"The 6-2-0 was a most unusual wheel arrangement, where the bulk of the locomotive’s weight was on the unpowered leading wheels rather than the powered driving wheels, therefore giving poor adhesion. The type was only practicable on the Crampton locomotive with a low boiler and large driving wheels placed behind the firebox.
On a trip to England, Robert L. Stevens, president of the
Aeronautical engineers had (still have?) a saying, “If it looks good it’ll fly good,” and it’s usually proved to be the case. We could probably apply the same saying to locomotives. The Crampton type looked downright weird, no wonder it didn’t work out.
As far as coal for a locomotive fuel the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad tried anthracite coal in the 1840’s, however it only worked well in locomotives with a vertical boiler, which were an evolutionary dead end. Bituminous coal’s time would come later.
When your locomotive looks more like a side-wheeler riverboat, probably it ain’t cut out for railroad work.
You’ve got this all croggled up.
The story you’re telling is about Lightning, which is most certainly not a 6-2-0 regardless of what certain wack British sources may try to tell you. This is a remarkable design, noted as easily sustaining 60mph in at least one source I’ve read. Here she is:
The 6-2-0 of course is the infamous Monster, over a decade earlier, complete with enormous drivers with paneling between the spokes to keep from paddling ballast everywhere at colossal speed. I am still in awe of a man who could progress in half a decade from assembling the John Bull to conceiving of… let alone getting constructed… something like this:
Of course most of the caption (from 1911) is ridiculously mistaken.
While we’re here, some of the early
Looking at that last locomotive, tell me that I am not having a visual hallucination?
It’s the 96 inch drivers. I once read that they had a hard time starting a train but that “nothing could catch them” once they got going. And, look at the bright side, they had outside valve gear (Stephenson, I guess) back in the 184o’s
I’m impressed by that stack. It’s almost as big as the boiler.
You can’t see the stack. That is the spark-arresting system. As with other contemporary systems there is a sheet-metal funnel around the ‘normal’ stack, and sparks in the exhaust are knocked down to gather there. The two ‘bolts on Frankenstein’s monster’s neck’ are cleanout ports for accumulated stuff.
Interesting how big it needs to be to catch all the unburned stuff. Gives you an idea of how much fuel it burns vs. what it doesn’t!
OK, the spark-arresting system is almost as big as the boiler.
Well, that was the problem with wood as a fuel. While wood burns relatively clean (there’s no cinders to dispose of like there is with coal) there’s a LOT of sparks that can find their way up the stack and into the surrounding countryside, especially with a hard-working locomotive.
Setting farmer’s chicken coops on fire was no way to make friends!
According to E. P. Alexander, in his “Iron Horses, American Locomotives 1829-1900”:
“According to the order entered in the Norris books,…gauge, 4 feet 9 7/8 inches;…boiler…to burn anthracite;…”
I threw in the gauge note as also being interesting.
Ed
The gauge is interesting, but of course this was the “Pioneer Age” of American railroading, all sorts of different gauges were tried, usually on the whim of the railroad companies.
And they may have intended to burn anthracite coal, but as I said in an earlier post it just didn’t work in the horizontal boilered locomotives of the time.
I’m sure they DID burn anthracite in this locomotive, as it was in the specifications. Whether they changed to wood, and when that move was made (and why) would make interesting reading.
Perhaps the photo illustrates the locomotive in its wood burning phase. Perhaps in its anthracite burning phase. I do agree that the stack looks “woody”. And a lot like an add-on.
Ed
I’m sure they tried as well. As I said, this was American railroading in its pioneer stage, they tried lots of things that didn’t work out.
But hey, if you don’t try, you don’t do.
Disagree with this in several places. First of all there were very many unsightly locomotives which did their required tasks very well and “weird” or “ugly” is very subjective. There are many Europeans who says American steam locomotives are hideous while everyone except a minority hold disdain for Belgian and Central European aesthetics (I like both mentioned above personally). Locomotives come to look as they do for their needs (most of the time at least). The plumbing “under the kitchen sink” appearance of continental locomotives had a purpose along with square chimneys and outside frames (the engineering qualities of these features are all a discussion on their own).
Its also very Americacentric (even Anglocentric) to say the Cramptons didn’t work out. They were mainstays on the continent to the extent that many were still at work until the 20th century and were as good as it got for mid nineteenth century solutions for fast running with moderately weighted trains apart from using Brunel gauge. The C&A 6-2-0 design was a notably poorly conceived road of the Crampton layout and sadly that’s about as far as it’s legacy went in the US. The track conditions of Great Britain and the US weren’t as suited for it as the continent was.