Arizona republican., 1902-04-02
KING OF ALL ENGINES.
No. 9S9, the New Mountain Climber on
 the Santa Fe Railway.

I the Santa Fe Railway.
 | The worlds biggest and most pow erful locomotive-an American com nound-passed through Kansas City recently on its way from the Mohawk valley to the far west. Ii is now in | service on one of the mountain divis- | ions of the Atchison, Topeka and santa | Fe railway. During the last thirty years each successive type of engine has been slightly larger and more DOW l erful than it's predecessor. In this way | the growth has been so gradual as to | escape notice. But there is nothing gradual about this new engine. The | present type of locomotive. when com pared to this mighty engine. looks like a midget. It can haul a train one and one-half miles long, and can transport | with ease the harvest of 10000 acres Of | wheat. Three men standing enc above | the other would equal the height of the | monster. as 1t is sixteen feet from the ground to the top of it's stunted smoke- stack. It's fireboX is as big as the aver- ae ee bedchanber in q Kansas City flat. | The boiler tubes. all two and a half | inches in diameter, if taken out and placed end to end. would make q pipe a Inila and half long. It weighs 13O | tons. exclusive of the tender. and is the 1 largest locomotive in the world.
 | As a bold venture in massiveEess. the rev engines service tests in the trans Missouri territory will attract the at tcntion Of the railway architects of the world. American locomotive builders were said to be insane when they passed the hundred-ton mark, but here is a monster weighing without tn, ffty-ton tender. 130 tons-twenty-o one times as much as the historic Dewitt Clinton. the engine that pulled the first passenger train in New York state. But while the dome is thirteen feet above the driving wheel axles. the cen ter of gravity is very low-scverai inches below the top or the drive wheels. The engine gets it's great sta bility from it's massive frames, cylin- der castings. driving wheels and driv- ing. mechanism. The ten massive drive wheels. each nearly as tall as q man and heavily counterbalanced that they appear almost solid, grip twenty feet of track.
 On these ten drivers, which gave the name of decapoG to this type of engine, a weight of 232 GOO pounds is carried.
 
 tons, much of the weight of the saddle and cylinder being distributed over the drivers by the equalizer beams. q dis tinctly American design. To make use of this unprecedented driving weight o1 115 tons, the engine must produce steam as no other engine ever has. Fol lowing the general practice in the southwest the engine will burn oil. The most remarkable feature is the un- precedented heating surface. The hear- ing surface of this new freighter meas ures nearly double that of the English :. record breaker. or exactly 4.6S2 square feet. The fireboX is made of carbon steel tested to a tensile strength Of CO., eco pounds. The grate area is sixty square feet. The cylinders are placed in new and unique fashion. Follow ing the design of powerful stationary engines. the cylinders are placed in series instead Of parallel. The massive low pressure cylinders are next to the forward drivers. The smaller high pressure cylinders are directly ahead q construction which makes one pistoi. rod for each pair of cylinders. This Is designated as the tandem compounC. The live steam is first used in the for ward cylinders, which exhaust into the 30-inch chambers of the low-pressurc cylinders. The cylinders of this engine are the greatest ever made in tha Schnectady, N. Y. shops. Their gross weight in the molds was 25,3 $40 pounds. The Dewitt Clinton. tender and all. did not weigh as much as one of these castings.
 Before the advent of No. 9S9. which is the name of the monster, the most remarkable engine was the consolida- tion ore-hauler built at Pittsburg for Andrew Carnegie. This engine is in service on heavy grades. It weighs 30,000 pounds less than the new Santa Fe engine, and its heating surface is 1900 feet less. James J. Hills twelve wheel mountain locomotives weigh 2fS,- eco pounds. When the 115-ton engine | was built for MT. Carnegie the English builders said that Americans were af- fiicted with monomania for bigness and that the monstrous engine was an absurdity. Now the 115-ton engine has been succeeded by 13O-ton engine, and the end is not yet. This new engine made record haul over Cajon pass tha other day. It pulled 7O3 tons up a grade of 15S feet to the mile and six and one-half miles long.-Kansas City Star
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