Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1904-05-24
TESTING.
DOES THE RAILROAD MONSTER
PAY FOR THE OIL, SAND
AND coALIT USES?
Testing of the Huge Monsters Forms!
One Of the Interesting Sights of the
Transportation Building At the st.
Louis Fair.

Transportation Building At the st.
Louis Fair.
OF all the many interesting sights to
be seen in the Transportation building
at the st. Louis exposition the testing
of the big railroad locomotives forms
one of the greatest attractions to all,
classes and conditions of people. The
big balcony is always thronged and
the people peer down at the work OF
testing as though they were looking
down into some great hole at some
huge and confined monsted.
The hole is full of big wheels and
hose pipes and strange looking ma
chinery, and would also be full of Curl
GUS people were it not for some stout
ratings about it. It holds the railway
engine-testing plant, and any one hav-
ing a locomotive they want tested can
just take it right out there and find
out in a jiffy if its capacity for earning
its keep is overbalanced by its appetite
for oil, sand and coal.
Manner of Testing.
What is apparent to the strolling
sightseer is that an engine, stripped of
it's tender, is attached by drawbar to
probable arrangement of stiff levers
and powerful springs buried in a heavy
mass of concrete, and is then fired up
and it's drivers set revolving. Instead
of moving forward on the rails the en-
CINE spurns the track from beneath it's
feet, for the track is but another set
of wheels mounted in a pit and having
on their extended axles an ingenious
system of friction brakes, working I'M
| der hydraulic pressure. Attached at
various places are indicators, gauges.
scales, thermometers, calorimeters and
tachometers, and everything Is taken
note of by measure and weight and
register, from coal and water to draw
bar pull. SOS
i When you first come upon some big,
!. honest, homely, hard-working engine
4 built for transcontinental hauling of
: heavy coaches OF steady work in
4 freight handling wasting its strength
there on that scientific .treadmill, you
are filed with pity and Indignation.
The fireman, shovels in coal, weighed
as in food test, and the engineer
opens the throttle, whereat the great
drive wheels revolve and black clouds
) Of smoke are puffed into suspended
escape pipe. Mile after mile the In
dustrious engine labors on, overcom-
v ing the friction of the retarding track
: and registering on the dynamometer.
. at the drawbar force that would take
| an excursion train over mountain
grade, and all the time men potter
around and read the Indicators and put
i on more friction and more steam and
measure out more food and drink.
:. Sorry for Wasted Engine.
l. You feel as if it were a case of cruel
). vivisection at which the unfeeling test
|. ers were coolly presiding and you are
!, sorry for the engines wasted energy
d that might accomplish SO much more
than the mere trailing Of a registering
pen across piece of paper. You feel
as is the hampered engine harnessed
, there felt it's degradation and you long
~ to slip out it's restraining coupling pin
. and let it go sailing out of the doorway
e. and work off its energy blowing UP
III some of those prim, self-conscious
le sunken gardens and trellised fruit
q. trees outside.
le Crowds Of people gather about the
~ testing plant every day and eye it curl
ne ously or indifferently. Some Of then
re stay hour after hour and study it in
at tently while others give it only pass
ST. ing glance, as if the battery of theil
nj doorbell or the machinery of the dumb
al waiter in their flat was just exactl.
of like it. Strangely enough the peopl,
re who appreciate and sympathize witt
yo the laboring engine are women VIII
Sc are overburdened with the cares
he home and children for they know hoy
lid the engine feels, tied as it is to heav
ng load that with all it's efforts 1t neye
re seems able to move appreciably.
Try 1t is amusing sometimes to listen t
ell people talking to foreigners at tn
or fair, especially to the Orientals. Tn
me sight of some sleek, leather-hued mo
ere sci Of humanity standing Innocent
en- around is sure. to suggest to the. PEI
ing pie about him that he is lonesome an
BILE they try to cheer him up. They. i
civ variably talk loud. as if he were sure
be quite deaf, and they ask some TO-
nth baby question at which the Orient
ade Yale or Harvard graduate must laug
in the sleeve of his Occidental cut
way. They always ask him how
sey likes it here and il he is homesick al
ian how much of family he has, and do
ton he get paid much for his laundry VOL
son at home, and can he fight we'll on ri
,wn alone, and what does he think of Anne
Her lean institutions.
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