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Articulated Locomotives
An articulated locomotive is a steam locomotive (rarely, an electric locomotive) with one or more engine units that can move independent of the main frame. Articulation allows the operation of locomotives that would otherwise be too large to negotiate a railroad's curves, whether mainlines or special lines with extreme curvature such as logging, industrial, or mountain railways. Articulated locomotives saw service in many nations, but were very popular on narrow-gauge railways in Europe. The largest examples were developed in the United States, where the Union Pacific Big Boy 4-8-8-4s and the Allegheny H-8 2-6-6-6s were some of the largest steam locomotives ever built. Many schemes for articulation were developed over the years. Of these, the Mallet locomotive and its simple-expansion derivative were the most popular, followed by the Garratt type (mostly built in the United Kingdom, popular throughout Europe, Africa and European colonies), and the various geared steam locomo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Locomotive Boiler
A fire-tube boiler is a type of boiler in which hot gases pass from a fire through one or more tubes running through a sealed container of water. The heat of the gases is transferred through the walls of the tubes by thermal conduction, heating the water and ultimately creating steam. The fire-tube boiler developed as the third of the four major historical types of boilers: low-pressure tank or "haystack" boilers, flued boilers with one or two large flues, fire-tube boilers with many small tubes, and high-pressure water-tube boilers. Their advantage over flued boilers with a single large flue is that the many small tubes offer far greater heating surface area for the same overall boiler volume. The general construction is as a tank of water penetrated by tubes that carry the hot flue gases from the fire. The tank is usually cylindrical for the most part—being the strongest practical shape for a pressurized container—and this cylindrical tank may be either horizontal or verti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thermal Efficiency
In thermodynamics, the thermal efficiency (\eta_) is a dimensionless performance measure of a device that uses thermal energy, such as an internal combustion engine, steam turbine, steam engine, boiler, furnace, refrigerator, ACs etc. For a heat engine, thermal efficiency is the ratio of the net work output to the heat input; in the case of a heat pump, thermal efficiency (known as the ''coefficient of performance'') is the ratio of net heat output (for heating), or the net heat removed (for cooling) to the energy input (external work). The efficiency of a heat engine is fractional as the output is always less than the input while the COP of a heat pump is more than 1. These values are further restricted by the Carnot theorem. Overview In general, energy conversion efficiency is the ratio between the useful output of a device and the input, in energy terms. For thermal efficiency, the input, Q_, to the device is heat, or the heat-content of a fuel that is consumed. The des ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anatole Mallet
Jules Theodore Anatole Mallet (23 May 1837 – 10 October 1919) was a Swiss mechanical engineer, who was the inventor of the first successful compound system for a railway steam locomotive, patented in 1874. He is known for having invented three important forms of compound locomotive. In 1876 he introduced a series of small two-cylinder compound 0-4-2T tank locomotives for the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz Railway in France. He subsequently designed an articulated compound system with a rigid chassis at the rear carrying two high-pressure cylinders, and two low-pressure ones mounted on a swivelling front truck. This was patented in 1884 with full rights granted in 1885. This was first used for a series of narrow gauge locomotives specially built by the Decauville Company in 1888 for the Paris Exposition of 1889. This arrangement became known as the Mallet locomotive. The final developments of these in the USA were some of the largest steam locomotives ever built. A third compound lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Compound Locomotive
A compound locomotive is a steam locomotive which is powered by a compound engine, a type of steam engine where steam is expanded in two or more stages. The locomotive was only one application of compounding. Two and three stages were used in ships, for example. Compounding became popular for railway locomotives from the early 1880s and by the 1890s were becoming common. Large numbers were constructed, mostly two- and four-cylinder compounds, in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and the United States. It declined in popularity due to maintenance issues and because superheating provided similar efficiencies at lower cost. Nonetheless, compound Mallets were built by the Norfolk and Western Railway right up to 1952. Introduction In the usual arrangement for a compound engine the steam is first expanded in one or two high-pressure ''(HP)'' cylinders, then having given up some heat and lost some pressure, it exhausts into a larger-volume low-pressure ''(LP)'' cylinder, (or two, - or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norfolk & Western
The Norfolk and Western Railway , commonly called the N&W, was a US class I railroad, formed by more than 200 railroad mergers between 1838 and 1982. It was headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, for most of its existence. Its motto was "Precision Transportation"; it had a variety of nicknames, including "King Coal" and "British Railway of America". In 1986, N&W merged with Southern Railway to form today’s Norfolk Southern Railway. The N&W was famous for manufacturing its own steam locomotives, which were built at the Roanoke Shops, as well as its own hopper cars. After 1960, N&W was the last major Class I railroad using steam locomotives; the last remaining Y class 2-8-8-2s would eventually be retired between 1964 and 1965. In December 1959, the N&W merged with the Virginian Railway (reporting mark VGN), a longtime rival in the Pocahontas coal region. By 1970, other mergers with the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, Nickel Plate Road and Wabash Railroad, Wabash formed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southern Pacific Transportation Company
