Scientific American Supplement, No. 561, October 2, 1886 by Various
page 26 of 163 (15%)
page 26 of 163 (15%)
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One point I wish to make is this: We find, as I have said, that as we spread out with boilers and furnaces in the mills, so that we can take matters deliberately, we save money. Now, coming again to locomotives. I think, if we examine the subject carefully, the fact will strike us a little curiously. The first locomotive built in Philadelphia weighed about 14 tons. Judging from the cut I have seen, I should think her furnace might have been 30 inches square. We have gone from that little 14 ton engine to machines of 50 and 60 tons--perhaps more. The engines have been increased over four times, but I will ask you if the furnace areas have been increased (applause) in proportion? Some of the furnaces of the engines are six feet by three, but that is an increase of less than 3 to 1 of furnace, as against 4 to 1 of weight of engine. When my attention was first called to this matter, I had supposed, as most people do who are outside of the railway profession, that there was something subtile and mysterious about railway engineering that none but those brought up to the business could understand. Possibly it is so, and I am merely making suggestions for what they are worth, but I think the position I have taken in this matter was established by some experiments of three weeks' duration, which I conducted between Milan and Como, in Italy, for the Italian government, in pulling freight trains up grades of 100 feet to the mile. The experiments were made with an engine built by the Reading Railroad. We competed with English, French, Belgian, and Austrian engines. These machines required the best of fuel to perform the mountain service, and could use coal dust only when it was pressed into brick. We used |
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