The Evolution of the American
Locomotive.
Scientific American SupplementApril
24, 1897 (Part 1 of 3)
By HERBERT T. WALKER.
Member of the National Museum CommitteeEngland
To write a short article on the evolution of the most scientific
and wonderful form of the steam engine is not, by any means, an
easy task; for not only is the quantity of information on the
subject enormous, but it is scattered over a vast area, which
makes it difficult to collect and classify and still more difficult
to condense and present to the average reader in a way that shall
be interesting without going too much into technical details.
It is to be deplored that no history worthy the name has yet
been written of the American locomotive. Many short articles and
fragmentary accounts of certain old engines have appeared in technical
periodicals and some books have been written describing engines
of a certain period, or those constructed by a particular firm
of engine builders, but, valuable as these works are, none of
them have attempted to deal with the subject in either a comprehensive
manner or from an impartial standpoint.
Probably the best outline history of the American locomotive
will be found in the opening pages of Zerah Colburn's "Locomotive
Engineering and Mechanism of Railways," 1871. This is a standard
English text book, and it is worthy of note that Mr. Colburn was
an American.
The want of a good history is to be further regretted for the
reason that drawings of many important locomotives have now become
destroyed or lost and their designers and builders have since
passed away. An illustration of this point can be made by quoting
a passage from a letter received by the author front one of the
largest locomotive works in America, in response to a request
made by him for certain information
"We can find no drawings or tracings of the engine you
refer to. At the time that engine was built full sets of drawings
were probably never made. Full size sketches on boards were often
made use of for important parts, sometimes half size on long rolls
of paper, and the minor parts, even boilers, were made front pen
sketches. Many of the half size drawings on paper, of the engines
built in early days, have been defaced, torn and thrown away many
years ago."
Even in cases where drawings have been preserved they have
been found to be incorrect in details, because complete plans
of many engines were never drawn, or if they were, alterations
and additions were made during the building of the engines without
such changes being noted on the drawings. This is a fault that
even modern engineers and draughtsmen are not free from.
In the present article an attempt will be made to trace the
progress of the American locomotive from the crude machine of
about ninety years ago to the magnificent engine of modern tunes,
passing but lightly over all sporadic or transitory forms and
dealing principally with some of the earliest engines possessing
details of construction that go to make the locomotive of the
present day a mechanical and commercial success.
Richard Trevithick, of Cornwall, England, was undoubtedly the
father of the locomotive. In the year 1803 he built a tramway
engine having a horizontal cylinder connected by gear wheels to
the driving wheels; he employed high pressure steam and turned
the exhaust steam into the chimney by means of a pipe which he
called the "blast pipe." On February 24, 1804, this
engine was tried on the Penydarran tramroad, in Wales, and conveyed
a load of ten tons of bar iron and about seventy passengers to
Merthyr Tydvil, a distance of nine miles. The locomotive worked
satisfactorily from a mechanical point of view, but commercially
it was not a success, being more expensive than horse traction.
[This engine was illustrated in the Scientific American Supplement,
April 7, 1894].
No essay on our subject would be complete without mentioning
the name of Oliver Evans, although his machine was not, strictly
speaking, a locomotive engine, but it was the first carriage propelled
by steam in America. The name of this curious machine was Eructor
Amphibolis, and it was built for dredging purposes, being mounted
on a scow or lighter having four carrying wheels. The engine had
a walking beam and fly wheel communicating motion to the carrying
wheels by rope gearing. Evans was thus enabled to transport the
machine by its steam power from his shop in Philadelphia for
some distance over rough roads to the river Schuylkill, which
it navigated (by means of a paddle wheel) to its mouth, whence
it ascended the Delaware to a point where it was set to work dredging.
[This engine was illustrated in the Scientific American, April
3, 1847]. This was in the year 1804, and for the next twenty years
Blenkinsop, Hedley, Hackwortb and Stephenson were bending all
their energies to develop practical locomotives.
The next attempt
at steam locomotion in America appears to have been in the year
1825, when Col. John Stevens, of Hoboken, N. J., designed and
built a rack rail engine for the purpose of exhibiting to a committee
of the Pennsylvania Society for Internal Improvement when the
question of constructing a railroad from Philadelphia to Columbia
was being considered. This was the first steam engine that carried
passengers on a track in the United States, and is shown in Fig.
1.
The following extract from a letter dated March 30, 1883, from
Mr. F. B. Stevens (Colonel Stevens' grandson) addressed to Mr.
J. E. Watkins, Curator of the National Museum, Washington, describing
the locomotive of 1825, will be of interest:
"The track was laid on wooden stringers capped with thin
iron, the gage being about that usual on ordinary roads or turnpikes.
A cast iron rack was laid in the center of track, and into the
teeth of this rack a cog wheel, driven by the engine, geared.
The engine had only a single cylinder, which was exactly horizontal,
resting on the main frame and was from four to five inches in
diameter and about one foot stroke. The boiler was formed by a
number of vertical tubes each about 1¼ inches external
diameter and 4½ feet long. These tubes were set closely
together in a circle, surrounding and inclosing a circular grate
of about ten inches in diameter. This boiler was inclosed by a
jacket of thin sheet iron, which was surmounted by a conical hood
on which the smoke stack rested. The fuel was wood, which was
dropped on to the grate through a door in the hood. The boiler
with its jacket and stack presented very much the outside appearance
of the small vertical flue boilers now in use.
"The engine was set on four wooden wheels about four feet
in diameter.
"I have an impression that friction wheels of small diameter
and having their axes vertical were used to keep the engine on
the track, but my recollection is not at all distinct on this
point. The tires were without flanges, the wheels being the ordinary
wagon wheels."
A full size model of this engine was shown at the Columbian
Exposition of 1893 with the tubes placed outside for the purpose
of exhibition, as seen in the illustration.
But the first practical locomotives were imported from England.
With however much pride (and justly) we Americans may point to
our modern engines, some of which are the fastest and most powerful
in the world, we must not forget that the cradle of the locomotive
was in Great Britain, and that long before any such machine was
seen in this country, stalwart mechanics on the bleak hills of
northern England and Wales had sweated and toiled their lives
away in the face of difficulties and discouragements of which
we know nothing; and, with scarcely one of the appliances now
commonly found in machine shops, had produced successful locomotives
for hauling coal and freight trains. In the year 1825 the Stockton
and Darlington Railway was opened for traffic, with George Stephenson's
engine Locomotion, and from that time the steam passenger railroad
was an established fact.
From Stretton's
valuable and interesting book, "The Locomotive Engine and
its Development," we learn that early in the year 1828 the
Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, having heard of the success
of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, sent Mr. Horatio Allen
over to England with instructions to obtain information and purchase
rails and locomotives. He placed orders for some engines with
Messrs. Foster, Rastrick & Company, of Stourbridge, and also
with George Stephenson. Stephenson's engine was named America;
it was built in 1828, and arrived in New York on board the ship
Columbia about the middle of January, 1829. It was the first practical
locomotive seen in this country and is illustrated by Fig.
2, which is a copy of one of Stephenson's working drawings.
Although this engine was the first to arrive, it was not the first
to be used, as will be seen later on. Following are some of the
principal dimensions of America: Diameter of boiler, 4 feet 1
inch. Length, 9 feet 6 inches. Dimensions of fire place, 4 feet
by 3 feet. Diameter of cylinders, 9 inches by 24 inch stroke.
Wheels (wood), diameter 4 feet. Angle of cylinders to the horizontal,
33°. Diameter of tubes, 1 foot 7 inches. Number of tubes,
2. It had no smokebox, the two fire tubes opening directly into
the chimney base.
All the early engines designed by Stephenson had frames made
of bar iron, but about the year 1826 he adopted a composite frame;
the frame connecting the wheels and supporting the boiler being
of bar iron as usual, with the addition of a plate iron frame
carrying the cylinders and motion, as seen in America. While this
construction possesses grave faults, it illustrates a step in
the evolution of the locomotive frame, for in 1830 Stephenson
abandoned the bar frame and introduced a double plate frame with
an oak beam fastened in between the plates. This was called the
"sandwich" frame and was used in England for many years,
until the oak filling was finally discarded and the frames made
of iron plates alone: Thus, the plate frame of the English locomotive
of to-day is a development of the cylinder frame of America. On
the other hand, American builders, while they used the sandwich
frame to a limited extent, soon selected the bar frame as better
adapted to American requirements on account of its superior flexibility
on a rough track and comparative low cost, and this bar frame
is one of the chief characteristics of the modern American locomotive.
