The record-union., 1895-07-22
new JUMBO LOCOMOTIVE.
Electrical Motor More Powerful Than
Any Ever Built.
Ran Off With Two Steam Locomotives
-Glides Along Swiftly and
Smoothly.

remarkable locomotive has been built
for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
Company, and will be employed in haul
ing trains-a hundred or more of them a
day-through the great tunnel that COM
pany has just completed underneath the
city of Baltimore. There are mum ber
of electric locomotives now in existence
and there are many huge locomotives
propelled by steam. This is not merely
the greatest electric motor ever built, but
it is one of the most powerful locomotives
in the world.
This giant weighs ninety-siX tons and
stands fourteen feet high. The drawing
power of a locomotive depends upon its
weight. Yet it is very compactly built,
so compactly that there is no road III The
East with track and bridges strong
enough TO bear it up. There are mogul
engines that weigh as much or more than
this engine. but their weight is spread
out, thrown along the rails, so that the
strain is not concentrated to small area.
This engine stands on two trucks and
eight driving wheels. Its length over all
is thirty five feet.
So when it was completed and tested in
the shops of its builders, the General
Electric Company, at Schenectady, n. Y,
before it could be taken TO Baltimore it
had to be taken apart and shipped in Sec
tions. No railroad would permit it to be
hauled entire over its line.
This engine has drawbar pull of A.
600 pounds and starting draw bar pull
of $1,000 pounds. These figures mean
good deal to an engineer, but perhaps not
much to the readers of the World. Stated
in another way, they mean that if you
stand in the engineers cab and give a
twist to one Of the wheels that control
the electric current you develop a power
sufficient to exert pull of thirty tons.
And the wonderful thing about it all is
that If you know o little about wheels
you can do this just as well as al old
engineer. 1t only takes an intelligent
man about three minutes to learn how TO
run trolley motor, and this engine is al
most as simple as a trolley.
You twist wheel, the current is turned
on and the giant moves off as easily and
smoothly as horse in front of light
side bar. 1t takes a heavy passenger
or freight train Off with it just as easily,
and with no more strain. 1t is very even
tempered. 1t does not puff and jolt and
bump as does steam locomotive. The
man who built II says he can push it up
against an orange placed against the
bumpers and hold the orange there with
tive and striking way OF saying that it is
SO finely adjusted, its mechanism so true,
that despite its enormous strength this
giant can be as gentle as child.
This monster locomotive represents
just now the acme of electrical progress in
the way of lOcomotion. 1t is just seven
years now since the electric motor was
first employed to pull public car. This
engine will pull the heaviest freight train
that the coupling links will hold together.
1t is built to pull passenger trains at
speed of thirty-hye miles per hour. This
is as fast as railway trains are usually
run in tunnel, at least OF great length.
But nobody knows just how fast it could
run if all the electricity it can handle
were turned on.
The other day at Nantasket an electric
locomotive ran at the rate of eighty miles
an hour, on bad track at that. II this
engine had clear stretch it could prob
ably run hundred miles an hour as
easily as steam locomotive runs fifty
miles an hour.
In steam locomotive it takes con-
siderable time to get a start. This cleo
trical Cyclops starts Off as if some invisi-
bic power had taken hold of it, some
power that disdained resistance and sent
it going as swiftly as a rocket. There
ure no valves or stean-boXes to burst or
blow out if the steam be applied TO
abruptly, and yet there is no jerk or jar.
no putting or pounding. And of course
there is no heat, no smoke, no steam, no
cinders. Maybe seven years from now
a motor will be perfected that does not
have even the whirr and buzz of the cleo
trio armatures.
The powerstO drive this engine is taken
from an overhead trolley that runs in tn o
middle between the two sets of tracks.
This conduit is a heavy steel rail. No
wire would be heavy enough to carry the
enormous voltage required.
Last week, in Baltimore, engineers and
railway men have been amusing them
selves with series of tug-of-war con-
tests between the electrical engine and
steam locomotives. One day TWO of the
biggest yard engines were coupled to-
gether and then they hitched up with the
locomotive Sandow. They put on steam
and went flying down the track, drag
ging Sandow with them. When they had
gained full speed the engineer of the
electrical engine began to twist his wheel,
sending his engine in the opposite dlrec-
ton. AS though a heavy brake had been
applied, the flying two began to slow.
The Steam engineers opened the throttle
wider still. 1t was of no avail. Slowly
this odd hitch-up came TO a stop, and
then slowly it began TO move the other
way. The steam drivers flew round and
round-no use. The electrical newcomer
was dragging both the yard engines back
down the track, despite the fullest head
of steam the latter dared apply. At every
test the smokeless and invisible power
trIumphed.
Success Assured.
Dashaway-Jagway has lust invented