The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the names Southern Pacific Railroad, Southern Pacific Company and Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The original Southern Pacific began in 1865 as a land holding company. The last incarnation of the Southern Pacific, the Southern Pacific Transportation Company, was founded in 1969 and assumed control of the Southern Pacific system. The Southern Pacific Transportation Company was acquired in 1996 by the Union Pacific Corporation and merged with their Union Pacific Railroad. The Southern Pacific legacy founded hospitals in San Francisco, Tucson, and Houston. In the 1970s, it also founded a telecommunications network with a state-of-the-art microwave and fiber optic backbone. This telecommunications network became part of Sprint, a compa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
B&O EM-1
A 2-8-8-4 steam locomotive, under the Whyte notation, has two leading wheels, two sets of eight driving wheels, and a four-wheel trailing truck. The type was generally named the ''Yellowstone'', a name given it by the first owner, the Northern Pacific Railway, whose lines ran near Yellowstone National Park. Seventy-two Yellowstone-type locomotives were built for four U.S. railroads. Other equivalent classifications are: *UIC classification: 1DD2 (also known as German classification and Italian classification) *French classification: 140+042 *Turkish classification: 45+46 *Swiss classification: 4/5+4/6 *Russian classification: 1-4-0+0-4-2 The equivalent UIC classification is, refined for Mallet locomotives, (1′D)D2′. A locomotive of this length must be an articulated locomotive. All Yellowstones had fairly small drivers of . (For greater speeds, the Union Pacific Railroad chose a four-wheel leading truck and drivers of for its Big Boy 4-8-8-4 class.) Several classes of Y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chesapeake And Ohio Class H-8
The Chesapeake and Ohio H-8 was a class of 60 2-6-6-6 steam locomotives built by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio between 1941 and 1948, operating until the mid 1950s. The locomotives were among the most powerful steam locomotives ever built and hauled fast, heavy freight trains for the railroad. Only two were preserved; Nos. 1601 and 1604. History In 1939, the C&O was in the market for new locomotive power for its coal traffic. The railroad already had 40 Lima-built 2-10-4 T-1s from 1930 which ran across the largely level trackage in Ohio, while 45 2-8-8-2 H-7s dating back to 1924-1926 plodded away in mountainous territories of West Virginia and Virginia. Seemingly poised to order more Superpower T-1s, Norfolk & Western's success with their home-built Class A 2-6-6-4 prompted the C&O and Lima to consider a more modern articulated design. Design engineers at Lima argued that expanding the 4-wheeled trailing truck design to a 6-wheel design would permit an even larger fire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Union Pacific Challenger
The Union Pacific Challengers are a type of simple articulated 4-6-6-4 steam locomotive built by American Locomotive Company (ALCO) from 1936 to 1944 and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad until the late 1950s. A total of 105 Challengers were built in five classes. They were nearly long and weighed 537 short tons (487 tonnes). They operated over most of the Union Pacific system, primarily in freight service, but a few were assigned to the ''Portland Rose'' and other passenger trains. Their design and operating experience shaped the design of the Big Boy locomotive type, which in turn shaped the design of the last three orders of Challengers. Two Union Pacific Challengers survive. The most notable is Union Pacific No. 3985, which was restored by the Union Pacific in 1981, then operated in excursion service as part of its heritage fleet program. Mechanical problems forced it out of service in October 2010; it was retired in January 2020 after the restoration of the 4-8-8 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simple Expansion Steam Engine
A compound engine is an engine that has more than one stage for recovering energy from the same working fluid, with the exhaust from the first stage passing through the second stage, and in some cases then on to another subsequent stage or even stages. Originally invented as a means of making steam engines more efficient, the compounding of engines by use of several stages has also been used on internal combustion engines and continues to have niche markets there. The stages of a compound engine may be either of differing or of similar technologies, for example: * In a turbo-compound engine, the exhaust gas from the cylinders passes through a turbine, the two stages being dissimilar. * In a compound steam locomotive, the steam passes from the high-pressure cylinder or cylinders to the low-pressure cylinder or cylinders, the two stages being similar. * In a triple-expansion steam engine, the steam passes through three successive cylinders of increasing size and decreasing pressu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Firebox (steam Engine)
In a steam engine, the firebox is the area where the fuel is burned, producing heat to boil the water in the boiler. Most are somewhat box-shaped, hence the name. The hot gases generated in the firebox are pulled through a rack of tubes running through the boiler. Steam locomotive fire tube firebox In the standard steam locomotive fire-tube boiler, the firebox is surrounded by water space on five sides. The bottom of the firebox is open to atmospheric pressure, but covered by fire grates (solid fuel) or a firing pan (liquid fuel). If the engine burns solid fuel, like wood or coal, there is a grate covering most of the bottom of the firebox to hold the fire. An ashpan, mounted underneath the firebox and below the grates, catches and collects hot embers, ashes, and other solid combustion waste as it falls through the grates. In a coal-burning locomotive, the grates may be shaken to clean dead ash from the bottom of the fire. They are shaken either manually or (in larger locomotiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