Messrs. Foster
& Rastrick's engine, the Stourbridge Lion, is shown in Fig.
3, and was also built in 1828, arriving in New York May, 1829.
It was tried for the first time August 9, 1829, being driven by
Horatio Allen on a section of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's
railroad and was the first practical locomotive ever run on a
railroad in America. As it was too heavy (7 tons) for the very
light track of that period, it was soon withdrawn from traction
service. The boiler was tubular and the exhaust steam was carried
into the chimney by a pipe in front of the smoke box, as shown.
It had vertical cylinders of 36 inches stroke, with "grasshopper"
beams and connecting rods, thereby imparting an up and down movement
to the driving wheels, a serious defect in a locomotive, as a
vertical pull on the cranks is hard on the track and makes the
engine unsteady.
In this respect also Stephenson's America (Fig. 2) is
worthy a little study, as it is one of the earliest improvements
he made in the locomotive engine. It will be seen that the piston
rods communicate motion to the cranks by connecting rods without
any intermediate gearing (this plan was first used by him in the
year 1826), and thus we have one of the earliest examples of a
direct connected four coupled engine as now in use all over the
world.
We now come to the year 1829, which was a memorable one in
railway history, but before describing the principal event of
that period it is necessary to note in passing that Peter Cooper
built an experimental engine named Tom Thumb. This engine had
an upright boiler 20 inches in diameter by 5 feet high, with gun
barrels for tubes. It had a single cylinder 3¼ inches diameter
by 14½ inches stroke. This engine was tried August 28,1830,
on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and with a load of 4½
tons it made 13 miles in 1 hour and 15 minutes, the best time
for a single mile being 3¼ minutes.
In the year 1829 George Stephenson placed his world renowned
Rocket on the tracks of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
Although this was only about a year after America was built, the
Rocket was a vast improvement on that engine, having a multitubular
boiler (tubes were of copper) with a fire box riveted to the end
thereof, and surrounded with water, inclined cylinders with direct
connection between the piston rods and crank pins on a single
pair of driving wheels, and the exhaust steam was turned into
the chimney through a blast nozzle. In short, it possessed all
the essential features of the modern locomotive. [This engine
was illustrated in the Scientific American Supplement, April 7,
1894]. At the celebrated Rainhill trials, commencing October 8,
1829, it attained a maximum speed of 24 miles an hour, and is
credited with covering a mile in 60 seconds when running without
a train.
This engine is preserved in the South Kensington Museum, London,
and is generally regarded as the most interesting locomotive in
the world, not only for the reasons above named, but also for
the fact that its success went a great way to silence the opposition
to railways; an opposition that is hard for us to realize at the
present day. The early locomotives were contemptuously called
"steam pots," by the stage coach and canal proprietors,
and they, together with other interested parties, to say nothing
of the large class of people who objected to innovations on general
principles, made the work of the first railway mechanical engineers
one of extraordinary difficulty. It was not an uncommon thing
for the engine men to be pelted with stones and brickbats when
on a journey, and George Stephenson himself was in danger of his
life on more than one occasion. Logs of wood, etc., were frequently
placed on the track in front of an approaching train, which was
quite serious, as, in those days of insufficient brake
power and cumbersome reversing gear, it was almost impossible
to stop the engine in time. Even some of the civil engineers of
that day were unfavorable to locomotives, as, in their opinion,
the lines could be worked more cheaply and better by horses. With
a few brilliant exceptions, the English landed gentry were opposed
to Stephenson and his infernal machines, a certain nobleman, in
the course of a public speech, declaring that he "would rather
meet a highwayman on the road than an engineer." The absurd
and exasperating questions put to Stephenson by Parliamentary
lawyers when early railway bills were introduced are matters of
history.
