Illustrated Catalogue of Locomotives; Baldwin Locomotive WorksBaldwin Locomotive Works
History
Illustrated Catalogue of Locomotives; Baldwin Locomotive Works
Baldwin Locomotive Works
Baldwin locomotives; Locomotives -- Catalogs
Forty-two engines were completed in 1846, and thirty-nine in 1847. The
only novelty to be noted among them was the engine "M. G. Bright,"
built for operating the inclined plane on the Madison and Indianapolis
Railroad. The rise of this incline was one in seventeen, from the bank
of the Ohio River at Madison. The engine had eight wheels, forty-two
inches in diameter, connected, and worked in the usual manner by
outside inclined cylinders, fifteen and one-half inches diameter by
twenty inches stroke. A second pair of cylinders, seventeen inches in
diameter with eighteen inches stroke of piston, was placed vertically
over the boiler, midway between the furnace and smoke-arch. The
connecting-rods worked by these cylinders connected with cranks on a
shaft under the boiler. This shaft carried a single cog-wheel at its
centre, and this cog-wheel engaged with another of about twice its
diameter on a second shaft adjacent to it and in the same plane. The
cog-wheel on this latter shaft worked in a rack-rail placed in the
centre of the track. The shaft itself had its bearings in the lower
ends of two vertical rods, one on each side of the boiler, and these
rods were united over the boiler by a horizontal bar which was
connected by means of a bent lever and connecting-rod to the piston
worked by a small horizontal cylinder placed on top of the boiler. By
means of this cylinder, the yoke carrying the shaft and cog-wheel
could be depressed and held down so as to engage the cogs with the
rack-rail, or raised out of the way when only the ordinary drivers
were required. This device was designed by Mr. Andrew Cathcart, Master
Mechanic of the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad. A similar machine,
the "John Brough," for the same plane, was built by Mr. Baldwin in
1850. The incline was worked with a rack-rail and these engines until
it was finally abandoned and a line with easy gradients substituted.
The use of iron tubes in freight engines grew in favor, and in
October, 1847, Mr. Baldwin noted that he was fitting his flues with
copper ends, "for riveting to the boiler."
The subject of burning coal continued to engage much attention, but
the use of anthracite had not as yet been generally successful. In
October, 1847, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company advertised
for proposals for four engines to burn Cumberland coal, and the
order was taken and filled by Mr. Baldwin with four of his
eight-wheels-connected machines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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