Steam Powered Locomotives

[Bodean]

Steam is awesome, I have many family members working with steam still.

My little cousin is a steamer mate on one of the last 5 US Navy Steamships.

 

[Al Smith]

Are those the ones that have a pinion and a bevel gear and the bevel is on the wheel?

Yes they are .Originally designed by a lumber baron by the name of Shay from Michigan .

This one is on static display in the podunk town I grew up in .It saw service for Tioga lumber company in West Virginia .

All the wheels drive including those of the tender .

 

[Frans]

Man I love checking out rail engines.
Check these guys out
http://www.rootsofmotivepower.com/

They come to the logging shows with their steam donkeys

I like how in England you can see very well built up track systems and cars on narrow gauge.

 

[sotc]

The Skunk Train?
Dur, I forgot we have the internet now.
http://www.skunktrain.com/

I rode that as a kid, think I still have the ticket stubs

 

[Thor's Hammer]

Are those the ones that have a pinion and a bevel gear and the bevel is on the wheel? If so that's what the Santa Cruz engine had. If I remember right it also had some cogs on the front wheel and in the really steep places they had a "rack" along the track for the cogs to fit into. Most of the small railroads in California were installed to service either a mine or a lumbermill.

steve, the 3rd vid I posted is a cog driven mountain railway. it climbs 3000 ft to the top of mt Snowdon.

 

[Frans]

I think if I won the lottery I would build a narrow gauge system on some property.
Talk about playing with trains!

 

[stig]

If you are really into this stuff, buy Hank Johnson's: "The whistles blow no more"
It is a great book about railroad logging in the Sierra Nevada 1874-1942. good reading, lots of pictures.

 

[woodworkingboy]

I bet that shoving the coal into the engine would get you in good shape.
Don't know about narrow gauge though.

 

[stehansen]

I was reading about the QJ locomotives in China and it said that there is a mechanical device to deliver the coal to the fire box but it usually breaks down pretty quick and is never fixed. It takes two guys to shovel the coal in there and that they work in 10 to 15 minute shifts.

 

[Al Smith]

Trivia 101 : On the Norfolk Southern rail road near Ada Ohio in 1905 a speed record which still rates high was set .127 miles per hour .3 miles in 87 seconds ,can you imagine .

That section of track is still there ,Amtrac now. .NY city to Chicago,road it several times myself to Chicago and from NYC to Ohio when I was in the navy but not at 100 plus MPH for sure .

 

[Frans]

It amazes me how long rails and railcars and rail engines last. In Brazil they still are using to this day cars from the 'Key' system which covered much of california

 

[woodworkingboy]

It must be a special deal to be shoveling in the coal in China, if you stop and think about all the miners that are constantly getting killed providing it.

 

[Al Smith]

In this country they built the steamers to burn whatever coal was in the region .The "Allegany" class freight engines used the hard Kentucky and Pa coal that is in this area .

The western locomotives had large fireboxes to burn western "rosebud " which was about 14 percent moisture coming out of the ground ,Wyoming coal . It doesn't contain as many btu's per ton as the KY coal .

When we moved to this area in '53 the Erie Lackawana had a round house where they did maintainence on the big steamers .It was the amount of maintainance plus the amount of track a steamer tore up that ultimently lead to it's demise .

The Electomotive division of General Motors sold diesel locomotives to the railroads on stictly the savings in track repairs .Those big old behemouths were tough on the rails .

My friends father was comtroller of GM Electomotive in La Grange at one time .Did he ever have the stories .Besides that ,the old boy could put away the scotch telling them .

 

[stehansen]

Are any of the water towers left in your part of the country Al?

 

[Al Smith]

Only the bases where they once stood .

About 25 years ago there was special a steam commemeration run through Ohio with I think a Lima built steamer .From Bellefountain Ohio to Kenton is about 30-35 Miles . In that few miles it sucked down a few thousand gallons of water and burned around 30 tons of coal .

They filled the water tender from a fire truck ,used a clam shell crane for the coal and it hissed and snorted and was on it's way towards Toledo .

If I'm not mistaken the Santa Fe still has two operating steamers they use for excursion runs . Biguns,the 5000 HP jobs .

 

[stehansen]

I'll take my camera the next time I go to Westley. There is one there that is still standing. One ton of coal to the mile. I think the nearest coal deposits to here are in Utah.

 

[thattreeguy]

there is a steam up occasionally at fort humboldt state park in eureka
and the steam engine group that runs it just picked up another locomotive and sent it to PA i believe for refurbishing
the forrest service ids asking for 1200 bucks for the permit to have the once a month steam ups now, so they may not do anymore. there is some old steam donkeys there too. worth the time if your out for an adventure in nor cal
the same group is trying to get an engine to go around the humboldt bay similar to the skunk train
the current locomotive is from Falk a now defunct lumber town up here..

 

[mryb]

I drove a steam train one time. You gotta be careful not to go too far with the lever or the drive wheels will spin...

 

[stehansen]

A friend of my parent's was in the service in Japan shortly after the end of WWII and was put on guard duty at a train station. One day some GI's came pulling up in a Japanese steam engine and were lost and had stopped to get directions from Frank. He started asking them about the train and they said "you wanna drive it?". So he says hell yeah and got to go for a little excursion down the track and back and he said that he opened up the steam valve a little too much and spun the wheels also.

 

[mryb]

It doesn't take much. One extra click will do it...

 

[Al Smith]

Mike Acres wrote me an E-mail one time about his early days as saw mechanic in a huge lumber camp in the NW Territories I believe .The camp delivered over a million board feet of logs per day to the mill pond by way of several hundred miles of back woods rail spurs with diesel electric locomotives .

Low and behold the steam boiler went on the blink that supplied heat for a camp .It gets cold as dead witchs tit in that area .

It just so happened they had an old Shay steamer setting on a spur which wasn't used much .They connected that old duffer to the piping and it made steam for the camp until repairs were made to the boiler .

 

[Bodean]

Just got back from Ft. Bragg area.

Here's a steam donkey.

 

[stehansen]

Crap man, that's so awesome!

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Would have loved to watch that donkey run! Too cool!

 

[aceruk]

This is "Tornado", the last steam locomotive to have been built in the UK..completed last year at a cost of £3m!


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