We will now recross the Atlantic and see what the Americans
were doing about this time. In sharp contrast to the general opposition
which the indomitable Stephenson and the handful of enterprising
merchants and capitalists who supported him had to fight against,
it is refreshing to read that, as Mr. Charles Francis Adams has
expressed it, [See "Railroads: There Origins and Problems"]
"All through the time during which Stephenson was fighting
the battle of the locomotive, America, as if in anticipation of
his victory, was building railroads. . . The country, therefore,
was not only ripe to accept the results of the Rainhill contest,
but it was anticipating them with eager hope." On the fourth
of July, 1828, the construction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
was begun, the first act being performed by the venerable Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton, the only then surviving signer of the
Declaration of Independence. At the close of the ceremony of breaking
ground Mr. Carroll said, "I consider this among the most
important acts of my life, second only to that of signing the
Declaration of Independence, if even second to that."
The American
mechanics were also following closely on the heels of their English
brothers, and in 1830 the South Carolina Railroad Company contracted
with Mr. E. L. Miller to build a locomotive which was named the
Best Friend. It was the first locomotive ever built in America
for actual service upon a railroad, and was designed by Adam Hall
and constructed by the West Point Foundry Association, foot of
Beach Street, New York City. It was a four coupled, inside connected
engine, as shown in Fig. 4, which is reproduced from a
copy of the original drawing. The cylinders were 6 inches in diameter
by 16 inches stroke, driving wheels 4 feet 9 inches diameter,
weight 4½ tons. The boiler was vertical, and was totally
destroyed by explosion on June 7, 1831, being, it is said, the
first locomotive boiler explosion on record.
The second locomotive built for actual service in the United
States was the West Point, in 1830-31; it was built for the same
railroad and at the same shops as the Best Friend. This engine
had a horizontal tubular boiler with tubes 2½ inches in
diameter and 6 feet long. Four coupled driving wheels 4 feet 9
inches diameter. Inside connected cylinders 6 inches diameter
by 16 inches stroke. With 5 cars containing 117 passengers this
engine made 2½ miles in 8 minutes.
The third American engine built for actual service was the
De Witt Clinton. This engine was also constructed at the West
Point Foundry in 1831, and was trade for the Mohawk and Hudson
Railroad, now a part of the New York Central and Hudson River
Railroad, to the order of Mr. John B. Jervis, chief engineer of
the former road. A full size model of this engine was exhibited
at the Columbian Exposition, 1893, and is illustrated on the right
hand side of Fig. 5. The engine on the opposite side of
the cut is No. 999, and will be described in its proper place
later on. The outward appearance of De Witt Clinton was very similar
to America, Fig. 2, but the cylinders were inside connected
and the frames were of wood, reinforced with iron. We also notice
that it had a rudimentary smoke box. The boiler had 30 copper
tubes, 2½ inches diameter, wheels 4 feet 6 inches diameter,
cylinders 5½ inches diameter by 16 inches stroke, weight,
of engine and tender about 6 tons.
The first regular trip was made between Albany and Schenectady,
August 9, 1831, when, with a load of three coaches, a maximum
speed of 15 miles an hour was attained, but, alone, the engine
was run at a speed of 40 miles an hour. The conductor had a small
seat on the rear of the tender and gave the signal for starting
by blowing a tin horn. We are told that "the fuel used was
dry pitch pine, and as there was no spark arrester on the stack,
the sparks poured back on the passengers in such a volume that
they raised their umbrellas as shields. The covers were soon burned
off these, and each man whipped his neighbor's clothes to put
out the fire started by the hot cinders."
The illustration shows the engine with a large steam dome,
but in an official drawing published in the Railroad Gazette of
May 25, 1883 (which also contains authentic drawings of the Best
Friend and West Point), the engine is without a steam dome. The
New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company's description
gives the diameter of driving wheels as 4 feet 6 inches, but the
wheels on the above named drawing scale 5 feet. There are other
discrepancies, but, nevertheless, Fig. 5 may be accepted
as a fair representation of the De Witt Clinton.
Mention having been made of the conductor blowing a tin horn,
we note, by the way, that an old print showing Stephenson's Planet
on Liverpool and Manchester Railway, year 1830, represents the
engine driver blowing a bugle after the manner of a stage coach
guard. The first whistle was a steam trumpet placed by George
Stephenson on the Samson, a freight engine for the Leicester and
Swannington Railway, in May, 1833.
(To be continued.)
Antebellum RR
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