Geared Steam Locomotive Works ©

a Baldwin Cog Geared Steam Locomotive 

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From:

ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUE OF BALDWIN LOCOMOTIVES
BURNHAM, PARRY, WILLIAMS & CO.,
PHILADELPHIA.
--
First Published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1881
This Edition Published by Bishopsgate Press Ltd., London 1983
p. 29

"Forty-two engines were completed in 1846, and thirty-nine in 1847. The only novelty to be noted among them was the engine "M. G. Bright," built for operating the inclined plane on the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad. The rise of this incline was one in seventeen, from the bank of the Ohio River at Madison. The engine had eight wheels, forty-two inches in diameter, connected, and worked in the usual manner by outside inclined cylinders, fifteen and one-half inches diameter by twenty inches stroke. A second pair of cylinders, seventeen inches in diameter with eighteen inches stroke of piston, was placed vertically over the boiler, midway between the furnace and smoke-arch. The connecting-rods worked by these cylinders connected with cranks on a shaft under the boiler. This shaft carried a single cog-wheel at its centre, and this cog-wheel engaged with another of about twice its diameter on a second shaft adjacent to it and in the same plane. The cog-wheel on this latter shaft worked in a rack-rail placed in the centre of the track. The shaft itself had its bearings in the lower ends of two vertical rods, one on each side of the boiler, and these rods were united over the boiler by a horizontal bar which was connected by means of a bent lever and connecting-rod to the piston worked by a small horizontal cylinder placed on top of the boiler. By means of this cylinder, the yoke carrying the shaft and cog-wheel could be depressed and held down so as to engage the cogs with the rack-rail, or raised out of the way when only the ordinary driving-wheels were required. This device was designed by Mr. Andrew Cathcart, Master Mechanic of the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad. A similar machine, the "John Brough," for the same plane, was built by Mr. Baldwin in 1850. The incline was worked with a rack-rail and these engines until it was finally abandoned and a line with easier gradients substituted."

Image & data source:

"Illustrated Catalog of Baldwin Locomotives - Burnham, Parry, Willams & Co., Philiaelphia" - Bishopsgate Press Ltd., London 1983  Provided courtesy of Christian Halpaap of Hohenhameln-Bruendeln, Germany

               

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This page changed September 30, 2013 06:40:42 AM