Oh, my. Haven’t heard that song in a long time. [:D]
Ya, afraid I don’t get the connection?
Shirley,
You’re not that dense! [;)]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJag19WoAe0
And don’t call me Shirley.
Hello -
(yes, I’m back again - please
welcome *) back my friends
to the show that never ends
*me)
gee …
Uhm, that said, my comment on that question should be:
If you already go so far as to totally Americanize that French
name of Mallet (spoken Maijét) into ‘Malley’
(sounds much better for a whiskey, doesn’t it?)
then you have sort of dispensed with your care about the mode
of expansion. Further, although the two items according to
Monsieur Mallet were supposed to go together
(some old European inventors could be quite stuborn heads
once they had come to look at certain matter from their own
branch in a tree - one of the last such patrons probably was
Wankel, who was so obsessed with getting rid of the reciprocating
action of pistons in engines that he remained blind towards the
impracticability of a stretched out sickle shaped combustion chamber
as concerns todays all-important fuel efficiency. Likewise, when the
Wankel engine had been brought to become sturdy and longer
lasting by the Japanese who had become equally devoted to the
principle, then again there could have been a discussion if those
Far East series engines should still be called Wankels - there had
been a couple of further inventions and improvements made by
the engineers of Mazda that were essential to make that type of
rotary piston engine run and last. As far as I know that sort of
discussion never broke out, instead Wankel lovers happily drove
their Mazda sports cars and listened to the turbine-like humming
of the engine at high rotational speeds.
In a similar fully practical sense US railroads when they found the one
pr
When I was a seven-year-old steam freak I got a box of railroad “flash cards” for Christmas. Boy was that fun! It was there I first saw the word “Mallet” applied to a steam engine.
“Mallet? Mallet?” I wondered. “What does it do, hammer the rails?”
Hey, I was seven. What did I know?
You probably knew more than you imagined, as any M/W foreman will attest.
I think I have described how I worked this out circa age 5. I had seen pictures of Rio Grande articulated locomotives, probably L-131s, in Trains described as “Mallets” and reasoned this was because of the ‘hammer’ at the upper boiler front (I did not know what an Elesco feedwater heater was at that age). My mother had a bicycle equipped with an English headlight, which had a reflector and visor that looked like those on a steam locomotive, with cylindrical D battery holders extending to either side, and I imagined that that looked like a “Mallet” engine as she rode it.
I should probably go back through the Complete Collection and find the original reference… just out of nostalgia.
My goodness, Rebecca!
that whould be down my alley, too …
Yet I doubt any Mallet was ever built from / or was fired by Malley’s …
Juniatha
Hi Flintlock
…and it did hammer the rails - didn’t it?
=J=
Oh probably, if the engineer got a little too agressive on the throttle!
You know, another card I remember from that boxed set had a picture of the NYC’s 999 on one side and the story on the back. Seven year old steam-freak me was thrilled at the last sentence:
“No diesel has ever matched 999’s speed of 112.5 miles an hour.”
“YEAH!” I said! Mind you, this was 1960. Things have changed since then, and not all for the better. At least Malley’s Candies are still around.
I should order some on line…
While NYC&HR 999 is alleged to have attained 112.5 MPH, it took two major rebuildings (reboilering and smaller drivers) to turn it into a reasonably practical locomotive.
For running milk trains on the railroad; 4-4-0s of any kind rapidly became unlikely power on any first-line NYC trains starting only a couple of years after 1893.
In any case, 999 herself was not designed to be a ‘practical’ locomotive for regular traffic, and management at the time actively disparaged the idea of particularly high-speed trains for any practical service (see Vanderbilt’s infamous quote in context).
There were some interesting practical design details of 999’s boiler that I don’t think are popularly recognized. Again, I think this represents an interesting target for an ‘achievable’ replica effort … but one with extremely limited practical excursion use, so don’t expect it to happen without angel investment…
To add to what the Mod-man said, 999 was built as a “showboat” and attention getter, and it did that in spades! Certainly it was no more practical than a Formula One racecar would be for a family car, but it sure made everyone sit up and take notice of the New York Central!
And how many other steam engines have made their way on to a US postage stamp?
NYC & HR predecessor Hudon River RR had some pretty high-wheeled engines in the 1850s, with cast iron centers. Even before 999 they seemed to have a need for speed, pushing then-practical limits at 50 MPH.
A 4-4-0 with huge 84" drivers was quite capable of hauling a string of 5 or 6 short all-wood passenger cars at speed. It was as cars began to get longer and heavier - and as cars switched from individual car stoves to steam from the engine - that they proved inadequate.
Keep in mind too one important limit on train length is the ability to stop the train. Before airbrakes, trains had to be short in order to be stopped with just the engine and (on freight trains anyway) the car’s handbrakes. Airbrakes brought longer trains, requiring engines better designed to pull them.
Hi Flintlock
I wouldn’t say a Formula 1 car was too unpractical to go shopping at Walmart for instance …
… only, you’d need a trailer to put your shopping in. And a trailer hand-made 1-piece by Mercedes or Ferrrari as well would cost - let’s see - uhm - by ten and … wrzloutsh … uhm - well, more than … too expensive!
No, just for the extravagant - not to mention grounding on the exit of the basement car park right up at the sidewalk where everybody would be glad to lend a hand …
=J=
Quoting Overmod. "There were some interesting practical design details of 999’s boiler that I don’t think are popularly recognized. "
Well, I was only born in 1976 -
if you don’t say, how should I know?
So what was it?
=J=
*About 12% greater direct surface, via a ‘water table’ or ‘water arch’ that likely assisted circulation. The arrangement is described in Railway Engineer (v14 n7 pp207ff, Jul 1893) and there is some discussion of the general layout of Buchanan’s approach in this immediate period in the second edition of Forney’s ‘Catechism of the Locomotive’ 576-579.
This used a ‘water arch’ rising from fairly low at the rear tubesheet to high in the backhead, largely dividing the ‘radiant section’ into two volumes; there was a comparatively small opening (Forney calls it a circular one, about 18", 2/3 of the way back)
I have not been able to verify whether the steam jets that produced “a flow intended to entrain the gases” actually worked to improve combustion-gas flow. They are not the same thing as jets to assist the effect of draft in the front end with the engine running at high demand. (See Engineering News v25 n14, Apr 4 1891)
Photo of what I believe is a genuine Mallet, B&O 2-6-6-2, photo June 1949, near Connolsvile, PA, photo from the-right-front window of a West Penn iinteruban car:
