A twenty-four hour continuous test of an automobile is as nothing; a five hundred or a thousand-mile test of its engine without resting, these days, a mere child’s sport. You do not think after you have driven your own car ninety miles that you must rest it before you set it in service once more. If you could not drive it upon necessity twice or three times that distance without resting it you probably would feel like selling it.
Yet there are many ninety-mile engine-runs left in the United States to this day; some of them, like those between New York and Philadelphia, are matters of operating convenience that cannot easily be changed. Tradition holds others. One hundred and fifty miles still remains a typical division in the minds of many conservative railroaders. And a real boast upon the part of the progressive manufacturers of the electric locomotive is that their machines can easily cover two such typical divisions without either rest or inspection. But it should be borne in mind that when the inspection finally is made it must be like that at Calais, of the most thorough sort.
Very recently the New York Central instituted the experiment of combining as a single engine-run the former two runs between Albany and Buffalo, 300 miles. The Santa Fé has cut its separate runs from Chicago to the Pacific coast from twelve to six. There seems to be no very good reason why the New York Central should not run the locomotive from Harmon, at the outer limit of the New York electric zone, right through to Chicago, 946 miles—or two engine-runs on the Santa Fé between Chicago and Los Angeles, 2246 miles. Down in the Southwest the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railway already has a 700-mile run, and is preparing to install a 1000-mile one. It is simply a question of proper rewatering and refueling facilities. Obviously the crews could not make runs such as this. I have known an engineer to take a special through from New York to Buffalo on the Lackawanna or the Erie—a little more than 400 miles in either case—and not relinquish the throttle for the entire distance. But that was a stunt. I am talking of regular performance day in and day out.
It is easy enough to change the crews however at distances of approximately 150 to 175 miles. But there is no reason why the engine should be changed. If an 11,000-horse-power ship racing two 250-foot shafts can keep it up continuously for six days and 3000 miles there is no reason on earth why a well-equipped locomotive should falter at the same performance.
The steam locomotive a laggard?
There is no inherent reason whatever why he should be a laggard unless men themselves so desire. The paths for his possible development have not been followed to their ends. Men this very day are engaged in plans for the placing of a third cylinder in his mechanism; the possibilities of the brick arch, the superheater, and the hot-water feed now have brought his steam production up ahead of the mechanism that consumes it. The opportunity is rife for the further perfection of this mechanism.
In England, right up to the present time, and for many of his earlier years in this country, the steam locomotive in builders’ phrasing was “inside-connected,” the cylinders and driving-rods being placed within the frame and under the boiler. Gradually this type of engine was abandoned upon this continent. Despite the trimness of its appearance—your foreigner always lays great stress upon the appearance of his locomotive—the important driving mechanism was so hidden as to render it comparatively inaccessible for repairs. And so we came here to placing the entire driving mechanism upon the outside of the locomotive, where it could be easily reached and taken down.
There is a movement to-day toward the creation of a locomotive which shall be both inside and outside-connected. There is hardly room for two cylinders within the frame. There certainly is room for one. And with the retention of the two outer cylinders there presently will be created a locomotive which, with all its improved steam-creating powers to boot, will quickly take highest place both in speed and energy. More operating economies will be effected, new records established.
The steam locomotive a laggard?
Is not the question now fairly answered?