“The Three little Engines”
The Rubicon, as yet unnamed, arrived at NCR in 1909 on a flat car, just as its successor was welcomed more than half a century later.
Most things yield to progress—and that, of course, is how museums are made. The Corliss engine now on display at Carillon Park labored mightily during the formative years of American industry, yet more economical electric power systems eventually sent that steam giant into retirement at the Park. The Conestoga wagon and the Concord coach, the Grasshopper locomotive and the high-wheeled Cadillac—all served their purpose. And then, with sentimental if somewhat whimsical ceremony, they were consigned to their final resting place.
In the summer of 1962, Carillon Park made room for what is probably its most unusual example of antique “rolling stock.”
“The Three Little Engines” are pictured soon after their purchase by NCR. The Carillon Park relic, the Rubicon, is pushing the first electric express car used by The Ohio Electric Company. The exhaust stacks of all three fireless engines originally extended up the front of the storage tanks, fully exposed, but the tanks were later given false fronts so the Rubicon, The Dayton and the South Park would resemble conventional railroad locomotives.
The Dayton
The South Park
The newcomer is the “Rubicon,” one of three fireless locomotives which were purchased by The National Cash Register Company in the early years of this enterprising century. The Rubicon, however, did not come to the Park from a rusty and forgotten limbo—as, for instance, the Grasshopper locomotive did. The engine is an antique, to be sure, yet its boiler and baffles had scarcely had time to dry when it was refurbished for a place of honor in the museum. Its successor, a Diesel-powered switch engine, had been delivered only a short time before the Rubicon was relieved of service and was ready to be converted into a public curiosity. In fact, the Rubicon—injury added to insult!—on one of its final trips puffed across the NCR yard and pushed its bright blue-and-yellow replacement from the flat car on which it arrived to the roundhouse.
“The Three Little Engines,” so long familiar to Daytonians, were among the first fireless (or steam storage) locomotives in America. The Dayton was built in 1913, the South Park in 1910 and the Rubicon in 1909—all by the Lima Locomotive Works of Lima, Ohio, on a basic design developed and popularized in Germany. NCR’s founder, John H. Patterson, had in fact seen such an engine during his travels in Europe, and decided it was just what he wanted for Dayton, Ohio.
Mr. Patterson was one of the first American industrialists to be concerned with “factory environment.” He believed that a factory would be an esthetic asset to the community, as well as a happy place for workers, if it were kept clean and attractively landscaped. NCR resembled—then, as it does today—a series of office buildings rather than a huge industrial complex.
The neighborhood adjacent to the factory also concerned John H. Patterson; he offered annual prizes to householders who kept the best yards and flower beds. An early NCR machinist who looked up from his lathe and glanced out the spacious window—by way of resting his eyes—saw lovely suburban gardens instead of the grimy clutter that bordered most factories of the era.
Keeping the sandstone buildings clean, and the geraniums healthy, would be easier, Mr. Patterson concluded, if it weren’t for the sooty smoke belched up by switch engines.
The steam-storage locomotive proved to be the answer. It could chuff about for hours, emitting nothing more than a few puffs of steam.