The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1902-03-07

The worlds biggest and most power
full locomotive, an American compound
built at Schenectady by the American
Locomotive company. is on its way
from the Mohawk valley to the far
West. where 1t will haul heavy freight
on the Santa Fe road. 1t represents
the highest achievement in locomotive
design, the most notable effort OF
American builders to produce an en-
zine of enormous tractive power adapt
ed to the needs of our trans-continental
lines This monster weighs, without
the fifty-ton tender, 1870 tons.
From the end of the tender to the
point of the pilot, this giant of the rails
measures seventy feet.
The top of the stunted smokestack is
sixteen feet above the ties, and to such
a height does the dome reach that Its
top had to be taken off before the loco
motive could pass in safety under the
overhead bridges between. Schenectady
and Buffalo. The massive boiler is
perched so high in the air that tall
man can stand under it,
But while the dome is thirteen feet
above the driving wheel aXles, the
center of gravity is very low-several
ers. The engine gets it's great stability
from it's massive frames, cylinder cast
ings, driving wheels and driving
mechanism.
On level track 9s9 could haul train
a mile and a half long. Its tractive
power is So 900 pounds-that is, it could
lift that amount of dead weight.
It's great wheel base gives 9S9 this
nr
massive driving wheels, nearly as tall
as man, and so heavily counterbal-
anced that they appear almost solid,
grip twenty feet of track.
On these ten drivers which gave the
name of decapod to this type of engine,
a weight of $4,000 pounds is carried.
The pony trucks carries only fourteen
tons. much of the weight of the saddle
and cylinder castings being distributed
over the drivers by the equalizer beams
so distnctively of American design.
It's fireboX is made of carbon steel
tested to tensile strength of $4,000
pounds to the square inch. is about as
big as the bedchamber of a New York
fiat. It's two thick shells are held to-
sether by nearly 1000 staybolts, each
one capable of lifting a yard engine
without breaking.
The crate area is sixty square feet.
which is unapproached in any other
locomotive ever built. The bottom of
the firebox reaches out over the tops
of the drivers, after the fashion of re-
cent American locomotives.
The heating surface measures exact
ly 1852 square feet. Between the tube
sheets 9S9's boiler measures 1S1s feet
md in the big barrel are massed fues,
"a inches in diameter. Placed end to
end. these fues would make u pipe a
mile and half long.
The massive low pressure cylinders
are next to the forward drivers. The
smaller high pressure cylinders are
directly ahead, a construction which
makes one piston rod do for each pair
of cylinders. This is designated as the
tandem compound. The live steam is
first used in the forward cylinders
which exhaust into the thirty-inch
chambers of the low-pressure cylin-
ders.
The cylinders of 9S9 are the greatest
castings ever made in the Schenectady
shops. Their gross weight in the molds
was 25,340 pounds. Much of this great
weight is in the halves of the saddle
the forward support Of the boiler.