The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-04-11

| need to be taken into account, and prob ably all the advantage that may accrue from the increased size of of a driving
 wheel Is at least counterbalanced, if
 not heavily overbalanced, by the ma terial loss of relative tractive force
 which unaviodably accompanies every
 addition to driving wheel diameter However, those were the days of rail-
 way infancy, and, I may add, ignor-
 ance. The Great Western had already employed driving wheels eight fet in
 diameter. and MT. T. E. Harrison, c. E.-afterward distinguished as the able engineer-in-chief of the Northeastehn
 railway-having to design new express engines for the Great Western, resolved to "go two better" and add A inches
 to the wheel diameter that had been
 the largest hitherto-to increase 1t iron, 8 to 10 feet. The locomotive was brtlt
 at Newcastle-on Tyne by Messrs. X. & w. Hawthorn, and was named "durri- cane" With 16-inch cylinders, 20-inch piston stroke, and only 624 square feet
 of heating surface, it will readily be perceived how feeble and inefft ctive the
 new engine would be, possess. ng only
 forty-two pounds of tractive force for
 every pound of effective stean! pres
 sure in the cylinders. not more than
 six tonse adhesion weight, and very
 small steam pressure. But 1t had oth- CT drawbacks.
 Another fallacy which obtained in tose early days was that high pitch cd boiler was disadvantageous, If not absolutely dangerous. With the driv- ing axle feet above the rails and 1o-inch crank-throw. the under side of the boiler barrel must have been at l least 6 feet above the rail levei--allow- inr for the space occupied by tagging etc-and so with boiler 4 feet in di- ameter. It's axis would have stood fully | S feet above the rails. Nowadays s feet 6 inches to feet is deemed per- fectly safe height even on the narrower l 4-foot S1s-inch gauge; but not so in lsSS, and, therefore, special provision had to be made for the 1O-foot driving wheels.
 This was accomplished by placing the boiler on & separate frame from that I to which were attached the cylinders l and the leading, driving and trailing 1 wheels, only one pair being employed | for the purposes of propulsion. It hard
 Iy needs to be said that this monstros-
 ity proved an immediate and final fail- ure, and was never able to do any &C., tual train work.
 | But the ingenious MT, Harrison had yet another string to his bow. He de- signed and built simultaneously with
 hurricane" second locomotive named "Thunderer," which also had its ! boiler on an independent frame, but had two pairs of coupled 6-foot driving
 wheels connected with the second frame , these being geared up three co one with | the view of rendering them practically l equivalent to single pair IS feet in 1 diameter. Had the four 6-foot coupled wheels been placed under the boiler ! in the usual way "Thunderer," even with cylinders only 16x20, and SPA 1 square feet of heating surface, might | have proved fairly useful machine I as locomotives went In those days. As | it was, her laundering was as mild as | the force of the others hurricaning, and
 the fastest journey made by either en- zine was to the scrap heap which was
 reached in double quick record time.-- | Magazine.