The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1902-01-20

No nation could be prosperous with
out good means of inland Transports
tion. Great Britain, with it's moist
climate, was the first country in mod
crn times to acknowledge that some
thing better than common roads was
necessary to develop the resources OF
the country. The United States, with
its vast extent of territory and pau
city of good roads, needed improved
means of inland communication more
than Great Britain did. Both coun-
tries tried canals and both found them
slow, inefficient and disappointing.
The increase of production of COM
modities faster than the means of NOV
ing them led enterprising men in both
countries to look in the same direction
necessity which led to the invention
of the steam engine We're repeated as
the volume of produce and merchan-
disc to be carried went beyond the
capacity of water carriage and infer
ior roads. The steam engine came,
when great properties were fall
ing into ruin because horse power had
reached its limit of concentrating
power.
To meet the advancing conditions of
transportation enterprising business
men began to look to the steam engine
as source of relief. The need for
Il locomotive engine was much more
urgent in the United States than it
was in any other country. There We're
long stretches between the Western
rivers and the Eastern estuarieS that
needed to be connected by transport
tation facilities, and railroads We're the
only practical means of connecting re-
mote territories on the seaboard.
The high speed, high pressure steam
engine, of which the locomotive is the
most popular representative, is ma
tive OF America When James Watt
was developing the ponderous, SLOW
moving, lcw-preSsure engine, Oliver
Evans, of Delaware, was developing
the high-speed. high pressure engine,
which required less than one tenth the
weight of the Watt engine to develop
Il horse power. BY the time that an
Gincecs began discussing the practica-
bility of using steam engines for in
land transportation, the advanced
thinkers in the United States had
clear ideas of hoW the problem could
be worked out.
The first practical locomotive was
built in 1918 by William Hedley for a
coal mine in the North of England
Before that time, in 1904, oliver
Evans used one of his high pressure
steam engines to propel a scow through
the streets of Philadelphia.
In 1920 George Stephenson achieved
the great triumph of his life by VIM
ming the first prize for his Rocket" on
the Liverpool and Manchester railway.
In the same year, Peter Cooper citi-
zen of Baltimore, built locomotive
after his own ideas and without con-
sulting European models. which proved
rather more efficient than Stephen
sons Rocket" That was for the Bal
timore and Ohio railroad Shortly at
terward, the directors of that railroad
offered prizes for native-built locomo-
tives and several good engines entered
the competition. MI of them We're
practical locomotives, and all of them
We're of original design.
The building of railroads progressed
so rapidly in America after 1880 that
the native workshops We're unable to
meet the demand for motive power,
and many locomotives had to be i'm
ported from Great Britain. The for
e!gn engine did not exercise much in
1ltlence on our native designs. At first
the engines We're wonderfully varied
in character, but they gradually set
tied down into established forms. The
most popular engine was that with Il
four-Wheel truck in front and two
pairs of driving wheels coupled.
The leading truck was an American
invention, and the weight on the drv-
ing wheels was equaliHed by means of
cqualizing levers, another American
invention, which not only distributed
the blows of service evenly on the
truck, but produced Il remarkably
smooth riding engine.
The tendency of late years has been
to design locomotives that would haul
exceedingly heavy trains, and by this
means the cost of moving ton of
freight has been reduced to it's lowest
practical limits, The locomotive of
1880 weighed four tons, the locomotive
of 1910 weighed ten tons, the locomo-
tive of 1860 weighed twenty-five tons.
the locomotive of 1880 weighed fortN
tons, and many locomotives of 1900
weigh one hundred tons. The curtail-
ment of bridges and tunnels will pre-
vent locomotives from being made
much larger.-Angus Sinclair, Editor
of Locomotive Engineering,