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September 16, 2007
Those locomotive types
From the 1921 Wonder Book of Railways:
The Pacific, The Mikado, The Mastodon, The Santa Fe. Time was names like these could raise the hair on the back of your neck, but the days of the Steam-Men are over. Great iron horses eating coal and breathing smoke as they hauled their heavy goods across country. Strong men stripped to the waist shovelling the black stuff into the glowing maw of the fire box. Blowing down to reduce priming, always watchful not to jam the valve open, then shutting off the cylinder oil feed when drifting. It took a skilled man to work a steam locomotive's draw-bar horse-power up to 3870.
a 2-8-2 Mikado class locomotive, at the Bell Fontaine refuelling facility, Ohio, photo Fred C Stoes
Posted by john at September 16, 2007 04:03 PM