Our Railroads To-Morrow

by Edward Hungerford

“No, but some user of this car some day is going to get all but stuck in second speed on some stiff, muddy hill and if the valves act gummy he is going to have it in for this car.”

Eventually this manufacturer had the valve working to his taste. When he had perfected it, in keeping with his agreement, he threw the new cylinder-block open for the use of his fellows. There was no secret about it, no patent; they were quite welcome to use it. And some of them did use it.

More than this, the automotive industry, as it now likes to call itself, is not content to let the individual manufacturer do all the work upon the development of the machine. It has centralized bureaus, technical experts, and engineers who are working all the time for the interests of the industry in general. The development of the marvelous Liberty motor of war days would not have been possible without such a centralized organization.

Such a plan never has been attempted in the history of steam locomotive development. There the individual manufacturers have gone it alone. And they are quite frank when they tell you that there is not the slightest financial inducement for them to carry forward a scientific work of development. Their output is sold generally in quantity lots—like potatoes, by the peck. And in the present-day poverty of many of their customers—comparative poverty at least—they assert that the margin of profit is held to a figure that permits of little or no “staff” work upon their part.

Now remember, if you will, that for eighty years the steam locomotive of the United States grew in size alone. Aside from the air-brake (which, in reality, was not a distinctly locomotive improvement) hardly a single fundamental improvement had been made since the days of Stephenson to make a pound of iron and a pound of coal and a pound of water do more work. Yet with our super-sized locomotive reached, the operating geniuses of our American railroads demanded more power, and still more power. The longer train-load, and the heavier, apparently was their only way out of the demands that came down upon them from “higher up” for still more operating economics.

Then slowly and after a very great delay the railroad executives began casting about through their mechanical departments to inquire what, if any, progress was being made in intensive locomotive improvements, either overseas or else right here in America. The mechanical departments reported quickly. There really were several possibilities. Listed, these ran about as follows:

The superheater: That German device that we have just seen for bringing the steam into the cylinders at such an intense heat as not to permit it quickly to waste itself in water vaporization; a purpose accomplished chiefly by the use of special flues in the boiler through the entire length of which steam is twice passed. That done, it comes into the cylinders superheated, and not saturated as in the old-time engine.

The brick arch in the fire-box: A sort of second cousin to the superheater. Its name to a large degree indicates its nature. An arch thrown across the forward end of the fire-box has a very marked tendency to insure complete combustion of the fuel before the heat reaches the flue-tubes of the boiler and hence achieves a great economy in coal or oil consumption. Its use came with the development of the maximum width of the fire-box in the newest types of American locomotives, which in turn was accomplished when the locomotive had been lengthened and a pair of trailing-wheels placed just back of its drivers.

The feed-water heater: An allied device for quickening the production of boiler steam and so effecting a further economy in coal consumption. Perhaps the least tried and so the least established of all these devices.

The booster: In reality a miniature locomotive, attached to those two trailer-wheels just back of the drivers and giving to the biggest locomotive at its starting-point or other points of real stress the accelerating power equal to that which 50,000 more pounds of additional locomotive would be able to give. Yet the booster is as ingeniously geared from its cylinders to its driving power as the engine of a high-grade automobile and weighs but 3500 pounds all told—a mere nothing in comparison with the energy that it gives off. Its application and disconnection are almost automatic. The engineer, when he is in need of its assistance either at starting or upon a steep grade, puts its additional power into play by a quick twist of a tiny lever at his side.