of the earliest passenger-cars used in
this country. The accuracy of the illustration may, however, be
questioned. Probably the artist depended upon his imagination and
memory somewhat when he drew it. The engraving below (Fig. 40)
is from a drawing made by the resident engineer of the Mohawk &
Hudson Railroad, and from which six coaches were made by James
Goold for the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad in 1831. It is an authentic
representation of the cars as made at that time. Other old prints
of railroad cars represent them as substantially stage-coach bodies
mounted on four car-wheels, as shown by Figure 41. The next step
in the development of cars was that of joining together several
coach-bodies. This form was continued after the double-truck system
was adopted, as shown by Figure 42, which represents an early
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad car, having three sections, united. It
was soon displaced by the rectangular body, as shown in Figure 43,
which is a reproduction from an old print.
[Illustration: Fig. 40.--Mohawk & Hudson Car, 1831. (From the
original drawing by the resident engineer.)
Fig. 41.--Early Car. (From an old print.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 42.--Early Car on the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad.]
Figure 44 is an illustration of a car used for the transportation
of flour on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, while horses were
still used as the motive power. To show how nearly all progress
is a process of evolution, it was asserted, in one of the trials
of the validity of Winans' patent on eight-wheeled cars with two
trucks, that before the date of his patent it was a practice to
load firewood by connecting two such cars with long timbers, which
rested on bolsters attached by kingbolts to the cars. The wood
was loaded on top of these timbers, as shown in Figure 45. An old
car (Fig. 46), which antedated Winans' patent and was used at
the Quincy granite quarries for carrying large blocks of stone,
was also introduced as evidence for the defendants in that suit.
Although Winans was not able to establish the validity of his
patent on eight-wheeled cars with two trucks, he was undoubtedly
one of the first to put it into practical form, and did a great
deal to introduce the system.
[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Early American Car, 1834.]
The progress in the construction of cars has been fully as great
as in that of locomotives. If the old stage-coach bodies on wheels
are compared with a vestibule train of to-day the difference will
be very striking. Most of us who are no longer young can recall
the days when sleeping-cars were unknown, when a journey from an
Eastern city to Chicago meant forty-eight hours or more of sitting
erect in a car with thirty or more passengers, and an atmosphere
which was fetid. Happily those days are past, although the
improvement in the ventilation of cars has been very slow, and is
still very imperfect.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Old Car for Carrying Flour on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.]
Improvement has also lagged in the matter of coupling cars. It
has been shown by statistics and calculations that some hundreds
of persons are killed and some thousands injured in this country
annually in coupling cars. The use of automatic coupling, by which
cars could be connected together without going between them, it
has been supposed, would greatly lessen, if it would not entirely
prevent, this fearful sacrifice of life and limb. To accomplish
this end, though, it is essential that some one form of coupler
shall be generally adopted by all railroads. One of the obstacles
in the way of this has been the mechanical difficulty of finding
a mechanism which will satisfactorily accomplish the purpose for
which it was intended. After thirty or forty years of invention
and experiment, no automatic coupler has been produced, which has
been approved by competent judges with a sufficient degree of
unanimity to justify its general adoption. The patents on that
class of inventions are numbered by thousands, so that it is no
light task to select the best one or even the best kind. Besides
this difficulty, there is the other equally formidable one of
inducing railroad men, of various degrees of knowledge, ignorance,
and prejudice regarding this subject, and who are scattered all
over the continent, to agree in adopting some one form or kind
of automatic coupler. Various cliques had also been organized
on different roads in the interest of some patents, and in such
cases argument and reason addressed to them were generally wasted.
Public indignation was, however, aroused; and the stimulus of
legislation in different States compelled railroad officers to
give serious attention to the subject. After devoting some years
to the investigation, the Master Car-Builders' Association--which
is composed of officers of railroad companies, who are in charge
of the construction and repair of cars on the different lines--has
recommended the adoption of a coupler of the type represented by
Figures 47 to 49, which has been already applied to many cars and
the indications are that it will be very generally adopted for
freight and probably for passenger cars. If it should be, it will
relieve railroad employees of the dangerous duty of going between
cars to couple them. Figure 47 shows a plan looking down on the
couplers with one of the latches, _A_, open; Figure 48 shows it
with the two couplers partly engaged; and Figure 49 shows them when
the coupling is completed.
[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Old Car for Carrying Firewood on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.]
[Illustration: Fig. 46.--Old Car on the Quincy Granite Railroad.]
One of the first problems which presented itself in the infancy of
railroads was how to keep the cars on the rails.
