19th Century Performance

Trains Magazine Transit
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I am interested in the performance limitations of the typical 1850’s locomotive (4-4-0?) and how it impacted possible scheduling, etc. I’m a fiction writer and want to ensure that a group of characters’ train ride into the frontier is plausible. If I can’t find answers to the following questions, they’re going to have to travel by a combination of steamboat and horse-drawn wagons, as I already have good source info on steamboats of this era. and personal experience with horses. The train would be fueled with cured hardwood (eastern US type - oak, ash, hickory etc), not coal.

What was the typcial train’'s unrefueled range?

Was water or fuel (or lube for that matter) the primary limit on the train’s range; how far could a locomotive pull a train without stopping?

How long did it take to refill the tender with water & fuel in a frontier-style depot with a water tower? I.e. how much time would passengers have to get into trouble in town while the locomotive was being serviced? (If someone knows how many chords of firewood the typcial tenders held, I could figure this out on my own, as I know how long it takes 2-3 men to stack a chord of firewood).

What was average speed on flat & level?

What was average speed at grade?

Did trains of this era typically change crews and travel through the night, or were passengers dumped off in town to find lodging? I can see where maintenance requirements might have made it impractical to swap crews and continue overnight.

Now that I’m thinking about it, what were the daily/weekly maintenance requirements in terms of the number of hours the locomotive is out-of-service?

Am I correct that it was not yet customary to serve meals?

If anyone knows of a good authoritative book that addresses questions like these and really tells the story of this is why the timetables were the way they were, and how many hours a day a loc

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In the 1850’s the frontier - at least as far as trains - would be the Mississippi River. The transcontinental railroads hadn’t started yet. Most railroads were fairly short, a trip of several hundred miles might involve switching trains several times from one railroad (and perhaps one gauge) to another. Being able to get on a train in New York and arriving in Chicago the next day was still many decades in the future.

Lubrication was the biggest factor on how far a train could go back then. Automatic McCoy lubricators that came along later in the 19th c. allowed engines to go much farther without needing to stop for “oiling around”. Most engines burned wood at that time, so would need to be replenished fairly often too…although engines use a lot of water and would generally need to stop for water more often than fuel.

Meals were served at stops along the line, often only allowing 15-20 min. to eat with very low grade food.

By the start of the Civil War train travel at night would have been pretty common, hard to think of a pic of an engine from that time without a big oil burning headlight up front. Sleeping cars were just beginning to be created, generally there wasn’t any sleeping accomodations except maybe a few cars with hard wood “bunks” to sleep in.

Engines crews could be swapped out, but in a pinch they could continue in service for a couple of days straight without a break…part of the reason accidents were so common, falling asleep in the cab wasn’t unusual.

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Thanks.

Travellers needing to change railroads raises an interesting question. Suppose our travellers are travelling with freight; e.g. horses or cattle, good whisky, perhaps manufactured goods that are expensive to buy at the frontier destination. Was it common yet for railroads to share rolling stock (obviously possible only if they’re of the same guage)? If a town was served by two (or more) RR’s, did they site the tracks so as to minimize the cost of transfering freight from one line to the next? E.g. would it be reasonable to assume the two “end of the lines” might be parallel for a 100yds or so with a platform in between to facilitate cargo transfer (probably a warehouse where goods can wait), or would travellers need to hire wranglers or teamsters to move freight, livestock across town?

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By 1850, most trains were already sparated into freight and passenger catagories. So traveling with the cargo would be possible only for some types of cargo. Going to the frontier with several barrels of wisky would be possible with the wisky or shovels or pick axes or even numbers of bags of grain or seeds going as baggage. But loads of lumber, probably not. Some through operation of freight cars, and even in a few cases passenger equpment, had already arrived. In other places there were union stations, but also in some places one would have to hire a horse and buggy for passenger transfer and a wagon and horse for freight. Overall train speed including stops usually varied between 15 and 20 mph. Also, time had not yet been standardized, and different railroads in the same town may have had different time. Various publishers did publish guides to rail transportation, often these were focused on a particular town or city, giving the station locations, and departure times for different destinations. So for many, travel was an adventure, going to the next end-of-line town or city in the right direction and then finding out how to continue the journey!

The average freight car could be loaded to about ten tons, and frieght trains were about twenty cars maximum length. The typical passenger car seated about 40 people, and typical passenger trains had a baggage car or baggage and mail car, and two, three, or four coaches. Meals were at stops, and on some lines so were the only restroom facilities. Sleeping cars of any type were just being introduced and probably handled less than 1% of total rail passenger traffic at the time.

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One phenomenon from that time was the so-called, “Gypsy car.” A family moving from one town to another would contract with the railroad for a house (box) car, load it with all their worldly goods and ride in it. Such cars were handled as ordinary freight shipments, which must have been a bear for the people on board.

One problem with non-standard time was that you might arrive in town aboard AB&C RR’s train on time, at 9:30 AM, only to discover that the XY&Z RR connection had departed on time - at 10:00 AM. Each railroad ran to its own time, usually sundial time at its headquarters. Union stations used by several railroads would have several clocks, one per railroad, displaying times that differed by anything from a few minutes to over an hour.

To find out what route fictional characters would have to take between departure from Alpha and arrival at Omega, you need to know:

  • Which railroads connected more or less end to end.
  • What kind of run-through arrangements there might have been, for passengers and freight.
  • If there were stretches where no rails had been laid.

Of course, you can always erect the following firewall on the flyleaf:

This is a work of fiction. No claim is made for absolute historical accuracy.

Slightly [#offtopic] Lack of that statement got C. S. Forrester in trouble with an eminent historian who wanted to know where Forester had found evidence for the use of Royal Navy bomb ketches in Russian waters during the Napoleonic Wars. Forester had placed two under Admiral Hornblower’s command… (Now you know why I write science fiction, not historical fiction.)

Chuck

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Chuck, please re-read Comodore Hornblower, wherein Captain (his actual rank at the time) Hornblower, using literary license, successfully used bomb ketches to stall the French army’s attack on the Russian town. Horatio Hornblower reached flag rank after Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena–and saved some of Napoleon’s veterans from capture by the British by pledging his honor that Napoleon had died, not knowing that Napoleon had died (Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies).

Back to the subject. Back in the fifties, I obtained from Kalmbach a nice little reprint of the 1851 American Railway Guide, and Pocket Companion,For the United States; containing CORRECT TABLES, for Time of Starting from All Stations, Distances, Fares, etc, on all the Railway Lines in the United States; If Kalmbach still has one of this in some dark corner, and is willing to part with it, it can be a source of information on rail and some water travel in the East, Midwest, and South at that time. It shows that various roads were still under construction, and most of these were extended to their intended destinations within the decade.

Your warning about accuracy reminds me of reading a, as of then not yet printed, book, which had the heroine traveling from Washington, D. C., to Santa Fe in 1875. Along the way, the train stopped in Cairo, Illinois, for lunch. I expostulated, gently, with the author, telling him that Cairo was well out of the way for his heroine–unless she was taking an extremely round-about way. He also had her going through Kit Carson, Col., (which was on the Kansas Pacific and not the Santa Fé). There is more, but I will not weary my readers with such detail.

Oh, yes, DaveH13, welcome to the forums (If we still had a “Welcome” emoticon, I would put it in, but the recent reworking of the site dropped it). I hope that what Chuck and I have written will not discourage you or turn you off. It is true that many people who would read your wor