I was reading about camel locomotives- steam locomotives also refered to as camelbacks or Mother Hubbards(?). They were 0-8-0 steam locos, with the cab on top of the boiler. Ross Winans developed them for the B&O. They were also used on the PRR and Erie, and others.
“Camels were the subject of bitter controversy when the B&O decided to adopt 4-6-0 locomotives. Regarding the decision as a personal affront, Winans published pamphlets defending his locomotives, and the B&O countered with pamphlets attatcking them.”
What pros and cons could they come up with for the 2 designs that would cause such a ruckus?
Everything I have read over the years indicates that Ross Winans had a tremendous ego…and with that ego felt the his way was the only RIGHT WAY. Such thinking, when directed toward potential investors in a company by a highly respected individual, causes the company to present it’s own story.
The bulk of these engines which ranged from 0-4-0 through 2-8-0 were mostly used by the anthracite railroads - Reading, CNJ, L&NE, LV. Reason they were liked is the anthracite mines had a waste product called culm which was the fines nobody wanted. By moving the cab over the center of the boiler the firebox could be widened substantially and use this coal which was cheap to obtain. It is called a Wooten after its designer. This allowed a much slower air passage through the firebox and didn’t tend to blow the fines up the stack. A secondary advantage is anthracite is a very clean burning coal with very little ash. The big disadvantage was safety related. The engineer was almost always killed in the event a rod broke as the only place for it to go was up into the cab. Likewise a boiler explosion was usually deadly. Add to this the fireman stood on an open deck at the back and the engineer was fairly distant minimized the ability to communicate. They were outlawed to the extent that no more could be built but servicable engines could run out their life sometime in the late 1920’s. To the best of my knowledge the PRR did not have any. They did have one inspection engine that had a crew cab running the length of the engine to give a better view. technically I guess that is a amelback. These engines were also called Mother Hubbards.
Wooten was with the Philadelphia and Reading from 1866 on, and his design came later than Winan’s. In the early 1900’s, the Reading introduced a modern class M1 2-8-2 featuring a Wooten firebox with a standard cab behind. I believe most Reading steam followed this practice.
I have read in multiple sources about the danger posed by a rod failure to the engineer in the central cab location.
Had there been accidents of this type? Was the metalurgy such that rod failures happened with such frequency that there was an “honor roll” of locomotive engineers perishing in those accidents? Or was there a single notorious accident giving the design a bad reputation?
Kind of like the matter of boiler explosions. It might be that boiler explosions are actually rare accidents compared to other things that could take the lives of a crew, mainly collisions. But Diesels don’t have boiler explosions and steam locomotives can, and a lot of effort goes into went into crew-vigilance and safety-inspection measures without completely avoiding boiler explosions. So steam locomotives are kind of like Pinto automobiles in that rear-end collisions with gas tank explosions was perhaps a minority of the ways Pinto drivers lost their lives in accidents, but it was deemed unacceptable to keep that design defect and leave that risk “on the table.”
The cab of a steam engine was a dangerous place regardless of location. Many crew members found themselves trapped in the event of a derailment either through skewing of the engine or the tender riding into the cab blocking exit. Not a nice way to go but many were scalded to death by steam either from crownsheet failures upon turning over or burst steam lines. And yes once Wooten fireboxes were used on the Reading they were used on nearly every engine.
May I ask - What book or article are you quoting from ?
What is the time frame for that debate ?
A couple points that I can think of:
The engineer of a Camel would have much better visibility forward and to the left side of the locomotive, than he would from a ‘conventional’ cab-behind a long boiler out front.
The conventional locomotive’s boiler and driving wheels could get much larger - hence more power and speed - if there wasn’t a the need to perch a cab on top and still stay within the upper limits of the clearance diagram.
I suppose that the engineer’s visibility up there might have been adversely impacted by the stack and any dark exhaust immediately ahead swirling around him, esp. in tunnels and under bridges.
The engineer probably did not have as good a view of the wheels and driving rods from up above - as when starting or trying to gage any slippng, etc. - as from the cab-behind conventional locomotive.
As mentioned above, it was easier to get a wider firebox in a Camel, than if there had to be room for 1 or 2 crewmen above or alongside it.
And finally: Early in the 20th century it was widely thought that the Camelback design was obsolescent and functionally extinct, and that no more would ever be built. But then one of the NorthEastern US anthracite coal roads - I can’t recall which one - placed an order for a few of them with one of the locomotive builders. The Interstate Commerce Commission - which regulated all railroad safety matters back in those days - got all in a huff at having been out-maneuvered, and issued a formal ban on the Camelback design to prevent that from happening again and any more from being built. Maybe someone else here can recall or find out which road that was.
i’m no expert on camelbacks but i did ride behind the last one in common-carrier service on its last run, on a central of new jersey fantrip in early 1956 (late 1955?), from hoboken nj to jim thorpe (mauch chunk) pa behind 4-6-0 #774. Birdsboro #4 stayed active until the early 1960’s, but by then i was helping buy logging lokeys for a museum near seattle. big duke
The lack of communication was also an issue in that with a regular steam locomotive the crew is all in the same “room,” where with a camelback they were separated, so it was virtually impossible for the fireman to take over the trottle if that became necessary.
I recall reading about an engineer who found a bridge the hard way while leaning out of the cab window of a camelback.
I believe there is a camelback at the B&O museum.
Most “inspection engines” I’ve seen pictures resembled a passenger car mounted on top of a steam locomotive, as opposed to being a “camelback” as such.
