Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1902-02-22
THE LOCOMOTIVE.
Story Of Its Life, Work, Decline
and Death.
Its Voracious Appetite and Its
Many Requirements.
Why Some Roads Have Cowcatchers
on Rear of Trains.

The S. P. c. A. cares not a fig for
him, and says never a word in his
behalf as to over checking or UNDER
blanketing; the law is perfectly indif-
ferent as to whether he is driven
lame, or rendered unhappy in fly
season by short bobbed tail; and
we who ride behind him only look i'm
patiently at our watches and unsym-
pathetically wish he would go faster.
Yet, of all modern beasts of burden,
the snorting tugging locomotive is the
most overladen and the hardest driv-
en- writes Benjamin Brooks in the
Boston Transcript.
In times past he was considerably
allowed to rest and sleep twelve hours
day while his drivers were doing the
same thing. and the grooming and
tinkering up he received during the
interval Of recuperation often pre-
served him to a good old age. But
now, in these hurrying times it is
different. The modern railroad finds
il more economical to own fewer en-
gines and work them, day and night,
till they drop. than to own greater
number and spend less time repairing
them. Accordingly, the unfortunate
locomotive of today, except for occa-
sional catnaps caught between runs.
is always on the go.
When first he comes forth from the
shop where he was made to set gently
down on the rails by the big travel
ing crane. runs back and forth for a
few spins to test the adjustment of
his valves and the alignment of his ma
chinery, and then starts away to
traverse our broad continent, he
seems, with his FURNISHED surfaces,
polished brass and gay paint. almost
too pretty to use at all, let alone to
burn raging fires in and smear with
oil and cover with smoke and cinders.
He weighs, supposing he is designed
for ordinary passenger service, sixty
or eighty tons-a good lift, you see,
for a thousand men, even supposing
they could get hold of him-sustains
nearly 200 pounds pressure on every
square inch of his boiler, goes a mile
a minute if need be. with a moderate
train behind him. eats coal as fast as
il can conveniently be shOvelled into
his firebox-about eighty pounds a
minute when he's very hungry. /. e.,
going at full speed-so that he would
consume his own weight of fuel every
sixteen hundred miles. The water in
his boiler he converts into steam at
the extraordinary rate of almost
gallon a second. The bulk, in water,
of about eleven of those square tin
kerosene oilcans would disappear
every minute; and if you consider how
long the same quantity of water would
take to boil over an ordinary fire, it
will give you some idea of the rate at
which things go on in his system.
Each day that he works he earns a
good $50 for his owners. and each
month travels about 1000 miles. AS
good care is taken of him as is posi-
bic during the short periods he is idle.
AS soon as he comes in he is groomed
all over with wipers to get the oil
and water off his machinery. the worn
joints are frightened up, and each time
he goes out men look him over care
fully to see there's nothing wrong
Nevertheless his is the pace that fl
nally kills, and by the time he has
kept it up for twenty-four or thirty
months. he begins. in spite of con-
tinual care and adjustment. to wear
out of true. to rattle in his joints and
even to limp perceptibly on account of
the irregularity of his drive wheels.
Then, some day. instead of coming
nome 10 the fOununOuSe WneTe, III Il
circle of stalls set close around a great
pit with a turntable in it, he is ac
customed to stand with his fellow
Pegasuses (their formidable, cow
catchered heads together in a cloud Of
convivial soft coal smokey and talk
over the events of the day-instead of
returning there as usual, he is sent
away to the repair shops-the locomo-
time hospital.
But he does not lack company here,
for even the best of locomotives is ex-
pected to spend a tenth or at least a
twelfth of its time on the sick list, and
if there are thousand locomotives on
the road, nearly one hundred of them
will be there to keep him company.
The hospital is usually a very long
building with tracks down the middle
full of engines in various stages Of
ACKNOWLEDGMENT. and machine shops
lively with workmen and machinery
at each side The big travelling crane
overhead picks oar rheumatic friend
tenderly up by steel cable passed
around under his boiler and sets him
down in some particular ward accord
ing to the extent of his malady.
Probably there is nothing very serious
the matter with him on this his first
visit First of all. the pistons-those
circular disks upon which the steam
presses, first one side then the other,
to drive him ahead-have to travel
back and forth in their cylinders so
fast Gotten a thousand feet n minute)
to get him over the ground that they
and their cylinders are all worn in
grooves and scratches which let the
steam leak past.
Here is one of his weak points. you
see. The guides" between which you
may see that metal block-the Gross
head"-sliding back and forward 50 in
dustriously when he is going fast; are
worn hollow also; and each of these
Parts must be removed. bored out to a
perfect circle again, or planned off
smooth and straight and put once more
in place. Every joint and surface, in
short. of his moving parts needs at
tention. His fiy-wheels are in particu-
larly bad shape. From repeated slip
pings on the rails in trying to start
heavy trains, their surfaces will usually
be worn down a quarter of an inch,
and where the engineer has been so