The Railway Library, 1909: A Collection of Noteworthy Chapters, Addresses, and Papers Relating to Railways, Mostly Published During the Year
History
The Railway Library, 1909: A Collection of Noteworthy Chapters, Addresses, and Papers Relating to Railways, Mostly Published During the Year
Railroads -- United States -- Periodicals
As early as 1680 Sir Isaac Newton predicted steam-propelled
carriages, and even made suggestions bearing on their design. Through
the eighteenth century various types of steam vehicles appeared, more
as curiosities than anything else, some of them forerunners of the
locomotive and others of the automobile. It was not until 1803 that
anything really deserving the name "locomotive" was built. Richard
Trevithick, a Cornish miner, constructed the locomotive bearing
his name, curiously enough as the result of a wager. On trial this
machine did convey ten tons of iron for nine miles on a cast-iron
tramway by steam power, winning the wager. The desire of Christopher
Blackett, a mine owner, to use steam motive power in place of animals
led to the practical demonstration of adhesion. On this principle,
Blackett's Superintendent, William Hedley, built his "Puffing Billy,"
a complicated affair of levers, beams and gears. On the completion of
the Liverpool & Manchester Railroad, the directors, being undecided
as to the motive power, offered a prize of five hundred pounds for
a locomotive that would fulfill certain conditions. The test came
off at Rainhill, in October, 1829, on a level piece of track about
one and one-half miles long, between four competitors. Stephenson's
"Rocket" won and gave the world the mechanical combination
essentially represented in locomotive practice since that time.
American locomotive practice followed the Stephenson model. Among the
early builders were Phineas Davis, Ross Winans and Matthias Baldwin.
The four-wheel engines of the English type proved injurious to the
light rail and sharp curves on our early roads, and to overcome this
Mr. John B. Jervis, Chief Engineer of the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad,
introduced the four-wheel "Bogie" truck. For some twenty years this
design remained, until in the '50s the demand for more tractive power
brought about the addition of another pair of coupled drivers, thus
evolving the well-known "American" type. Additional drivers were
added with the demand for increased tractive power, leading in turn
to the development of the "Mogul" and "Consolidated" types.
In the decade between 1880 and 1890 more drivers, such as in the
ten-wheel type, began to be used in high-speed service, and the
adaptation of wide fire-boxes to the American type necessitated the
addition of a trailer truck to support the rear end of the locomotive
frame, and brought about the "Atlantic" type, in 1895.
The "Pacific" type, or the most modern high-speed passenger
locomotive, is a development of this. In 1888 Anatole Mallett
designed the articulated locomotive. In 1904 the first one of this
type was placed in operation on an American railroad, and since that
time has gained favor where maximum tractive power on heavy grades is
required.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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