Anyone who will stand close to a line of railroad when a train is
rushing by at a speed of forty, fifty, or sixty miles an hour must
wonder how the engine and cars are kept on the track; and even
those familiar with the construction of railroad machinery often
express astonishment that the flanges of the wheels, which are
merely projecting ribs about 1-1/8 inches deep and 1¼ inches thick,
are sufficient to resist the impetus and swaying of a locomotive or
car at full speed. The problem of the manufacture of wheels which
will resist this wear, and will not break, has occupied a great
deal of the attention of railroad managers and manufacturers.
[Illustration: Fig. 47.
Fig. 48.
Fig. 49.
Janney Car Coupler, showing the Process of Coupling.]
Locomotive driving-wheels in this country are always made of
cast-iron, with steel tires which are heated and put on the wheels
and then cooled. They are thus contracted and "shrunk" on the
wheel. The tread, that is, the surface which bears on the rail,
and the flange of the tire are then turned off in a lathe, shown
in Figure 25, on p. 121, made especially for the purpose. For
engine-truck, tender, and car-wheels, until within a few years,
"chilled" cast-iron wheels have been used almost exclusively on
American railroads. If the tread and flange of a wheel were made
of ordinary cast-iron they would soon be worn out in service, as
such iron has ordinarily little capacity for resisting the wear
to which wheels are subjected. Some cast-iron, however, has the
singular property which causes it to assume a peculiar, hard
crystalline form if, when it is melted, it is allowed to cool and
solidify in contact with a cold iron mould. The iron which is thus
cooled quickly, or "chilled," becomes very hard, and resists wear
very much better than iron which is not chilled. Car-wheels which
are made of this material are therefore cast in what is called a
chill-mould. Figure 50 represents a section of such a mould and
flask in which wheels are cast.
[Illustration: Fig. 50.--Mould and Flask in which Wheels are Cast.]
_A A_ is the wheel, which is moulded in sand in the usual way. The
part _B B_ of the mould, which forms the rim or tread of the wheel,
consists of a heavy cast-iron ring. The melted iron is poured into
this mould and comes in contact with _B B_. This has the effect of
chilling the hot iron, as has been explained. In cooling, the wheel
contracts; and for that reason the part between the rim _C_ and
the hub _D_ is made of a curved form, as shown in the section, so
that if one part should cool more rapidly than another these parts
can yield sufficiently to permit contraction without straining any
portion of the wheels injuriously. For the same reason the ribs on
the back of the wheels, as shown in Figure 51, are also curved.
As an additional safeguard to the unequal contraction in cooling,
the wheels are taken out of the mould while they are red-hot, and
placed in ovens where they are allowed to remain several days so as
to cool very slowly.
Figure 52, on p. 145, represents a section of the tread and flange
of a chilled wheel, showing the peculiar crystalline appearance of
the chilled iron.
[Illustration: Fig. 51.--Cast-iron Car Wheels.]
In making cast-iron wheels the quality of the iron used is of
the utmost importance. The difficulty in making good wheels lies
in the fact that most iron which is ductile and tough will not
chill, whereas hard white iron, which has the chilling property in
a very high degree, is brittle, and wheels which are made of it
are liable to break. There are some kinds of cast-iron produced
in this country which have the two qualities combined, in a very
remarkable degree; that is, they are ductile and tough, and will
also chill. Wheel-founders also mix different qualities of irons to
produce wheels with the required strength, and which will resist
wear; that is, they use a certain amount of hard white iron which
will chill, with that which is ductile and soft. By changing the
proportions, any required amount of chill can be produced. The
danger is that iron which has little strength or ductility will
be fortified with hard chilling iron, and a very weak wheel will
thus be the result. Thousands of such wheels have been bought and
used because they are cheap, and many lamentable accidents are
undoubtedly due to this cause. To guard against this, car-wheels
should always be subjected to rigid tests and inspection.
In Europe wheels are made of wrought-iron, with tires which were
also made of the same material before the discovery of the improved
processes of manufacturing steel, but since then they have been
made of the latter material. Owing to the breakage of a great many
cast-iron wheels of poor quality, steel-tired wheels are now coming
into very general use on American roads under passenger-cars and
engines. A great variety of such wheels is now made. The "centres"
or parts inside the tires of some of them are cast-iron, and others
are wrought-iron constructed in various ways.
[Illustration: Fig. 52.--Section of the Tread and Flange of a Car
Wheel.]
What is known as the Allen paper wheel is used a great deal in this
country, especially under sleeping-cars. A section and front view
of one of these wheels is shown by Figure 53. It consists of a
cast-iron hub, _A_, which is bored out to fit the axle. An annular
disk, _B B_, is made of layers of paper-board glued together and
then subjected to an enormous pressure. The disk is then bored out
to fit the hub, and its circumference is turned off, and the tire
_C C_ is fitted to it. Two wrought-iron plates, _P P_, are then
placed on either side of it, and the disk, plates, tire, and hub
are all bolted together. The paper, it will be seen, bears the
weight which rests on the hub of the axle and the hub of the wheel.
