For single axle engines this simple form of truck was entirely satisfactory, but it proved less satisfactory for 4- and 6-coupled machines. Also, as train speeds increased, so did the number of derailments. Many of these could be traced to the inability of the engine to negotiate curves at speed. Levi Bissell, a New York inventor who investigated this problem in the 1850’s, correctly analyzed the difficulty. He observed that when the engine was proceeding on straight tracks the leading truck tended to oscillate and chatter about the center pin, and he noted that it was this action that imparted a fearful pitching motion to the locomotive at speed. The derailments were traced to the action of the truck as the engine entered a curve.
This action can be more easily understood from reference to Bissell’s patent drawing in [figure 2]. For example, let us say that an 8-wheel engine, fitted with a center-swing truck, enters a right-hand curve. The left truck wheels bear hard against the left rail. The drivers jam obliquely across the track, with the right front and left rear wheels grinding into the rails. As a result, the locomotive tends to leave the track in the direction of the arrow shown on the figure (bottom drawing). It will be noted that the truck center pintle is in fact the fulcrum for this leverage. Under such strain the truck wheels are particularly likely to leave the rails when they encounter an obstruction. Once derailed, the truck would then spin around on the deadly center pin, throwing the locomotive over.
In effect, then, the center pin of the conventional truck extended the rigid wheelbase of the engine, and caused the truck to act much as would a single set of leading wheels fitted rigidly to the engine frame far ahead of the front driving wheels. Bissell proposed to correct the faults of the conventional truck by fitting the locomotives with his invention, the first practical safety truck to be patented. Since the primary requirements were to keep the leading wheel axles at right angles to the rails whether on a straight or curved track, and to allow the driving axles to remain parallel, or nearly so, to the radial line of the curve, he moved the center pin to a point behind the truck and just in front of the forward driving axle. This shortened the wheelbase of the engine and removed the danger of the pintle serving as a fulcrum between the truck and the driving wheels, thus allowing them to assume a comfortable position on a curve.
Since the truck could assume the correct angle when entering curves, it was claimed in the patent specification that, unless all four wheels were simultaneously [p122] lifted off the track, the truck could pass over “quite a considerable obstruction.”[3] Bissell further claimed:
In running on either a straight or curved track one of the truck wheels often breaks off, and the truck swivels around on its center pin in consequence, and throws the engine off the track, but with my device one wheel, or even the two wheels on the opposite sides diagonally of the truck might break off and still the truck would not run off, because its position is set and it has no axis of motion around which it could swing….
Figure 4.—A 4-wheel safety truck fitted with A. F. Smith’s swing-bolster centering device. Built by the Hinkley Locomotive Works. From Gustavus Weissenborn, American Locomotive Engineering and Railway Mechanism, New York, 1871, pl. 88.
The other problem Bissell wished to correct was the oscillation and chatter of the leading truck. This was accomplished by a simple centering device in the form of a pair of V-shaped double incline planes (D on [fig. 3]) situated at the center of the truck frame (A). The lower planes of the pair were fastened to the truck frame and the upper, cast in the form of a bridge, were attached to the locomotive frame (C) by a center plate. But while the portion of the locomotive’s weight assigned to the leading wheels was borne at the center of the truck, as in the conventional design, the center plate was no longer the point of rotation. On a straight track the V’s would be at their bottom position and thus prevent the truck from vibrating.[4] When the locomotive entered a curve the planes allowed its forward weight to bear continuously on all four wheels, and at the same time controlled any exaggerated swing caused by centrifugal force.
The centering device is thus explained in the patent specification (figure numbers are omitted):