Locomotive Engine Running and Management

by Angus Sinclair

WHAT HAPPENS INSIDE THE CYLINDERS WHEN AN ENGINE IS REVERSED.

Many men who have a fair understanding of the action of steam in an engine’s cylinders during ordinary working, have no idea of the operations performed in the cylinders when a locomotive is running in reverse motion. All men who have had any thing to do with train service, know, that, when an engine is reversed, the action works to stop the train, even if the locomotive should have no steam on the boiler; but just in what way this result comes round they can not clearly perceive. In hopes of throwing light upon this subject for those who have not studied it out, we will follow the events of a stroke in reversed motion, as we did in the ordinary working.