[Illustration: Fig. 53.--Allen Paper Car Wheel.]
Steel tires have the advantage that when they become worn their
treads and flanges may be turned off anew, whereas chilled
cast-iron wheels are so hard that it is almost impossible to
cut them with any turning tool. For this reason machines have
been constructed for grinding the tread with a rapidly revolving
emery-wheel. In these the cast-iron wheel is made to turn slowly,
whereas the emery-wheel revolves very rapidly. The emery-wheel is
then brought close to the cast-iron wheel, so that as they revolve
the projections on the latter are cut away, and the tread is thus
reduced to a true circular form. These machines are much used for
"truing-up" wheels which have been made flat by sliding, owing to
the brakes being set too hard.
It would require a separate article to give even a brief
description of the different kinds of cars which are now used. The
following list could be increased considerably if all the different
varieties were included.
Baggage-car,
Boarding-car,
Box-car,
Buffet-car,
Caboose or conductor's car,
Cattle- or stock-car,
Coal-car,
Derrick-car,
Drawing-room car,
Drop-bottom car,
Dump-car,
Express-car,
Flat or platform car,
Gondola-car,
Hand-car,
Hay-car,
Hopper-bottom car,
Horse-car,
Hotel-car,
Inspection-car,
Lodging-car,
Mail-car,
Milk-car,
Oil-car,
Ore-car,
Palace-car,
Passenger-car,
Post-office car,
Push-car,
Postal-car,
Refrigerator-car,
Restaurant-car,
Sleeping-car,
Sweeping-car,
Tank-car,
Tip-car,
Tool or wrecking car,
Three-wheeled hand-car.
The following table gives the size, weight, and price of cars at
the present time. The length given is the length over the bodies
not including the platforms.
------------------+-----------+------------------+--------------------
| Length, | Weight, lbs. | Price.
| feet. | |
------------------+-----------+------------------+--------------------
Flat-car | 34 | 16,000 to 19,000 | $380
------------------+-----------+------------------+--------------------
Box-car | 34 | 22,000 to 27,000 | $550
Refrigerator-car | 30 to 34 | 28,000 to 34,000 | $800 to $1,100
------------------+-----------+------------------+--------------------
Passenger-car | 50 to 52 | 45,000 to 60,000 | $4,400 to $5,000
Drawing-room car | 50 to 65 | 70,000 to 80,000 | $10,000 to $20,000
------------------+-----------+------------------+--------------------
Sleeping-car | 50 to 70 | 60,000 to 90,000 | $12,000 to $20,000
Street-car | 16 | 5,000 to 6,000 | $800 to $1,200
------------------+-----------+------------------+--------------------
[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Modern Passenger-car and Frame.]
Some years ago the master car-builders of the different railroads
experienced great difficulty in the transaction of their business
from the fact that there were no common names to designate the
parts of cars in different places in the country. What was known
by one name in Chicago had quite a different name in Pittsburg
or Boston. A committee was therefore appointed by the Master
Car-Builders' Association to make a dictionary of terms used
in car-construction and repairs. Such a dictionary has been
prepared, and is a book of 560 pages, and has over two thousand
illustrations. It has some peculiar features, one of which is
described as follows in the preface: "To supply the want which
demanded such a vocabulary, what might be called a double
dictionary is needed. Thus, supposing that a car-builder in
Chicago received an order for a 'journal-box'; by looking in an
alphabetical list of words he could readily find that term and
a description and definition of it. But suppose that he wanted
to order such castings from the shop in Albany, and did not know
their name; it would be impracticable for him to commence at A and
look through to Z, or until he found the proper term to designate
that part." To meet this difficulty the dictionary has very
copious illustrations in which the different parts of cars are
represented and numbered, and the names of the parts designated by
the numbers are then given in a list accompanying the engraving. An
alphabetical list of names and definitions is also given, as in an
ordinary dictionary. The definition usually contains a reference to
a number and a figure in which the object described is illustrated.
In making the dictionary the compilers selected terms from those
in use, where appropriate ones could be found. In other cases
new names were devised. The book is a curious illustration of a
more rapid growth of an art than of the language by which it is
described.
The following table, compiled from "Poor's Manual of Railroads,"
gives the number of locomotives and of different kinds of cars in
this country, beginning with 1876, and for each year thereafter. If
the average length of locomotives and tenders is taken at 50 feet,
those now owned by the railroads would make a continuous train 280
miles long; and the 1,033,368 cars, if they average 35 feet in
length, would form a train which would be more than 6,800 miles
long.
_Statement of the Rolling Stock of Railroads in the United States;
from "Poor's Manual" for 1889._