Paul- it was just some generic book, like Encyclopedia of Railroads, or similar title. 'Not something very indepth or, for that mater, very accurate. The statement made me wonder.
I’m not able to visualize why a Camel could get a wider firebox. The crew is standing behind the firebox. Wouldn’t every steamer be able to have as wide a firebox as the loading gauge allow?
Murphy, in your Original Post the quoted staement from that book may not have been entirely correct.
According to Brian Reed in the chapter on “Camels and Camelbacks” in his 1971 book Locomotives in Profile, Vol. I (Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York), Winan’s 1855 Centipede - the 1st 4-8-0 ! - ran on the B&O in 1855-56, "but was not bought by the road and was taken off following an acrimonious difference on other matters between Winans and the B. & O. master mechanic. This difference ended the B. & O. business . . . ", except for early in 1864 when the B&O finally bought it and 5 partially completed 0-8-0’s to replace locomotives lost during the Civil War. (pg. 206, left. col.; emphasis added)
Considering that statement appears in a 24-page article about the technical development and merits of that kind of locomotive, “other matters” were likely non-technical - there is no mention of a pamphlet war. As others have noted above, Reed also says of Winans: “He had an undoubted genius for upsetting people with whom he should have been friendly; and twice during the Civil War he was arrested arbitrarily on grounds of treason, but was released each time without trial.”
Winans and others developed and produced ‘Camels’ from around 1847 to the 1860’s, whose fireboxes were narrow to fit between the wheels, and extended a long ways back, which tended to be ‘tail-heavy’ (my term). These were mainly slow freight engines due to Winan’s preference for certain crude valve gears. The fireboxes were not wider then because of a combination of frame limitations, Winans’ concerns over high centers of gravity, and the relationship between the grate height, slope forward, and the boiler barrel location (which I have a hard time completely understanding). Thus, the dispute with the B&O
Per Reed above, the ICC Order was issued in 1918, but “there were exceptions”, and the CNJ was able to have a few more built through the 1920’s somehow. The CNJ still operated a pretty sizeable fleet of them into the early 1950s. I’m likewise now pretty sure that CNJ was the railroad that surprised the ICC by ordering new Camelbacks during the 19-teens, but can’t yet point to a specific date or class or road numbers, etc.
Paul North.
EDIT: Most likely it was the CNJ’s 10 ‘L8s’ 4-6-0’s, Nos. 780-789, built by Baldwin in 1918. There were also some 0-8-0 switcher-types that year, and other 4-6-0’s a few years previous as
A couple points. the Winans camel had a conventional firebox and was designed to burn bitumounous coal, not anthracite or culm.
Ironically the camelback design was created to lower the cab of the locomotive. Originally Wooten firebox engines had the cab in the rear perched on top of the firebox and so were quite high. When the Philadelphia and Reading demonstated a Wooten firebox engine in Italy, the tunnel clearances were so tight the engine crew moved the cab from the rear to the center position astride the boiler in order to lower the cab where it would clear.
If you look at “modern” camelbacks the cab is no taller than the cab of a conventional engine and on virtually all engines the smokestack is taller than the cab… What forced the cab to the rear was the diameter of the boilers became so large that the cab was getting squeezed for room so the cab was moved to the rear. Since numerous camelbacks had 80" or larger drivers (RDG 4-6-0’s and 4-4-2’s), and the RDG wasn’t know for generous clearances, I don’t think that driver diameter was the limitation.
I believe the controversy between the 0-8-0 and the 4-6-0 would have surrounded the concept of having a pilot truck and benefits of its ability to ‘steer’ vs. not having 100% of the engines weight on drivers, a classic speed vs. power arguement.
The Winans Camel was operated below 10 mph. Only 43 inch drivers. The name cane about because of the steam dome diameter that was almost as large as the boiler diameter. It was a work horse loco most of the time hauling coal. The south took quite a few from the B&O during the American Civil War.
Of the two hundred to three hundred made in the 1850s, only two had a boiler explosion. They came in short furnace, medium furnace and long furnace. The B&O had most of them The PRR itself had I think six and they were converted to 2-6-0s. The hard coal fire box was only between the drivers. Most had a sloping firebox.
Actually quite different to the later camel backs.
Now that I’ve found that Reed says this happened in the 1856 - 1861 time frame, I’m wondering: Would the B&O have been adopting 4-6-0’s that early ?
I thought the standard locomotive design for that time was pretty much the 4-4-0, and that would have been too early for a 4-6-0, so that would not have been the basis for the dispute. Anybody know if my theory that makes sense or not ?
If you cannot find back issues of the mention magazines, search the internet for b&o 4-6-0. Search Google books also. I find a lot of info in Google books plus sources to buy the books.
In the below link, you can find a link about “Camel Fights”. [:)]
I know the B&O had it own in house designers and they wanted 4-6-0 passenger engines. Hayes built some 4-6-0s that looked like the Camel. One still exist at the B&O Museum in Baltimore.
Paul, I can’t speak to B&O’s adoption of the 4-6-0 type, but a quick survey of my library revealed that Norris delivered the first one in 1847 for the Philadelphia & Reading Railway. My copy of Alexander’s Iron Horses - American Locomotives 1829-1900 claims that the Pennsylvania ordered 20 of the same type from Norris. So it is certainly in the possible, even likely that many railroads were using ten-wheelers by the late 50’s to early 60’s (1800’s that is). Perhaps someone can shed light on the B&O’s roster of the time.
