Volume 9 , Issue 24

July, 1907 - New Engine for 1908

The Alva Pioneer, Alva, O.T., Woods County, dated Friday, July 26, 1907 - The headlines read: New Engine for 1908 - No Fire, No Steam, No Coal, No Tender - It Will Speed From New York to Pacific Coast Without a Stop

A locomotive without water, fire or smoke, unnencumbered by the five trips coal and 7,000 gallons of water usually carried by the steam engine drawing no tender, but provided instead with an engine for generating electricity; speeding from New York to San Francisco without stop or delay, at the average rate of 100 miles an hour, is a dream of modern traction. It is now being constructed for the Southern Pacific railroad and is soon to be put to the practical test of a long trial run.

It is generally believed by railroad managers that the limit has been reached in steam locomotive construction. One exiom in this line has been a "pound of weight to carry a pound of weight." Locomotives have gained 100,000 pounds in wieght in the last five years, and tender capacity has been increased accordingly. Of the fuel used by the steam locomotives, 96 per cent of the energy produced passes up the snokestack, 4 percent goes to the boilers, and 2-1/2 per cent only to the drive wheels.

A prominent mechanical engineer in discussing steam locomotives today said: "Driving wheels can be made just so large and no larger. Connecting rods can be made just so large and no larger. If the driving wheels are giant affairs it means a tremendous weight to the machine that must come on the tracks in a comparatively short space."

"There is one way to spread the weight and that is to have longer connecting rods. But here a difficulty is encountered. Tractive power necessary for high speed or great draught cannot be obtained if the rods are much over 12-1/2 feet. This fact has put steam locomotive builders between the devil of big wheels and the deep sea of the short connecting rod. If the steam locomotive could be made compact, greater power could be obtained, but, on the other hand, the weight would be so concentrated that there is not a curve in the roadbed or a bridge on the line that coulde stand the strain."
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